Life, The Universe, and Everything

It was the New Year.
Fireworks bursted all around us,
Adding colour to a night
That surely would have been dark and sombre
Otherwise.

We sat on the edge of the rooftop,
Our feet dangling over the streets
Where so often we would walk.
We sat in silence, choosing
To lose ourselves in the moment.

And it came to me that in that silence,
I was closer to her than I ever could be,
And I could hear Annie say without speaking, ”I only want to be in love, 
“And never, ever be sure
“Which side loves the other more.”

Streetlight Manifesto is no longer my favourite band (that spot in my heart is reserved for The Gaslight Anthem) but this is always the song I come back to. I’m one of the many it has saved.

Perhaps my problems weren’t as bad as some that I read in the comments, but they were heavy for the 19-year-old that I was. I needed something I could hold on to, and this turned out to be it.

I slept, I dreamt, and found that I did wake up in a better place, in a better time. 

Annie’s tired of forgetting about today and always planning for tomorrow
Annie said, “The saddest day I came across was when I learned that life goes on without me.”

And perhaps that’s true, Annie, life goes on, but I think it’d be a better life with you still around.

I do not love you the way lovers do, I know.
Neither will you believe me when I tell you, but
I love you.

I love you the way a man might love the sunrise:
To watch from afar
I am content.

If Regard was a thing that could be seen and felt,
Would any of us truly be unhappy?
If we could only know how often
People thought about us, with good feeling.
Especially those 
Who love us best.

Joy and Sorrow are old lovers, it’s true, 
Look for them in the park, they always find the time
To feed the ducks.

On a park bench by the lake they smile and hold hands,
Throwing bread crumbs at the gaggle.
Pecking, their bellies fill.

And this is all a metaphor,
Because I mean to say that we are the ducks,
We live our lives and our hearts fill up
With all our sadnesses and all our joys.

At times we smile and forget our woes,
At times we weep, feeling we’ve never known happiness.

And often I think proof of God lies
In how blind we can be,
How our lives are unlike cut crystal,
In that we can’t see every facet at once.

It just boggles my mind that such a cute girl can spend hours upon hours in the library.

There’s some pretty blatant disregard for the laws of Physics going on here.

Caring for someone who has no reason to care about you is just about the quickest way to get hurt.

And am I here again, repeating the cycle? Building a castle in the air to suffer it crumble? It seems I must be. But I can’t have it any other way. Once you feel drawn to someone, you can’t let it go just like that. You might as well ask grass not to grow, ask snow in summer to never melt.

I’ll admit I was hurt bad the last time around. (The time I really consider to be the ‘last time around’.) It’s haunted me for years, my own ghost in the attic. But the hurt has served me well, because it’s changed me. I like to think I’m a better person now because of what happened, more ready to put myself in other’s shoes, a little more responsible. And if hurt is the price of change then I’ll try to pay in full. In the end it’s always been true: loving and losing is better than nothing at all.

You smile like someone who has never known sadness.
You may never know me, but thank you
Thank you for reminding me how to breathe, even if just for a while.

Everything’s up and running.

It’s been a while now, I’ve had the time. See those palaces? They take years to build, those, and the first few I tried to build kind of fell apart. Not exactly a walk in the park to bring them up.

Oh, and we have so many guests now, it’s always lively here. Most opt to stay in the palaces for a while but there are quite a few permanent ones. They’ve built cabins for themselves, can you imagine that? Cabins. And I didn’t have to lift a finger for them. They come and go as they please now, and when they do they stoke these great big fires in their fireplaces. When they’re around, I even fancy it feels warm here.

In short, everything’s better, so much better, than before. But I’m still hoping you’d show up for good someday.

You visit sometimes. I know you do. It’s pretty obvious from those big melted patches of snow I see around here from time to time. But I don’t even need to be a detective. I even see you sometimes, hiding from afar, watching everything. Takes every nerve in my body to pretend not to notice when I do.

You’re usually hiding behind the trees. And sometimes, I get a glimpse of you smiling. And there’s always something familiar about that smile, like I’ve seen it before. When I see it, I remember sunlight, roses, and a world different from this one.

But, I leave you be. Because you always choose to leave again, and even if I went after you I know I wouldn’t know what to say. I wouldn’t be able to find the words.

I figure it’s all still not to your liking. And maybe it never will be. Well, I don’t blame you for it. It is cold here. Also you don’t get reception or internet.

Ah, if only I knew the sort of buildings you’d like. If only I could find something in this world

To make you stay.

Did you say your lovers were liars?
All my lovers were liars too.
Did you say you were lonely?
I ain’t lived a single day without you.

-END OF SNOWFALL-

“…Why this world’s so cold?” said the builder, his tools under arm. His expression changed from one of calm to one of wistfulness. Outside, a seemingly endless blizzard raged, battering itself on the walls of the place like a desperate army.

“Truth be told, it wasn’t always like this. This world was green, once. The air was full of birds and squirrels were all over! That was how it all was in the beginning. But the years started to go by. And with that came the frost. At first you couldn’t notice it at all, you know. Slowly, everything changed. I haven’t seen many animals besides this penguin that keeps popping up sometimes, God knows what it wants. So the animals vanished. And the trees got frozen over, and where there was grass before there is nothing now but a blanket of silent white.”

The guest expressed his dismay over the fact. He asked the builder if the winter would last forever.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

The guest asked him what he meant by that.The builder paused, and sighed. Outside, the army continued its siege.

“Well, somebody was meant for this world. I really can’t put it in a better way than that. She’ll come, a girl as fair as any summer, with a sweet voice that’ll pierce right through all this cold. Oh, she’ll melt the snow wherever she sets her feet, and there the grass will show itself again. A heart to thaw the heart of this world, how do you like that? Spring will come, then. Because she’ll bring it with her.

“But you know, I’m trying not to think about that anymore. The fact is this vernal rebirth we’re talking about may not even happen in my lifetime. It may not happen for thousands and thousands of years, to be quite frank.

“Let me tell you something about myself, since you’ve seen me around. You must think i’m quite the worker, right? Always shuttling around with my tools. Always got something to else to build, or fix up, or etcetera.”

The guest expressed ignorance over that, but remarked that the builder was quite fond of conversation.

“Ahahaha! Well maybe you’re the one that’s too quiet. Anyway the fact of the matter is I wasn’t a good builder at all till recently. I couldn’t take this place. All this snow and blizzards and all this cold, it made me miserable. I went to a Door, one of those places you came through. Somehow I got it into my head that the Door I picked, and keep in mind I went to it completely at random, was the one she was going to pop in through, anytime. So I just stood in front of that Door. And I waited. I thought maybe if she’d come, I’d be able to bear living in this world again.

“It hurt to wait. Deep down I knew it wouldn’t happen that way, and not then. I don’t know whether it was out of misery or shame or what, but I ended up moving my hand out to shut the Door. But still I couldn’t pull myself away from it. Even then, there was a tiny bug of hope left in me about the matter that refused to be squashed. So still I stood upright in that spot with the Door closed and sometime after that, I don’t know when, I fell asleep. When I came to I was buried neck-deep in that snow.

“Eventually, I figured out years had passed. All that time, just gone. So do you see the mistake I made? I’m the builder here, just me. And if I can’t take it here, who will? I can’t just throw my hands up and go ‘Woe is me, for I’m lonesome’, all the merry day, ignoring my job. A builder builds, and he makes his guests comfortable.

“So let’s forget about these heavy matters. Hey, how do you find this igloo I’ve put you in, anyway? It can’t be as cozy as a summer home, I know, but I daresay it’s charming in its own right.”