That Space

Between us there is a mass of stale air, a cloud lingering. Within this cloud objects and words squeeze and expand, vowels broadly articulate for weak consonants to hide behind. Our hands are tied behind our backs and our chins are raised, like soldiers, we fight but without reason, only egotism which is a fools game.

When we become physically close, when our beating hearts echo in the same empty room, when our eyes well at each other, when we reach out our hands, the cloud is less distinguishable. Our tears you would think would metaphorically rain and the cloud would disappear but strangely grows a darker shade of grey.

We were undoubtedly at one time full of love but now just social formalities. We have both grown, diverging paths. Maybe you do not like what you see in me; maybe I come across as too carefree and without that which suffocates you or maybe a whole other view. What I see in you is not that of a king or a lion but a weakness that I fear is in me.

But we try and we try because we feel we should. I can hear your eyes begin to cry on the phone sometimes, I’m not sure if you can feel my heart sink. I can feel you losing control sometimes when you ask me questions with a quiver in your voice. I can hear you hiding and building obstacles to hide behind when I ask you of your life.

Death has not been kind to you and stolen your youth, without a father, yet you continue to frolic in its face. Alcohol has not been kind to you and stole your mother and your sense of love and compassion. Money has not been kind to you as it continues to hold you in your place. Your sense of adventure is dusty, taking to trying to upstage nature and building colossal buildings and erecting plastic trees.

We swim deeper into oceans and further into space yet we still cannot manage to keep a stable conversation without one of us feeling cheated. People show love in different ways, I am aware of that, love is varied and takes the shapes of random objects but can that object be so displaced from its context that it merely becomes an object minus any emotive reason?.

Maybe we ask too much of each other, we are at end of the day just men, not superhero’s or gods. And we persist perhaps through reasons vain or perhaps we persist for love. I don’t think that we will ever properly know. But we continue to persist and continue to grow old, still unknown.