Summer Lovin'

He sits. In the stifling heat this is as much as he can do. He recollects past Summers. Ground baked to solid plates. The ferocity of the kiln cracking the clay as it cooked. Heat shimmering up from that broken ground. Speaking to him of a land of fire beneath his feet. He was made differently then. The hot Summer energised his band of friends – they flung themselves into each day with a certainty that’s now alien to him.

To stay indoors in the comparative cool was a punishment. This he can relate to. He knows that his avoidance of the sun at the height of its powers is a retreat from life itself. This is self-imprisonment. He tries on pretty lies for size. But thoughts of his transformation from caterpillar to a new form of beauty is a joke. That joke’s on him. Wish fulfilment is what got him here. He mistrusts it as a means of escape.

There’s no escape from the consequences of a life gone wrong. No matter the whys and wherefores. Fault is an irrelevance. In the aftermath of a crash, everything is inanimate and unfeeling. The only living thing is pain. He likes to think he’s embracing the pain. Working through it. But this isn’t the time. He isn’t ready. One day he might be. And on that day he must make a hard choice. Then and only then will he traverse a landscape that’s the land of fire he imagined as a child. There lies his redemption.

Today he intends to write. Before him are several blank pages. He takes them up. Taps their bottom edges on the table. The sound of it is satisfying. He lays them down. Inspecting his attempt to hide the sibling pages. That job’s done, but it does nothing to rid him of the knowledge of their presence. So much in life is hidden. Yet the knowledge of it remains.

The pen finds its way into his hand as he considers the challenge that the paper provides. He knows he must write the words with his own hand. Allow meaning to flow through him irrevocably. Words of truth can never be taken back. All words contain magic. He performs this spell.

Dear…

That single word shapes the ones that will follow. Already the page is transformed into a letter. As one word follows another, he does dear justice. He never called her dear in earnest, but always she was dear to him, more so with the passing of each day. He loved his love for her. Of that he has no doubt.

He speaks love to the page. Only once does he pause to cross a word out, replacing it with the word that should have been written in its stead. That word is the flow and the flow of truth is all. He knows that he could write for a thousand years and still fall short of what she means to him. This is the very nature of love. Love is too big to be placed on any page.

Yet on he goes. This expression of love is something he must do. Only when he’s finished does he look upon what he’s made of the paper with his pen. Only then does he consider his options now that he’s brought this truth into the world.

The letter is how he sees their love. And now it’s done, he’s satisfied to know that his love is unaltered by its end. There’s a constancy to how he loved her and loves her still. His satisfaction goes beyond his love, for he sees himself reflected in that love and he doesn’t look away from that reflection. He’s still him despite all that’s happened in his life.

The shiny, new youth that ventured out into the world with a smile and a bag full of dreams may be dented and bruised, but he remains the same person. Flawed yet earnest. His inner voice is harsh and cruel at times, but he remembers himself and speaks words of kindness to counter the punishment he turns inward. He’s grateful and in his gratitude he touches greater truths. His existence is part of something far bigger. In that purpose he’s no longer quite so lost. Eventually he may find the child he once was and become the adult that child needed.

With his words he acknowledges his part in an end that he hopes may not be an end at all. He lays himself bare so that he can see the extent of the damage. Beyond that he sees healing in a union that can only grow stronger. To share the hard times is to know far more. To know the one you love and also to love yourself more deeply. To partake of a beautiful well that contains everything a life requires.

This then is a dream beyond the dream his younger self brought into the world. Since then he’s made vows and he’s lived them alongside his values and the truth not only of who he is, but who he must be. This is the Great Adventure – the quest to discover his destiny. Their shared destiny.

As he explores the landscape before him and the choices that lay ahead, he finds himself kneeling. Ridding himself of his armour and exposing his wounds. Laying himself open and vulnerable. He’s a warrior and he isn’t yet done. Where there’s breath, there’s hope. However much it hurts he must go on. He sees more and more clearly. He cannot give up. He smiles as he writes that there’s no giving up on love.

He talks of her as a fellow warrior. Revisits the battles they have fought side by side. Always there are unspoken words. Meaning inherent in the words that are spoken. They both made vows. They must fight for their love. Winters come and they seal the land in cold despair, but always there’s hope. Hope of times of renewal and rebirth. This is the cycle of all life.

