a triptych in words
By Je
-
If love was ever something that could be summed up in pictures, then the painting of our love was a triptych, and the first panel held a storm; the second, a forest; and the third, a gravestone.
I. the storm
She came like lightning: bright, unexpected, and utterly evanescent. Her laughter was thunder, echoing in my head for hours at a time, and her voice like the rumblings of an imminent storm, deep and throaty and heavy with uncountable layers.
Her arrival, and indeed, the arrival of the storm that would begin it all, was preceded by an acrid smell in the air that soon disappeared, and likewise, I thought nothing of it, and could not have known at the time the pain and bitterness it would come to symbolize.
We met for the first time as the storm was building on the horizon. The afternoon was gloomy and grey, and as I pushed open the dirty glass door to enter the bookshop, she brushed past me on her way out, with nary a greeting or apology. I turned my head as she left, mouth opening in complaint, and caught the barest flash of electric blue eyes, and then she was gone, swallowed up by the crowds of tired, indistinguishable people who would tread the same paths for the rest of their mundane lives, like toys rewound at the end of each day.
I was once one of those people.
And like lightning, that moment was burned into my memory. I tossed and turned in my sleep that night as blue eyes drifted through my dreams and cut me with their gaze as if they were broken pieces of glass, and as the storm grew nearer and nearer.
She changed me, there is no doubt about that. It was a slow transformation that was so gradual, so subtle, that I did not discover its infiltration until it was far too late to thank her for it and the new character it had wrought in me.
I became obsessed with those impossible blue eyes following our encounter, and I will shamelessly admit it: I searched everywhere for her. I haunted the bookshop in hopes that she frequented it regularly, I wandered around the general vicinity of the shopping area for the same reason, and time and time again, I was foiled.
I’m not sure why I thought I would be able to find her. We did live, after all, in the city, and never was there another place where as many secret nooks and crannies could be found, squirreled away in the most unassuming of locations.
And still, for some inexplicable reason, I hungered to see the splash of color she had shown me and cruelly taken away; the color that had proved there was more to life than just the black and white. And when at last I stopped looking - after many weary, unfruitful weeks - that was, of course, when she reappeared.
That day, I sat in a very similar bookshop to the first one, nursing a mug of questionable ale that tasted like nothing and brooding about the storm clouds that had been hovering ominously above the city for weeks. The television in the corner flickered in and out of color, buzzing with static and interference. As I looked into my mug and studied the curious ripples in the amber liquid, my whole body seemed to become very cool in an instant, and it was brought to my attention that I should probably look out the window.
I looked. She was hurrying past the window, hair blowing in her face so that it was difficult to make out her features, but I knew without a doubt that I had the right person. I sat frozen for a precious moment, unable to move, and then all at once sprang to my feet, dropping a few coins on the counter and heading outside quickly while my mug sat on the corner table, forlorn and forgotten.
She was moving fast, pushing through the tight hordes of people in her seemingly single-minded drive to get somewhere. I lost her a few times, to my utter panic, but she always came back into sight soon enough, and after what seemed like hours, though it can’t have been longer than fifteen minutes, she made a right turn off the main sidewalk into a secluded alley. I followed behind, breath suspended in my throat, aware that even the slightest sound would ruin everything. It was a good thing I was being so covert, because there in that quiet little alley she seemed jumpy, nervous... I could see it in the way she would check behind her every few seconds.
In a way, I had gotten incredibly lucky. The alley, though small, offered all sorts of hiding places I could quickly duck into or behind when she turned around. Still, to this day, I believe it must have been a miracle that I was able to remain unnoticed, and that she didn’t seem to hear the small noises resulting from my pursuit.
Finally, she stopped her incessant pace and, turning to the side, seemed to disappear. I waited a minute, and when nothing happened, risked the short walk to the place where she had last been. To my amazement, I saw a dark opening hiding a staircase that seemed to continue up forever.
What choice did I have? I could have gone home, for sure, but it seemed a waste of the time I had spent thinking about and following this woman. Predictably, after a moment’s hesitation, I took my first step up into the darkness.
The darkness was not dark so much in the sense of light, but an oppressive, unbearable darkness that seemed completely saturated with feelings of grief, shame, and anger. Each step I took forward was a victory, and at the same time weighed me down more, until I wanted naught but to collapse and cry. But I refused to let myself give up, though I believe I did almost break down when pale light began trickling down from above.
I was almost too late when I emerged onto the stark, empty rooftop, and even in that time of utmost urgency, I noticed all the wrong things first: the huge, looming clouds, the endless, dark grey sky, and then, finally, the woman.
She was standing on the edge of the building, and even as I watched, moved her right foot slowly forward, until it was hanging in the hard empty space above the alley. Though her back was to me, I knew she had closed her eyes, had prayed for strength and courage.
I was moving before my mind had completely registered the scene, and as I heard her take a final deep breath and shift her body forward, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back into safety, onto the stable, solid cement.
And that was it.
She looked at me, then, and I saw that the light had faded from those once vibrant electric blue eyes so that they were dim and sad and shifted colors as if unsure of which one they really wanted to be.
