vivid

Her face is always changing, with the lighting, with the mood. Memory is plastic, full of durable possibilities, but vulnerable to heat and force. I see here more and more in pieces. Her smile here, her gaze there, her sway and roll in the balance found in a roiling crowd. And still, in truth she has vanished. Her absence is riotous, eternity permeable and limited inside this heart of this human animal. I might not know her now if I saw her on the street. I might not recognize her if she walked up to me and spoke my name.

Romance is always a measure of turbulence, the volatility of desire played out only half outside the head, a muddle of will, matter, and stray intention. We strive, we strut, we stun however we are able. We hide and reveal, mingling shadow with light, mingling flesh with time and the dissolution of souls. We tell ourselves stories to hide our crimes, we tell ourselves the truth to allow us leaps of utter faith. Most of all, romance is that story that we very much long to have as our own. Nothing so special in the telling, it is the living of it that makes us so vivid and real.

Time tells us where our wills lapsed, where our stories folded and moved along. Time tells us where our tricks played out, where her eyes were looking when they couldn't find this gaze. Attentions wane and charms fade, and we wade in to the depths of the life we thought we had set aside. Strangers become our friends, and our lovers become names in a story we sometimes tell. Nothing like candle light and rain stippling the windows. Nothing like the chemistry of steam and sweat, kisses spent upon the youth of this ancient world. Her name is sometimes the same, sometimes it changes. Sometimes we have yet to meet, other times we never will. The story moves and coils behind my blurry eyes, its only consistency being how much I will never know.