We walked together, quietly, hand in hand,
right to the edge.
And peered into that abyss.
Infinitesimally deep.
So profoundly dark it seemed to pull the light out of our lives.
Though we stood, side by side, we were in that moment separated by a universe.
It had been years since the moment met.
A seemingly random event, a friend of a friend,
a casual invitation, lunch.
In the intervening years our connection deepened, its breadth and texture magnified with the passage of time.
It had grown, so slowly, neither of us had noticed how woven we were into each other’s lives.
And now, we stood, separately, staring into the abyss.
Each of us asking ourselves,
How important is this?
This human.
This friendship.
This love.
These questions, all in the face of …….
Goddamit! I am right!
Nobody! can treat me this way!
Fuck her! Fuck him!
Not yet able to notice a nagging reality,
obscured just behind a curtain woven of the threads
of self-righteousness and false pride.
There is a current, a breeze that flows thru the universe we call our lives.
Much of the time unnoticeable.
Sometimes just strong enough to clear the mist that obscures our view. Just strong enough to gently move a curtain just enough to get glimpse of something behind it.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
This small breeze, its purpose solely our clarity
Our growth
Our capacity to be loved
Our capacity to love
And then!
A blinding revelation,
And, I tell ya, that sucker crept right up on me. Mmmm mmmm mmmm
I realized the brightness of my life would dim in her absence.
The ripples of that, profoundly impacting my universe.
My soul unwilling to fill the void left by her departure.
Not some hormonally fueled, angst filled,
“you complete me” kind of thing.
No! The clarity to see and to choose that,
This is too potent,
too good,
too necessary,
too important
We both came to that conclusion, separately.
Together, hand in hand, we turned and walked away, from that abyss