They were deep cobalt, and then cloudy glaucous, and then dull blue-grey, fearful and hurt.
As we stared at each other, my hand still wrapped around her wrist, there was a fateful instant where something in the air seemed to come undone, and we were both keenly aware of it.
And finally, after weeks and weeks of endless tension and held breaths, relief crashed over us in a downpour, brought on by the heavy rain, because the storm had finally broken.
II. the forest
Loving her was like walking through a green forest. It was a journey that at the time seemed to last an eternity; only, once I stepped out the other end and looked around, the time had passed by far too quickly, and it would never come back.
Those were the best years I have passed in my life, and I know that I will not get more like them. Each day was a blessing, each hour a gift, each minute with her absolute heaven. When I looked away from her, even for a second, I felt as if I was wasting something special. When she was not in my sight, I would be ill at ease until she appeared again.
What she loved to do most was talk. She could talk for hours about the smallest things, things nobody else would ever consider worth noticing: the green of the grass, the nuances in the birdsong we heard each day, the colors of flowers. She would chatter away happily, and I was her willing listener until the end.
In the beginning, when we first stepped into the forest, her love of life would amaze me, and I would think, unbidden, back the circumstances of our meeting. It seemed incredible that this woman who was fascinated with such things as the flittings of bees would ever attempt to end her own life.
We never talked about it, about that day the storm broke and what she had almost done. But it was never far from my mind, and even as her eyes settled back to electric blue, I knew it was never far from hers, either.
Given this, she had her dark days, when her eyes would become the color of the sea on a stormy evening and she would retreat into herself, brooding about secret things she refused to share. It was those times when I knew and remembered best that everybody has a little piece of darkness hidden away in them, some more than others, though most times our souls are lit too bright on the outside for others to see that.
I will not attempt to sugarcoat her character, and how easy it was for me to forget that at her very core, in the deepest parts of her mind, she was profoundly disturbed, shrouded in despair and disappointment. It is just that she was incredibly skillful at hiding it behind a mask of excitement and vivacity. And it was because of that mask that in later years, long after she had gone, I would reflect upon our time together and feel as if I did not ever get to know the real person she was.
The first word that comes to me when I think about the middle of our walk through the forest is ‘precious’. I would not trade those times for anything else in the word; indeed, I would hold them tightly to my chest and covet them all the more. And because they were precious, by their very nature they were fleeting.
Therein lies my mistake: I took it all for granted, and when the edges of the forest came into view, I wasn’t ready to give any of it up, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that there was still time, that we still had time.
Nobody can fight against fate, and I lost.
As twilight began to filter in through the trees, and as her dark days became more and more frequent until they outnumbered her good days, I knew the end had arrived.
She withdrew completely into herself: she hardly ever talked, she did not notice when the seasonal flowers had bloomed, and she was moody, a shadow of how much she had once been. I feared, I was apprehensive, but I did nothing against the rising darkness, and that was another mistake on my part.
It was the one that would cost me everything.
It was hard, and it still is hard to this day, for me to not blame myself. How can I not? If I had just loved her more, if I had just made her a little happier, perhaps she would not have walked into traffic on a sunny afternoon. Perhaps I would not have seen her broken body on the news channel when I turned on the television that evening. Perhaps she would still be here with me now, pointing out the way the autumn leaves drift to the ground.
It is a small perhaps in a big world, but it will stay with me for the rest of my life.
She did not leave a note behind, and the police say we will never know what her real intentions were; if she meant to leave this world, or if she was simply the victim of chance in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But I know more than I have ever known something that she walked into the busy street that day with a purpose in mind. She was sad. She was disillusioned with life. And most of all, she was tired.
She was just tired, don’t you see?
And though my anger was terrible in the first days following, I gradually came to see past the hurt in my heart, to stop blaming her, even as I began my own struggle with self-blame.
It was strange, at first, how nothing seemed to change. The days still trundled by, the clock still counted the seconds. Life went on. I grew up without her and grew more as a person, and I think I understand her decision a little more now.
And there’s been something else I’ve always understood, from the moment I saw her with her eyes closed on that rooftop, taking a final, brave breath.
She was one of the strongest people I have ever known.
III. the gravestone
Here I am now, at the very end our story. Soon, the artist will finish his triptych. He will make the finishing touches, he will dab on the last bits of paint. What happens after that? Is it all over? Is our love simply gone?
The truth is, I don’t know the answers to those questions. They are not clear as black and white are, or day and night. Rather, they are grey, the dawn and the dusk. I would like to believe in eternal love that never fades, but I cannot, because our love did wither and die - as all things must - with her passing. She is not here for me to love, and that makes all the difference; I cannot love a memory, only honor it.
I stand here on this small green hill, far away from the sleepy city. I have braved a lightning storm, walked through a quiet forest, to be here today. At my feet a gravestone sits in the ground, blank but for the little scratches that mar its white surface.
It seems like such a thing could never represent who she really was, but it’s also humbling. It reminds me that no matter how big or small, good or bad, famous or unknown we are, we will all die someday, and that is the plain truth.
