no rest, I've stayed here too long, it's time to move on

Funny thing, love. There are times when I've wanted it, and never discovered a single shred of proof it existed. Other times I've wanted anything but more love in my life, and could not escape it no matter how I tried.

Whether I will or not, my heart chooses for me, and I openly acknowledge it's made some staggeringly ill-thought-out choices, both for me and those my heart wished for. But then, heart is not mind; heart is merely want, and need, and far more than occasionally, the loss of all rational thought. It's desire over deliberation, craving over consideration. Always.



Let's tell the future
Let's see how it's been done
By numbers, by mirrors, by water
By dots made at random on paper

But with one other heart...There was a binding made, there was a binding accepted, before ever the controversy of collars and titles commenced. We knew we were linked without needing other affirmations. The first time was also the first binding, by blood and spirit, and it only grew deeper from there.

And I have done everything I could conceivably think of to separate myself from that binding. Meditation, affirmations, therapy, intoxication. Privation, and gluttony; ascetic reflection. Arcane rituals of severance, incense thick on the night air. Self-denial. Self-accusation. Rationalizations.

Nothing has worked.

(I am ever careful, even virtually, when drinking from another, because this is the risk I run in all worlds.)

It was more than a year from the date my mind had declared as the tenebrous "end point" before I accepted another offer. I spent a full, traditional year mourning for the loss of him, and ever wondering if it was just that he moved on, or that he, in fact, actually died. And it was another year past that before I began to feel tentatively secure in the offer another heart had given me. Before I felt free enough from that binding to move through the strands of it remaining, and reach out once more.

(Though, in large part, it doesn't matter; what was damaged between me and that offering heart may never fully heal. We may never be what we were to each other, and...accepting that has been...damaging in itself. I don't fault the binding for that; I fault how things happened the first time that heart and I parted.)



By salt, by dice, by meal, by mice
By dough of cakes, by sacrificial fire
By fountains, by fishes, writing in ashes
Birds, herbs, smoke from the altar

And the writing, the writing, it goes on, it doesn't stop. When does it stop, will it stop? I want to say it feels uncontrolled, but the truth is--I could walk away from this at any time. Save for...maybe not. Maybe I can no less walk from this project, than I can disconnect from him.

When he told me 'forever'...I think he meant it, or, at least, some inaccessible part of me means to hold to it. Which leaves me in a peculiar quandary. If I cannot refute him, where does that leave me? If I cannot unbind the binding with my own powers, will I hear his echo in my heart forever? I want to hate him, I do, but...that...whatever inside says he is not mine to hate, only to love.

But how can love flourish in a vacuum? I think time has proven that it withers, that it shrinks, but the binding upon me, at least, does not let it fully evaporate. I am stuck with the dregs, and some nights, they are bitter indeed.



A suspended ring or the mode of laughing
Pebbles drawn from a heap
One of these things will tell you something

My hands are red with my own heart's blood, sectioned, on display...but only my eyes will ever view the resulting work. There are too many secrets, too much of me and him both, in the pages for me ever, ever to publish. This does not lessen its impact, however. And I'm feeling the impact--every word typed is every emotion felt again, is every situation relived, and afterwards, reexamined for contradiction or flaw.

I feel the revelation of future pain coming, from the perspective of the past, but I may well have no greater understanding why, once it arrives. And perhaps, I never will. Which is galling in itself, but yet another impossible thing I must find a way to accept.

Somehow. I cannot spent two more years pining for the lost one. He got lost on his own.



By nails reflecting the rays of the sun
By walking in a circle, by red hot iron
By passages in books
A balanced hatchet

Maybe, after all this time, it's too late to evict. Maybe it's time I think of his constant ghost as less binding force, and more...simple irritant. Several more years will smooth all rough edges of memory, and I will have a pearl to look back upon, instead of shards of glass in silk. Much less injurious for my heart to beat around, at any rate. Survivable, at the very least.

After all, it doesn't seem as if I have much choice.



Let's tell the future
Let's see how it's been done

(Lyrics are taken from Predictions from the album Days of Open Hand by Suzanne Vega.)