Confetti Confessions : the unquiet thoughts of a quiet wedding guest

Oh Paul, what do you know of love? What do you know, young lovers, inclining your chins and matching your nods to hackneyed lines read at your nuptials, nervous in your wedding whites and blade sharp suits, as though you really understood the name of the game, the crumble of the cookie, the lay of this strange, cruel land?

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Love is patient? So why was I always so impatient to see you? To get past the gap that are the hours, minutes and seconds between our meetings, the however many sleeps that I had to get through, especially the one last night by your side that I wanted to rush past, when it had been devoid of dreams of you - to awaken and let eyes find their home when they rest on your face?

Why is it that I cannot wait to be warmed by your smile? The sunny one that softens the lines on your brow, and weakens all my resolves. When you smile that smile which I know is for me and only me, the distance between us falls away. I catch it, midair, across the way and you become tangible to me then, even if we do not actually touch. And until you smile at and through me, I remain in a cold, darkish place, trembling slightly, and most unsure of myself. Snarling.

And when you go away from me, disappear for months and months, I am stir crazy. I bust out of rooms, slip off chairs, slam doors behind, fling open cupboards: as though any room which didn't contain you was unbearably claustrophobic; any conversation that you weren't indwelling was not worth listening to and had to be escaped; every space that didn't find your familiar form pushing against its edges needed to be boxed up, shut out, locked away; or even the most unlikely of places must be overturned and peered into, just in case you were hiding there for me to surprise and discover.

I become so loud in my silence, my muted distress, that I explode in foot tapping, hair pulling, scab picking, road raging. I text unceasingly and email till the inkspools dry up into scratches of faded hues, like chickens' feet in the dust, till my fingers cramp and stiffen. I tweet like a small trapped bird. And I hunt for your face, in every volume of Facebook till I've exhausted that library, knowing someone, something, has taken your visage off the shelves and refused to return you to me.

Love is impatient. Love sleeps wide-eyed, does not dream but nightmares, does not find rest till the richochets stop at that sweet spot from which it first issued.

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Love is kind? You leave me, because it's better off for me to be without you? Love given, then withdrawn, is good for me. How? How is it to my benefit to raise me from the dead, then throw me back into the coffin, where I am now a poor fit? How is it charity for a stone cold heart to stir again so it dares to believe the worth of its beat? Or to trust that it knows how to love again, like riding a bicycle built for two because you never lose that art? Till you're struggling uphill in the front seat, turn back and find you've been pedalling solo all along. To think again that I was good enough to love, but then oh hey, wait, maybe not.

Without a word, or even with words. Whether quietly slipping off or noisily storming off, fact is, you've gone. But you've uttered things immortal - like together, and forever. You've lured with dulcet tones and honeyed gaze. You've coloured in my bare outlines so I had a road to walk along, a vista to look upon, a scented blossom to smell and a carefree melody to hum. Then the barely begun journey was brutally wiped off the map, because you thought it kinder to stop leading me down a path that you didn't really know. It was only trompe l'oeil I saw, and a broken record I sang to.

So now I'm lost, head spinning at a crossroads with no signpost. The sky above deep pitch that stars had abandoned. My only bearing of season divined from leaf bare trees, shrivelled with autumn chill that heralds only the oncoming frost of a bitter winter. So I drag my feet from corner to corner to corner of roads that lead nowhere, looking up where signs should be, till I've traced circles in the dust and ground to a halt. They shoot horses, don't they? It's a kinder thing to do than to let wounded beasts plod.

Love is cruel: like an ice bath in the winter; like watching a drowning with hands in your pockets; like snuffing out ants one by one with your index finger - with just the right pressure and a singleminded intent.

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Love does not envy? Then why can I never bear whatever makes you less present to me, for whatever excuses given? Why do I loathe your work, where I cannot also come alongside and toil; to share sweet sweat and labouring, be in back-to-back battling with you to gain a handful of triumphs in a pitful of defeats? I fall over backwards because I lean against air, not you.

How I cannot abide your feasts, if I am not party to your party. My tongue can no more delight in tasty morsels if you do not sit by me, eyes locked and twinkling in mutual thanksgiving as we savour the jewels of life. My palate is soured if you consume what I cannot, and so I fast and starve and fade. Neither can I stand your private famines. For you cast me off from where I might cower and bitterly weep, clutching your ankles as I watch you suffer any misery, shame or loss. I am jealous even of your pain if I am not to be crumpled and consumed by it like you.

