The Flickering Flame

Dear reader,

Please click here first and allow this song 

to wash over you as you read this, 

as I did when I wrote it:  I don't love you

When you go, 

Would you even turn to say,

I don't love you, 

Like I did,

Yesterday...

 
 The familiar strains of a moving guitar melody and gut-wrenching vocals flow through my veins and  it empowers, saddens and invigorates.  What a paradox.  The finality of loss is brought into sharp relief by a renewed hope for the future.  The sheer unexpectedness of what tomorrow might bring... the opportunity to create a new outcome... burns like a candle in the darkened window of my heart.  Confidently it brightens and keeps the shadows at bay, but occasionally a slip, a twitch of a curtain, and a cold familiar draft threatens to extinguish the promise of the flame.

Well when you go, 

Don't ever think I'll make you try to stay,

And maybe when you get back,

I'll be off to find another way...

As my gaze fixes upon the cold blue heart of the flame, black and white images move across the theatre of my mind.  Irony.  It replays a scenario that resides in the grey areas of human frailty.  Flickering shadows play upon the features of a soulful face.  Large and red rimmed eyes swollen from hours of sobbing... and outstretched hands with fists closed tight from the strain of trying to keep all the emotions at bay... express more than words possibly could in explanation or justification of the events about to unfold. 

Sometimes I cry so hard from pleading,

So sick and tired of all the needless beating,

But baby when they knock you down and out,

It's where you oughta stay.

I wish I had the vocabulary, the insight, and the talent... to have relayed my thoughts and questions well enough to have been understood from the first instance, without them having become tarnished by the human condition.  At each and every moment when that flame guttered out, and I was left cold and alone with only those poignant questions to keep me company, the one person who might have understood and answered them... stood out on the street, mingling with the myriad, and faded beyond the darkened window.  And so the candle stood, dark... until with the light of the morning came the only reliable relief, and the view through the window wiped clean for another day and another play.

And after all this time that you still owe,

You're still a good-for-nothing I don't know,

So take your gloves and get out,

Better get out while you can...

Week after week, the scenes in front of that night-time window would replay with clockwork regularity.  And the recluse behind the window, the once-owner of that flame, grew to regard it all as a cruel and painful joke; a long distant memory of happier days.

Then with time and with nothing but the darkness to consider... the only sensible thing to do was move away from the view and maybe, find a way to rekindle the light.  Such effort did it take to grope for the matches, that I stumbled in the dark, and fell... far and hard.  And although there was pain, there was also endorphins and euphoria.  And for that I will always be grateful, for it suffused me once again with warmth, and the knowledge of things material and immaterial, that I knew I deserved.

So fix your eyes and get up,

better get up,

while you can...

Then finally, the matches were sought.  The candle was lit.  And the flame began burning anew... illuminating an altogether different scene.  One of endless possibilities and hope for tomorrow.  So upon the morrow, and the morrow after that....

I don't love you like I loved you yesterday...

... I will seek once more, that same person who once stood on the other side of the window, and hope to meet his eyes to recognise love of a different kind - a mutual understanding of a love that gives, rather than takes... and that makes us both better people than we were before.