Realization

The difference between love and death is sometimes only imaginary.

     Komfort has been realizing it for a long time. But only today it turns out to become true. You can hide secrets about personal affairs. You may keep silence about clandestine issues. You are able to hush about creepy mysteries.

     But genuine love will reveal itself, ultimately.

     Surely, Komfort liked her. He liked how she tried to explain him why Bob Dylan was the greatest songwriter of all times. He loved her how she argued with him why she preferred the ordinary life above the intellectual. How her generous words permeated his thoughts like dawn infuses the body of a dry lizard.    

     But he adored her most while she was doing the chicken dance.

     A lot of people can do this, but her moves were just amazing charming.

     But he never told he loved her.

*  *  *

     He had plans to do it. Subtle plans. Komfort would take her to Florence. They would stroll along the Arno river. He would tell her about the city and how it once became the birthplace of the renaissance. And while the Tuscan sun would shine on their faces like a medieval painter, he would disclose to her his feelings.

     How she was the brilliant spark in his fiery ideas.

     She would smile and hug him. And then they would start a new life. They would travel around the world, they would read the love sonnets of Pablo Neruda, they would drink Orujo, grow vegetables, watching Breaking Bad, sleep under a sky filled with dreamy lingering clouds.

*  *  *

    She passed away on a lustreless day early December.

    A drunk truck driver hit her while she was waiting for a traffic light.

    That afternoon when he heard the news, was it then he decided that he never had loved her? Off course, they were friends. Off course, they were acquainted. But love? Authentic affection? He didn't think so. And he managed to live on.

     Like a soldier after a bloody wars take up his job as a office worker.

*  *  *

Sometimes love acts like a butterfly, sometimes like a lion. But in case of Komfort she acts like a boa constrictor. And today he has to admit, it's there. Her love.    

     Komfort has only this choice: to suffocate or to fight.

     He doesn't like to fight. He hates blood. He detests sweat and tears. But while the snake got tighter and tighter around his neck, he does the only thing he can do, starts to struggle.

     However, the skin of constrictor is too slimy, too slippery.

     Everything he tries - drawing, pulling, lashing, twitching - it makes matter only worse. He face turns more purple than the rain of Prince.

     Then, lying to die on the ground, which his last strength, he selects a song on his phone. The chicken dance.

     The moment the first notes of the accordion players fill the room, the snake falls from his neck. Like a second-hand millstone. He grasps.

     The difference between love and death is sometimes only imaginary.