I especially hate your mountains, which I know you love to climb. Because you stride off alone for the glory of higher pursuits, to breathe thin air and feel the tickle of hoarfrost against your skin. You walk with your God in the cool of the heights but forget that I am Eve to your Adam: ripped from your side so you might cherish and protect beneath the arc of your embrace, and above all keep close to your heart. Instead you leave me tethered to the lowlands like a fledgling with clipped wings; earthbound; never to unfurl or swoop with you in eagles' cloud-eyed flight.

Thus I am jade and olive, celadon and hunter, emerald, kelly, forest and duckshit - every shade of green with envy, for anything that robs me of you.

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Love does not boast, it is not proud? Oh I want to shout on rooftops that love is real, flagrant and unashamed! I want to brag with flip flop flip flop photographs unrolling out of the inside pockets of your jacket, that proves your face is pressed to mine against a hundred different backdrops. To boldly kiss you full on the mouth, in the middle of busy train stations at rush hour. To sit in restaurants, deaf to all and sundry, eating each other's food and clasping feet beneath the chequered tablecloths.

How could I not beam with pride and tell the world of all you are, and all you are going to be? Am I not the one who sees and recognises, even more than yourself? Would I not fight anyone with poisoned looks, chilling disdain and mind numbing verbal violence should they dare disagree or challenge? You know I'd throw anything - from plates to rocks to my weight around in your defence.

I have boasted of your every virtue: your sweetest prayer, your kindest thoughts, your humblest endeavours, your tiniest faith. Even in your betrayal and abandonment, I have found every reason to explain away why you didn't, couldn't, mustn't, hadn't. I did. Because although I am your sharpest critic and brutally honest conscience; I am also your loudest, proudest ally, and your truest, bluest friend.

I shall always be proud of you my love. But our love has gone blind: for what am I to boast of when I no longer see you?

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Love is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs. But does it keep a record of rights?

That this was the right time for us. That we were such kindred spirits, so compatible, such a good fit, so right for each other. That it felt right to know my small hand within yours, nestled like a warm mouse in its hidey hole. That it comforted when you stooped from your great height to enfold my smallness against your chest, so your largeness had its purpose in my fragility. That we always walked in step, me your faithful shadow and the echo of your song?

So where are my rights? Am I not entitled to a voice, to say that it is wrong for you to walk away just because you were too broken and too afraid, to convince you that you can forget the pain of your past because there is joy in our tomorrow? What right have you to decide unilaterally that we have no future, and not given me the benefit of the doubt, a moment for counter argument, the chance for rebuttal?

I keep no records but a tally of tears, a journal of jeopardy and sip daily the dregs of despair. But do you still not understand that love is not ever having to say "I owe you"? No, Love is not easily angered. It is a long slow burn to fury, incinerates with greed and lust and malice until it has consumed every living thing in its path.

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Love never fails? Take heed, shiny, brand new Mr and Mrs. For love is never what you think it is.

Love lies. Big fat white ones that dazzle with their glare, or smutty, smoky black ones that smudge the face and dulls the shine. You've left a trail of destruction behind you with your half truths and untruths. So I lie, dead and ashen in my shallow, common grave of the unloved.

Love cheats. Your sleights of hand caressed me into believing how love is for always, or is exclusive. Love hopes? I got conned by the hands you dealt me that only strangled all hope. Was it so easy to dupe me into thinking that solitaire was a game of my past? Tell me, how do I cheat death for the us that was us: rewind time and delete distance, to resurrect you and me?

Love steals. Love lost beggars my youth and the promise of me, so I am stifled, dwarfed and stunted in heart and soul. I am so gingered in my unbecoming and uncomeliness that I am a burning sting that catches in the throat, and can never again be as soothing salve. You've cleaned me out of my happily-ever-afters, because my country is now the Never-never. My prince on a white charger has ridden off into that sunset alone; all I got was the dust in his wake in my face and the end of a tail. I can but steal away, the unprepossessing dispossessed, graceless ghost of a once beloved.

No, you've got it quite wrong, Mr. Paul; it's like that Joni Mitchell always said: you really don't know love, at all.