Years went by without so much as a purr. I found myself wondering where she was, what she was doing, or how happy she was. Time progressed linearly but nothing happened. Idiots still posted stupid things on Facebook, buffoons abruptly became lifelong fans of dead celebrities who got even more famous, and poseurs with bathroom selfies made themselves look like the fumbling clowns they are. People… pardon me, things… never change.

But these are nothing more than thoughts in the ocean of misery… a restful distraction from the truth that I have no idea where to find her. I hallucinate her voice in the lonely cutting winds of our subzero Winter Wonderland. I feel her under my skin where my heart is supposed to be. I see her where my soul presumes to lay dormant in the middle of the ocean of this so-called life. I gaze into her restless hungry eyes clouding my mind. I watch the sunrise dew turn into rain which turns into tears of blood. On a park bench, I wait for the leaves to dry, lose life, and drift through the air, and like me, land in seemingly random places. Then I realize these are the distant dreams of things that’ll never be, hovering in thoughts that’ll never be free, until my mind attempts to escape to the consuming darkness of the day.

I realize I have no choice but to be patient and endure all of these nights without her. She is somehow, always surrounding my dreams, and in them, the moment I reach out to touch her soft, warm face I fall… I awake harshly, suddenly battling chronic insomnia like a zombie, and when I close my eyes, I see her as a solace in perpetual darkness.

Pain is the only constant; the only real thing among elaborate delusions: hope, faith, and even love. It sets in serenely, trying to account for lost time and search for the genuine affection that’s tired of idling inside you for so long. She deserves raindrops coming from clear country skies even if it means I have to dig the earth long after I’ve died; she deserves to have her body covered in gold and light. I sought to rule the land, the world where the constants differ greatly, where hope is king, faith is law, and she, is my queen. There, I could create words that carried meaning instead of a mere syntax conversion during a passing second between lovers, and with them, I’d tell her about those same lovers whose hearts are on fire. I’d tell her the story of this king who died from never having reunited with his queen. Unfortunately, no matter how far I go or how quickly I run, I know truth will find me, I know I eventually couldn’t talk anymore, that my words would inevitably lose meaning, my actions, panache. I’ll be forced to hide and watch her dance and smile in the rain, leave footprints in the sand on the edge of the ocean, and listen to her sing and laugh in the autumn breeze. Until finally, my heart would cease to be, and I’d have nowhere else to run to.

I detach. Walk far. Travel farther. Fight hard, and don’t even know what I’d say if I saw her again. All that remains is the somber sounds emanating from this piano; the Chopin I reluctantly hope she hears. Before her, there was never any light, and now, the darkness grows deeper. But there was, for a moment, something in between in her presence, and that slither of sunlight through her wooden blinds, that… is where I wanted to be.

Springtime of Love; Franz Stuck; 1917 — *Springtime of Love;* Franz Stuck; 1917

Oslo. Winter comes early and doesn’t leave until you force it. It was colder than her heart but just as majestic, and that itself was like something you’d read about in a Penguin Classic. It was there I’d first met her long ago. She’d just lost someone, crying on a park bench long after the sun had set, but there was a certain bravery in her demeanor. She crossed my mind somehow and never left it. I think that’s what others refer to as…feelings.

Toronto. Years later under a dimly lit streetlight she decided it was time to go back. I understood. She was tired of the feigned delicacies people aspire to, tired of our fat, crack-addicted mayor for not taking responsibility for his actions. She’d simply had enough. I gazed into her eyes and felt her pain, like I'd left her in some vicious British rain as if there were no one here for her, as if she were all alone with no more hope left in that perfect body of hers. And all the feelings she’d hidden in her valiant soul coupled with the things I couldn't feel oozed through the gilded masks we'd both cultivated in that moonless December night we let the snow course through the air. But none of it was enough, she closed her eyes and I watched her...slip away, and just like that she moved back. I never blame her; home has a particular equity. She thought she was nothing without her mask, nothing without the superficial things I could've provided her. That's what made it worse; I could've given her those things but I didn’t. I burned my tomorrows and traded my dreams for nightmares because those around us were too dumb to understand reality and opted for illusionary abstracts.

Helsinki. Here I was now, chasing an ideal around the world doing the same stupid things I always did, the only difference now was I couldn’t speak the language. I knew she could’ve blended my heart in with her morning smoothie anytime she wanted but I also knew how she thought. Even more than her desperate yearning for wanting to stand out, she’s always had one fatal weakness. Deep down, she was a good person, and deep down, I wasn’t. I looked through the mist, the moving fog and behind it, was the still moon staring back at me, cringing with the pain I knew it felt, and the sure sound of raindrops landing on dead leaves sunk my heart in line with my boots.

Bergen. Wet leaves squished under those same boots and I only heard the sound when there was a break in the Symphony of Sorrow playing through my headphones. Suddenly, something shuffled out of sight, intensified the air and…growled. The lone wolf. I knew how he felt. A creature that recognizes the futility of being solitary. Abandoning his pack means his odds for survival go down; he is one instead of two, even if he’s no longer putting up with their crap or listening to their exaggerated fables about how awesome they are. But the choice, the decision to be a lone wolf is perhaps more rational than we’d care to admit. In our landfill, lies burn through the grapevine; he’s this; he’s that; he’s bold; he’s cold…it’s those who withdraw that can then view things from an apathetical but necessary disconnection, to see things as they are rather than what they're meant to be. The single grass pane lit up by the moonlight rather than a wild forest imploding from excess.

It didn’t matter where she was or what she was doing or even…who she was with. As the darkness of the planet consumed me bit by bit, I smiled rather than cried. At least this way I'd die in peace, finally.

Vincent Van Gogh. Melancholy. 1883. — Vincent Van Gogh. *Melancholy*. 1883.

Ventulus

Amo