2004-10-03

...Oh no, it is an ever-fix�d mark that stands alone and looks on tempests...

The words �friendship�, or �friend� may oftentimes escape our lips without our grasping its true meaning. When soft lips give such words shape, I only wonder if some invisible essence is supposed to rush through the soul like white, cold smoke. Would this unknown feeling be as strong as a river�s current, in turn, making the heart beat faster--much faster, and we realize the beauty that lies in that other person who--in many ways--completes us. Our missing pieces from the mosaic of our lives and souls--lovers sans passionate caresses, salvation sans a preceding feeling of doom, and angels sans white wings.

I think that each person in his or her lifetime will love in many ways, yet, not necessarily in a �romantic� sense. The love we may oftentimes find through friendship is calm, immense--assuming that it is in its purest form. I doubt there are any age barriers...

And today, out of all days, I realized that indeed, I love him. Not the selfish intertwined-with-lust kind of love society seems to confuse--real, pure, unselfish...love.

� I am glad that we are still friends...and that we have worked out everything we�ve needed to work out...I have lost my grasp on life and the only thing I can catch are these thoughts lingering towards you...� he said.

I was struck, and felt guilty, sad, overjoyed, and nostalgic all the same. Never had it crossed my mind that someone else could mean so much to me, or I could mean that much to him. A strange and delightful feeling overflowed through my heart the minute I said, �friend...my friend� and for the first time, the word was not used in vain.

Yet, with any friendship, there comes the pain and the tears one sheds right along with that other person. I wish I could fix the world for him--write the perfect story, and he would be my main character. In that story, all his troubles would end and he would find the love he craves, and I would make the October evenings cloak him in a shawl of security and hope.

I worry constantly that the same spring breeze which kisses my cheek will not kiss his, and I worry that my words of I am always here sound too generic--as if that�s the answer I�m supposed to give, and in fact, I think it�s the answer everyone else gives.

He knows everything--he has managed to undress me of everything I am on the surface, digging through layers of uncertainty, cynical thoughts, and who knows what else to see the true image of my soul--leveling me with his words. He�s heard my sighs and has seen my smiles as I ramble about Chopin or Thoreau or a simple winter morning. Usually, in these black-and-white images of a lonely fisherman inside a golden boat of hopes, I would only like to see one person beside me: him. My dream of mornings in Walden Pond, and I would be Thoreau, and he, my Emerson.

What began with smiles and whispers turned to soft kisses and caresses, which darkened into anger, bitterness, and contempt; yet, in the end, we�ve managed to return to those same smiles and whispers. But today, I consider myself the luckiest I have ever been--for today, I learned that I am capable of truly loving.

aeka at 7:38 a.m.