We crash together, like satellites spinning out of orbit, pushing and pulling, at the moments that inform us, and the moments that we share. With little regard for consequence; with the inevitability of rain; we push and we pull, for succor and warmth, and demand to be known. And plead to be loved.
When the very best of us is praised, and we refuse to believe; what is left is a cup. A cup with a hole which can never be filled. "I'm not the man you think I am." And, "To love me, you must love me at my worst." So he hides all his love, for fear it's not enough. He hides his ambition, because he doesn't know how to use it. He hides his true self, because he's never faced a mirror.
Until one day when they decide to start everything anew, they fight and they argue, because it feels familiar and true. And he storms out, angry, incensed. She continues the task of moving boxes to the car. He's got to clear his head, he tells himself, as he circles round the block. He needs to find a place of calm, where the noise is shushed away. And as he circles round the corner, still filled with an anger he feels righteous, he sees her bent over, picking up the pieces of a poorly packed and flimsy box. A stranger has decided to give her a hand. A moment of kindness which has slipped him by, and as he approaches, he sees it's his box of porn tapes and magazines. The stranger never says a word, just helps along, until he hears, "I got it, thanks," in the worst possible tone. As he stands and turns to walk away, she reiterates her thank you, and the couple wordlessly continue to repack the box. And that wasn't the first time he felt he didn't deserve her love. It wasn't the first time he didn't say or do whatever it was he needed to do. And whatever that was, he simply could not figure it out. Because he was paralyzed with anger. He was angry still at her, and something she said, which in a week, he won't even remember. He was angry at himself, and these feelings, so large, they burst from the seems of his soul. But it was the first time he felt the indignity of what she must have suffered; of his temper tantrums and tirades. It was the first time he knew, he wasn't ready for love.
Oh he could write about it. Describe it in a poem; dissect it in a movie or book; recognize its immensity in some other couple striving to build something, in a world that tries to tear that very thing apart. But he didn't know how to earn it. Or recognize it from close up.
Satellites spinning and crashing out of control, their gravity inexplicably pulling, at forces which they should not effect. Tugging at the strings to find those moments, frozen in amber, and strapped to our backs, that make us more, and less, of who we might or will become, when forged on the anvil of time.
And he thinks, "A little bit of quantum physics would come in so handy right about now.A little bit of time is relative, and you are what you perceive: and a pair of rose coloured glasses to make it all true." Because he's tired of the sunset; he wants to rise with the day. He wants to live each moment as if he's at play. He wants to hold her hand oh lord, for forever and a day.
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