Ordinary Person

Remember when we lived in that cottage on a hill with its red steps, off-white porch and beige door? The crisp breeze wafted into the rooms and chilled us to the bone, but beauty and innocence still prevailed. We were two inconspicuous people, and maybe we were even humble. We had each other, and that was all that mattered. We loved each other, which was more than others had.

But fate chiselled me into a brutal, feral, concupiscent man. Venom and hate murmured in my blood, often rising to a head-splitting harshness that made me lash out at everyone and everything. Time eroded everything you once stood for, and you lost your winsome smile. Tender words turned into diatribes, and your affection became bitter.

All we do now is gasconade to suppress our insecurities while the raging, punitive storms of life uproot every foundation we thought we’d built. I could write a dark threnody to hearts grown cold or love lost. But do two people ever love each other? Does self-righteousness masquerade as love? The world has various notions of love. Some call it pure emotion; others’ action, and still others turn to metaphysics and introspection and assiduously come up with theories to explain it. It’s the fuel of every movie and the stuff of myth, but does it exist in human hearts?

Looking back, perhaps there was no bungalow with ivory walls and vines like green lace forming patterns on an auburn wall. Maybe all there was, was the two of us sharing in a delusion and imagining rooms with the soft rain’s cadence floating through them, urging us to hold hands and watch musical notation swirl around us in a vortex of light and sound.