He thinks of the robin puffing out his chest in the winter wastelands. Guarding his territory despite the freezing cold and desolation. Inspiration from a fellow warrior. Keep going! This is living! The letter a gentle battle cry for a love that shouldn’t end. For love knows no end.

When the letter’s finished he signs it with yet more love. He feels lighter. The heat of the day has become inconsequential as he rises from his seat and rolls his head around his stiff neck. Clenches and unclenches a hand become unused to writing. Quickly, he fetches an envelope and seals the letter within. Writing her name on the outside.

There’s a certainty to the fate of that letter. After all it was imbued with that certainty. He means for her to read it. He could have kept the letter. Perhaps his possession of it would begin with a delay in his sharing, that grew with his inability to find the right time, when it was always for him to make the time. Burning the letter has a romance to it. The ritual of cremation to aid the grieving process. This idea harries away at him. This is the season of fire. The sun rages and in that conflagration people burn as they light fires of their own and char offerings to gods they can no longer name.

It's the letter that burns him now. A baton that must be passed. He arranges to see her. From the outset of their meeting she hurts him as he knows she will. She tells him her life’s far better without him. The delivery of her words seems reasonable. She wraps them up in emotion that doesn’t accord with the message. If he hadn’t attended to the words themselves, she could be telling him she missed him and their parting had been a mistake. There’s poison on the edge of her blade.

He's been taught to go along with the charade. There’s no arguing with this narrative. Nor is there any harmonising with it. It’s hers and hers alone. She never learnt to share and doesn’t care to. He understands this in some deep and forgotten place within him. Eventually he’ll know her for what she really is. The letter’s a part of that ritual. A journey of revelatory redemption that’ll send him tumbling into a darkness that he can only claw and crawl from. Letting go will be his grail. The bond of servitude she created was forged in the heat of endless pain. He’ll mistake this for love for an age. He’ll cling to that which he’s been made to believe he deserves. Her narrative has cleansed him of all of his own narratives. There are no blank pages here, only a mess of siren noise that confuses and imprisons.

Smiling sweetly, he endures her cruel finger of blame. He’s a warrior after all. He knows she cannot be happy in this self-imposed exile. The nonsense of her feigned happiness confirms this. Which is exactly as she intended.

He finds a moment despite his misgivings and hands her the envelope. He feels the hope encased within. Spoken words haven’t turned the tide. The peace of written words of love may yet make all the difference. She places the envelope on the coffee table.

He urges her to read it. She eyes him as she enquires as to the nature of what awaits her. Checking there isn’t a trap. One of thousands of appraisals. The calculation of her supposed capitulation is barely hidden. There’s a hook here and that hook is his hope. And so she tears the envelope open and reads.

Her reading of the letter in his presence is important for him. Some things are known even in the midst of much which is unknown. Later he’ll look back with a different perspective. Eyes grudgingly opened to options and outcomes that he thought beyond anyone, let alone her. An envelope unopened and a letter unread. A temporary trophy of a victory that’ll be discarded as readily as the writer was. As callously as the Summer of his life was used by her.

As he watches her read, his hope translates her responses into something he can make sense of. There’s emotion evaporating from her in the heat of the moment. He wills those feelings to mean something that can be used to cement a future together. To salvage all that has been lost during what should have been his best years.

Once she’s finished, she asks him whether he means it. He’s confused by her question. He wouldn’t have written the letter, let alone shared it with her if he hadn’t meant it. The letter’s a small token of all their time together. All of it was meant. So, he asks awkwardly for clarity; which bit?

She smiles coyly asking him whether she really is a warrior. He grasps desperately at this straw and assures her that she is. Of all the letter, this is what’s important to her. And so another timebomb of revelation begins its countdown. Already other countdowns are clicking their way to a series of implosions that no one ever could survive. Yet those who stagger from the wreckage are labelled survivors. People torn apart. Cut down. Blown to pieces. Digging through the rubble of themselves. Seeking something of worth to start over with. Digging and digging to find pieces to put back together. Desperately trying to build a shell within which they may make of themselves a semblance of the person they once thought that they were.

Some of those timebombs have been counting down for a very long time.

