Finding Some Higher Beauty
Once, a long time ago, I saw a mirage of mountaintops, shorelines, dark roads, and skylines. I was pulled from reality and into the dreams I created; I was pulled from the whispers that the girls yelled down the hallways; I was pulled from classrooms where I was told I could never be enough; I was pulled into a place where I wondered if we could water each other with philosophy to stay high and
oh so so alive…
Since then, I’ve dreamed of a place where life is beautifully delicate and where I can wander down memory-clouded nights where cold air and starlight are the loudest sounds in the world. Here, those beautifully mad songs make all the intangible fantasies more powerful. Here, we’re all made eternal in the material world.
It was back a long time ago and once upon a time you asked me “how could you love someone who will never mend?” and I was silent for a long time. (I didn’t know it then, but that was when I decided this wasn’t what I wanted and I didn’t realize until years later). Now, remind me—I think I told you something profound but difficult to understand—is that right?
Well, I just wanted to tell you it was impossible.
In places I never thought I’d see, I keep faded feelings close to guard my heart. These were the places I wondered if I could become more than I already was. Multiple stages and numerous embarrassments, even failures and condemnations spat upon me were no match for the quarrel within. So instead of finding loneliness in the crowded rooms filled to the brim with cheap alcohol, I separated my reality from my dreams, wanting to tell you that
I love you still…
Now I am smothered stuck, did you know? After all the parties and drinking games I’m stuck in my place knowing I’m gonna wash this all away. Oh, but maybe the stars will remember it all. Maybe they’ll remember how much I wished I could touch you and yet when touching was far beyond anything anyone could comprehend.
No, no dear. I never thought it would go this way…
Yet in the morning I’m left steaming in the foggy daylight and I had to force myself to forget it all. No more parties and no more lies. I forgave everyone for things no one ever even did. I’ll admit that I eventually forgave you too, did you know? There was love behind it all—all that you never saw.
You probably don’t care about the words we can’t see anymore. I don’t even know if you see all the beauty in me like how you find beauty in birds and rocket ships. But I know you love the higher beauty—like the one in the sun and the trees and the winds we can’t see. For this, we shall live. And for this, I will love you still, even though I may never love you fully.
Well maybe we can never love someone who won’t mend, but I think we can love the shapes of souls and the shapes of scars in our hearts. Sometimes, these things are too terrifying to print into memory and too painful to carve permanently into a tapestry we could never bear to look at. Yet, these scars and hearts and souls hold all the things that words could never capture within us.