Harcourt Hill
I was creating a memory. A knowledge of a moment remembered when I was old, and no longer as beautiful as the time that I thought of. A moment laid in lavender, all too common in its time, far too precious in the dark of winter.
The vista opened herself to us, baring her all as the corner turned; revelation excluding humanity in its basest form.
We closed the doors on the music, the car humming to itself as each of us moved to a different music: more poignant, more meaningful. I cannot say what it was for him, but I remembered it from a time gone by, a time more painful each instance that I held myself to it.
The view was stifling in the pure air. Breathing in nothing, embracing my hate in beauty, in purity. I could hardly exist.
I stumbled to the ground, clutching the damp, sweet grass, to unfold scent, to release something tangible that I could hold onto, to save myself from this vertigo, this feeling that I could fall forwards and forwards into nothing. Could fall and be happy in that nothingness, in the blankness that spread itself before the artificial, yellow and orange light.
I sat and grasped the earth, in my cowardice, and watched, my love, my life, my darling. That city. And I realised, that until this point, my life had been devoted to you. You had governed my desires, my loves, my behaviour, my infidelities. I had devoted everything to you, and you had despised me for it.
Yet, I beheld you in your entirety, you, lying there, spread out before me, lying there in inversion and I realised what this evening could mean to me. I could hold a leaf, the discarded fabric of nature, hold it before me and eclipse your glory. Your power existed only in polarity, in the lights of the people that you held in your thrall. And I was no longer one of them, I was outside, breathing fresh clean air. A birthday cake of candles and in one breath I could take you in my hand, and scatter you ashes to the wind, making a wish on your destruction.
You, you had controlled me for so long. I had sacrificed everything to you, and it was no longer enough and so, I listened to him. Turned from you, in your isolated splendour and touched the humanity beside me, and felt resonance, felt the answer I had wanted since my conception, since I could think. And I turned away from you.
Yet I discovered in my act of defiance that I was not alone. Your cruelness was not even reserved for me. Did you think, in your control, in your exclusion, that we could bond like this? Rebellion can be so much more in isolation, than in screaming aloneness. You, who have hurt so much, demanded so much: did you dream in your spires, that hatred could bring so much love?
I held him, and I kissed away his tears of anger and of longing. Then, I met, and yet surpassed every standard ever rule that you have ever governed. And I held him, I blocked and shielded him from you. I, I who had loved you, turned his anger into love. And you no longer mattered. You were the shorn stubble before us, scourged with my love and hate, wet with my blood and tears.
I am a jealous lover, and in that moment, I took him, and made him mine. No longer yours. In that moment, I could leave you, you crowd of fireflies, and turn my back.
There is more than you.