Empty Spaces

I remember the day
You turned to me for comfort,
When time with me
Had been something you needed
And then looked forward to.

I don’t remember the day
The tables turned...
When you stopped needing me
And I started leaning,
Waiting, wishing, hoping.

Now you’re gone
And your place, taken over
By wistful longing
And a yearning for something
I had never needed in the first place.

Eclipse

I painted this for someone I thought was like the sun...close enough and yet exceedingly distant, warm, yet sometimes harsh enough to burn, and though jealously guarding his spaces, letting me in as far as his affection and need would disallow.

I painted in a smile; a reminder of mine that had once been reason enough for his. It reflected a happier time, before the beaming yellows evanesced into the greyness of an almost uncontrolled chaos...

This painting never found its place under the sun. It didn’t get to spread cheer like it was meant to, by infusing warmth and colour into a blank, stark wall, in a blank, stark room. No, it was dismissed to the bleak darkness of a cupboard, or a box, maybe, to lie there forgotten, along with a few, old dog-eared photographs of two happy-in-the-moment people, and other fading memories of me.

Maybe it’s just my imagination that I see a smile wilting, drooping, dying, in the suffusing blackness. Is it mine? Is it his?

Or is it the one in the picture...the painting that had once held meaning, which now simply holds two separate, distinct hues. A strong yellow, painted in thick, determined strokes, and a dull blue, delicate, unsure, receding...

That, and the ghost of a smile that once was.

Heartache

Pain…It hits you sometimes, when you least expect it. A word that stirs a memory you’ve tried to repress, a date on the calendar that used to hold some significance, a song that carries you to another time and place…

And when it does, what do you do? Do you stoically veil the pain with a smile and hope that the smile will turn real in time, or do you let the weight of the memories crash into you and run you down?

Maybe you just have to live through it. Let it wash over you before it leaves you, hopefully taking with it some of the hurt, the anguish and the disappointment, so that the next time it strikes, the intensity would have dulled. And you’re left with something resembling hope, not for what is gone, but for the things yet to come.

You realize that maybe you were destined to be together, but only for a while…That though your time has passed, it has left behind with you, answers to questions that used to haunt, and lessons that perhaps no one else could have taught. And finally, you understand that having your happiness so contingent on another person is what eventually breaks your heart…and that it should never have to be that way.

 

Pain…There are no shortcuts to overcoming it, and there are no quick fixes. Maybe you just have to swim through it and do your best to keep from being sucked under. And wait and pray for the wound to heal and for your spirit to be restored.

But then again, who’s to say?

Because sometimes, you don’t recover. You simply survive.