For better or worse, I never did write a diary entry to mark my first Summer Solstice.
But much like the scene of any crime committed both flagrantly and brazenly, in broad daylight, with the flashbulbs cracking and the cameras rolling, there were more than enough eye witnesses to attest to its golden existence. Even if memories warp three years to any day, there were too many teary eyes to whitewash the evidence. Too many smiles to ignore the joy radiating from every angle.
Of course, the pursuit of pure love is by no means a crime in itself.
Folding oceans over time zones constitutes no terrestrial misdemeanour.
And overcoming near impossible odds is not punishable in any court of Karma.
All we ever really did wrong was to meet under the strangest of circumstances, wouldn't you say? Like two loose ends dangling on a sudden crease in the fabric of the space-time continuum. The rest was good-old fashioned hard work as we did everything any two regular people would have done to be together. We wrote every day. We shared intimate stories. Consoled each other when necessary. Fuelled dreams. Calmed anxieties. Spoke on the phone and learned to imitate our funny accents. We helped each other dismantle our old lives, piece by painstaking piece, to make room for new love. We met in noisy midnight airports, lived in close quarters and traveled unchartered waters, kissed and fought passionately, cleaned clinically, hugged tenderly and laughed from the belly, even when we drove each other crazy, all before saying goodbye in noisy early-morning airports. We only promised each other the moon and stars, so as not to feel the gravity of unnecessary burden or expectation. We surrendered any notion of a simple life. We found comfort in the idea of together forever instead.
And all the while, we kept each other's secrets safely tucked between us.
No, let's say things as they are. I mostly held your secrets, close to my heart, just like you asked me to. I even began to collect a few from your family as well. Like laminated butterflies behind glass, they just sat there, silent and motionless. Frozen in their own metamorphosis. No longer looking to set anyone free. Still, I tended to their stubborn silence with a gardener's affection, trying my best to weed out the demons from the necessary life lessons. For you. For us. There's no crime in that.
No, there's no crime in believing in the eternal potential of your own love story.
There's no crime in having family and friends do the same.
Until, of course, that very beautiful story becomes all you have left.
Unless it's all there ever really was to begin with.
Until you disappeared with the last chapter.
Still clinging to all your stillborn secrets.
But how could I not have known? You finally did what all your favourite fictional characters before you did. You just up and vanished. They should have warned me when you couldn't. The pages should have cried out when I devoured them smugly. Maybe they did. But I wasn't listening. And when I was finally ready to listen, the same winds which had carried so many secrets finally went silent. Dead still. Like a soft breeze that never really existed.
Soon, there will be nothing to prove your existence beyond words on a page. Nothing but our story and our secrets. Our secrets and our family secrets, captured in grainy photos, fuzzy memories and cold genetic code. You and I, but no us. No longer husband and wife. No longer star-crossed lovers. No longer lazy daydreamers. Just subject and scribe; one all too eager to swim right over the ocean's edge, the other wading patiently in that same cosmic depth, a patient lifetime to uncover, understand, internalize and record whatever the dragnet may carry along with it.
It might take every last ray of sunshine the Summer Solstice can spare to shed light on the true depth of our love. Because the crime was never how strongly we believed in our own story. No. The crime was the unwilling role everyone around us played in that story's tragic unraveling; simple pawns and witnesses suddenly lending supporting roles in a narrative that never belonged to them in the first place, and one whose facts they'd see and hear but never truly understand. That crime will only be understood over a very, very, very long time. When the truth finally slips free from the grasp of those who have held onto it too tightly. When the suitcases become too many to carry. When the sunlight reaches the darkest corners of the cosmic dragnet. When you finally go home.
For now, we go back to being what we were before space and time brought us together:
A fascinating subject with no storyteller. A writer without his favourite muse.
Life has taught me you cannot be one without understanding the other.
But I have been proven wrong before.
So don't cry crocodile tears.
Be honest. Come clean.
And love yourself.
