I struggle, at times, to hear your voice, although I know it is never far my troubled ears.
I can remember those soul-filled vibrations that once rippled through my soul. I can remember closing my eyes, as if they were some new-age arms that would embrace your words, each demanding syllable, and never let them go. I can remember the warmth in the songs you sang, in the prayers you issued, and in the demands you offered that were somehow supposed to save me.
I can remember them all, yet I cannot hear your voice.
I recall the urgency in your pleas, the desperation in your tone. I can almost touch the drama in the space we shared, and I can almost feel the fear of loss shaking me to oaths I could never meet, rousing me to great heights of failure. I can recall the ice-cold feel of your touch, the horrible demands for something that neither of us could ever feel. I can recall the lonely testaments of love, and the protestations of eternity as the hangman’s noose slipped suredly around forever’s neck.
It seems even eternity has a grave somewhere. Even forever has a tombstone.
Yet despite the finality of the end, we were once there, together. Despite the promises of our shallow pits and weakness of our lazy knots, we were bound once in great certainty. Despite the broken oaths and great risk of failure even we, once, thought of eternity as nothing more than certain.
And even though we had fought our battles, and waged our wars, with words as our swords and love as our sacred battleground, I cannot remember your voice. I cannot hear your spoken battle cries, even as I wince as words flow out of others. I can no longer feel the raised protrusions of wounds on my skin even if I can feel the stiffness of their scars. I can no longer relish in the fools’ folly of promising wine from water, for I have sworn an oath to let water be good enough.
I bid you a fond farewell, my old soul. I welcome you to whatever paradise you’ve found not through my own extended hand, but through the hand much sturdier extended by a love more suitable to your liking. It is time, I say to you, to have our own flowers bloom and our own fields tilled by plows much better suited for the task.
It is in such liberation that we give another the promises of eternity we could never offer ourselves. It is in such potential that we find in others that we could never find in us. It is now we part, never to be whole, together, again.
Peace.