As she basks in his adulation of her as warrior, another truth is revealed. Swiftly he hides it as it doesn’t fit his secret narrative of hope. But he’s seen it and it will grow. The seeds of his salvation have found fertile ground and they’ll push through the devastation to come. Real hope lies within. His second life will be the life that was always meant for him. In the cruellest of ways, she’s his salvation. Not that he’ll give thanks for her in the aftermath of her betrayals.

Even in his denial, he’s seeing her more for what she truly is. This is where it begins. In an ending that seems to be the death of hope. And he’ll never want to see all of her. Not like that. Grief paints death anew with the golden moments of life. But there’ll be none of that here. He’s been captivated by the false shine of fool’s gold. This Summer the sun shines upon all that glitters and the lies shrivel in the heat of its scrutiny.

Never will he want to see her in all her dark glory. Monsters exist, but to look upon them can turn our hearts to stone. And yet he knows he must. That the only way forward is through the hell she’s made especially for him. As he stands in the midst of the devastation she’s inflicted upon him, he’ll know that she’s no warrior, only an empty vessel that she filled with a hate that consumed her humanity. She’s grabbed hold of one piece of his confession of love. She likes the look of it. Wants to use it in her self-serving narrative. The rest of the letter means nothing to her. In that lack of the appreciation of love, she’s no comrade. She’s manifest treachery waging a secret war against all the good in the world. This an act of abhorrent self-aggrandisement. Carrion magpie stealing shiny treasure to build the lie that she’s become. Honouring only herself, she craves attention. Addicted to the relentless thrill of hurting him.

But this is nothing personal. It’s merely nothing. And in the nothing dwells the ever so seductive darkness that resides in us all. He’s danced with the devil and stared into the murk of a madness that consumes. He’ll never know how long ago it vanquished her. He’ll come to know that she was never there for him. He fell in love with an echo. An echo of who she once was and who she might’ve been. That was the bait and the prize – if he loved her enough this would be his reward. None of it was real. She was never there. A ghost that haunted him all the more in the outrage of her cruel discard of him, his love and his life.

On this unbearably hot Summer’s day she reels him in. But she never tries again. She never tried in the first place. She’ll lead him and his love a merry dance. He’ll go along with it. Not for her, but for his love for her. For love. His heart is pure and he yearns for the best for her. He’s a warrior and warriors fight the battles they’re destined to fight. There’s no glory in war. Glory is for the poets. Glory is for those who would steal the narrative.

And there are battles yet to come. He’ll be betrayed by those he loved and he’ll learn that it’s possible to drown in a sea of friends. But those are tales that lie beyond his Summer.

She’ll never write him a letter. She cannot allow herself to be tied down by words. Never is there reciprocation. This one of many sticks to beat him with. He isn’t worthy of her letter. He must try harder. Love more. Eventually he understands his need for the letter he wrote. It was for love. He was the only party to that love. The letter was for him and only him. The letter was for grief. Grief is selfish. He grieved the part of himself that she became.

There’s a time when he wonders whether it should pain him that she has his letter. But the words aren’t lost to him. Writing was yet another act of love. His heart knew. His heart always knew. His heart loved all the more, because that’s what a heart was built to do. That’s the heart’s nature. Our nature. Love can never be wrong.

On that furiously hot Summer’s day he wrote the letter that must be written. That letter was a confession. As he poured his heart out, he expressed his love and that love defined him. In his darkest moments he would question his love. For to love someone who secretly hates and uses you is a painful trap of madness that steals life and leaves you drowning in profound loss. But love comes right back around. You get out of life what you give. This is the way of things. No one can change that. Not even the devil himself. Lies are yesterday’s newspapers blowing in the winds of truth.

As Summer’s lovin’ cools, he at last understands why he loved her. His was a need to love the unobtainable. In doing so he learned to love himself. She was broken and in her pain he found redemption. As he stepped out into the fierce and unrelenting light of truth he dared to look upon all that it revealed. She was the mirror he needed. She hated what was best in him. Envied his strength and capacity to love. But when tested, he dared to stand in the light and burn all the more brightly. While he still had breath, he still had hope. Faith in the goodness that lay before him. A life of peace and gratitude that he dared to live despite the wounds that would always be a part of who he was. He was here as a result of those wounds. He wouldn’t hide them, nor any part of who he was. He wouldn’t sell himself in order to belong. He understood his value now. His focus was upon peace and giving himself to a world that could only be better for the gift of him.