That, my darling, is no crime at all.
But much like the scene of any crime committed both flagrantly and brazenly, in broad daylight, with the flashbulbs cracking and the cameras rolling, there were more than enough eye witnesses to attest to its golden existence. Even if memories warp three years to any day, there were too many teary eyes to whitewash the evidence. Too many smiles to ignore the joy radiating from every angle.
Of course, the pursuit of pure love is by no means a crime in itself.
Folding oceans over time zones constitutes no terrestrial misdemeanour.
And overcoming near impossible odds is not punishable in any court of Karma.
All we ever really did wrong was to meet under the strangest of circumstances, wouldn't you say? Like two loose ends dangling on a sudden crease in the fabric of the space-time continuum. The rest was good-old fashioned hard work as we did everything any two regular people would have done to be together. We wrote every day. We shared intimate stories. Consoled each other when necessary. Fuelled dreams. Calmed anxieties. Spoke on the phone and learned to imitate our funny accents. We helped each other dismantle our old lives, piece by painstaking piece, to make room for new love. We met in noisy midnight airports, lived in close quarters and traveled unchartered waters, kissed and fought passionately, cleaned clinically, hugged tenderly and laughed from the belly, even when we drove each other crazy, all before saying goodbye in noisy early-morning airports. We only promised each other the moon and stars, so as not to feel the gravity of unnecessary burden or expectation. We surrendered any notion of a simple life. We found comfort in the idea of together forever instead.
And all the while, we kept each other's secrets safely tucked between us.
No, let's say things as they are. I mostly held your secrets, close to my heart, just like you asked me to. I even began to collect a few from your family as well. Like laminated butterflies behind glass, they just sat there, silent and motionless. Frozen in their own metamorphosis. No longer looking to set anyone free. Still, I tended to their stubborn silence with a gardener's affection, trying my best to weed out the demons from the necessary life lessons. For you. For us. There's no crime in that.
No, there's no crime in believing in the eternal potential of your own love story.
There's no crime in having family and friends do the same.
Until, of course, that very beautiful story becomes all you have left.
Unless it's all there ever really was to begin with.
Until you disappeared with the last chapter.
Still clinging to all your stillborn secrets.
But how could I not have known? You finally did what all your favourite fictional characters before you did. You just up and vanished. They should have warned me when you couldn't. The pages should have cried out when I devoured them smugly. Maybe they did. But I wasn't listening. And when I was finally ready to listen, the same winds which had carried so many secrets finally went silent. Dead still. Like a soft breeze that never really existed.
Soon, there will be nothing to prove your existence beyond words on a page. Nothing but our story and our secrets. Our secrets and our family secrets, captured in grainy photos, fuzzy memories and cold genetic code. You and I, but no us. No longer husband and wife. No longer star-crossed lovers. No longer lazy daydreamers. Just subject and scribe; one all too eager to swim right over the ocean's edge, the other wading patiently in that same cosmic depth, a patient lifetime to uncover, understand, internalize and record whatever the dragnet may carry along with it.
It might take every last ray of sunshine the Summer Solstice can spare to shed light on the true depth of our love. Because the crime was never how strongly we believed in our own story. No. The crime was the unwilling role everyone around us played in that story's tragic unraveling; simple pawns and witnesses suddenly lending supporting roles in a narrative that never belonged to them in the first place, and one whose facts they'd see and hear but never truly understand. That crime will only be understood over a very, very, very long time. When the truth finally slips free from the grasp of those who have held onto it too tightly. When the suitcases become too many to carry. When the sunlight reaches the darkest corners of the cosmic dragnet. When you finally go home.
For now, we go back to being what we were before space and time brought us together:
A fascinating subject with no storyteller. A writer without his favourite muse.
Life has taught me you cannot be one without understanding the other.
But I have been proven wrong before.
So don't cry crocodile tears.
Be honest. Come clean.
And love yourself.
That, my darling, is no crime at all.
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