It’s what you make of it that matters, and it was all the better for us because we did not look back.
We grew up in those short years, and I’m still growing now.
We are never done growing.
-
-
If love was ever something that could be summed up in pictures, then the painting of our love was a triptych, and the first panel held a storm; the second, a forest; and the third, a gravestone.
I. the storm
She came like lightning: bright, unexpected, and utterly evanescent. Her laughter was thunder, echoing in my head for hours at a time, and her voice like the rumblings of an imminent storm, deep and throaty and heavy with uncountable layers.
Her arrival, and indeed, the arrival of the storm that would begin it all, was preceded by an acrid smell in the air that soon disappeared, and likewise, I thought nothing of it, and could not have known at the time the pain and bitterness it would come to symbolize.
We met for the first time as the storm was building on the horizon. The afternoon was gloomy and grey, and as I pushed open the dirty glass door to enter the bookshop, she brushed past me on her way out, with nary a greeting or apology. I turned my head as she left, mouth opening in complaint, and caught the barest flash of electric blue eyes, and then she was gone, swallowed up by the crowds of tired, indistinguishable people who would tread the same paths for the rest of their mundane lives, like toys rewound at the end of each day.
I was once one of those people.
And like lightning, that moment was burned into my memory. I tossed and turned in my sleep that night as blue eyes drifted through my dreams and cut me with their gaze as if they were broken pieces of glass, and as the storm grew nearer and nearer.
She changed me, there is no doubt about that. It was a slow transformation that was so gradual, so subtle, that I did not discover its infiltration until it was far too late to thank her for it and the new character it had wrought in me.
I became obsessed with those impossible blue eyes following our encounter, and I will shamelessly admit it: I searched everywhere for her. I haunted the bookshop in hopes that she frequented it regularly, I wandered around the general vicinity of the shopping area for the same reason, and time and time again, I was foiled.
I’m not sure why I thought I would be able to find her. We did live, after all, in the city, and never was there another place where as many secret nooks and crannies could be found, squirreled away in the most unassuming of locations.
And still, for some inexplicable reason, I hungered to see the splash of color she had shown me and cruelly taken away; the color that had proved there was more to life than just the black and white. And when at last I stopped looking - after many weary, unfruitful weeks - that was, of course, when she reappeared.
That day, I sat in a very similar bookshop to the first one, nursing a mug of questionable ale that tasted like nothing and brooding about the storm clouds that had been hovering ominously above the city for weeks. The television in the corner flickered in and out of color, buzzing with static and interference. As I looked into my mug and studied the curious ripples in the amber liquid, my whole body seemed to become very cool in an instant, and it was brought to my attention that I should probably look out the window.
I looked. She was hurrying past the window, hair blowing in her face so that it was difficult to make out her features, but I knew without a doubt that I had the right person. I sat frozen for a precious moment, unable to move, and then all at once sprang to my feet, dropping a few coins on the counter and heading outside quickly while my mug sat on the corner table, forlorn and forgotten.
She was moving fast, pushing through the tight hordes of people in her seemingly single-minded drive to get somewhere. I lost her a few times, to my utter panic, but she always came back into sight soon enough, and after what seemed like hours, though it can’t have been longer than fifteen minutes, she made a right turn off the main sidewalk into a secluded alley. I followed behind, breath suspended in my throat, aware that even the slightest sound would ruin everything. It was a good thing I was being so covert, because there in that quiet little alley she seemed jumpy, nervous... I could see it in the way she would check behind her every few seconds.
In a way, I had gotten incredibly lucky. The alley, though small, offered all sorts of hiding places I could quickly duck into or behind when she turned around. Still, to this day, I believe it must have been a miracle that I was able to remain unnoticed, and that she didn’t seem to hear the small noises resulting from my pursuit.
Finally, she stopped her incessant pace and, turning to the side, seemed to disappear. I waited a minute, and when nothing happened, risked the short walk to the place where she had last been. To my amazement, I saw a dark opening hiding a staircase that seemed to continue up forever.
What choice did I have? I could have gone home, for sure, but it seemed a waste of the time I had spent thinking about and following this woman. Predictably, after a moment’s hesitation, I took my first step up into the darkness.
The darkness was not dark so much in the sense of light, but an oppressive, unbearable darkness that seemed completely saturated with feelings of grief, shame, and anger. Each step I took forward was a victory, and at the same time weighed me down more, until I wanted naught but to collapse and cry. But I refused to let myself give up, though I believe I did almost break down when pale light began trickling down from above.
I was almost too late when I emerged onto the stark, empty rooftop, and even in that time of utmost urgency, I noticed all the wrong things first: the huge, looming clouds, the endless, dark grey sky, and then, finally, the woman.
She was standing on the edge of the building, and even as I watched, moved her right foot slowly forward, until it was hanging in the hard empty space above the alley. Though her back was to me, I knew she had closed her eyes, had prayed for strength and courage.
I was moving before my mind had completely registered the scene, and as I heard her take a final deep breath and shift her body forward, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back into safety, onto the stable, solid cement.
And that was it.
She looked at me, then, and I saw that the light had faded from those once vibrant electric blue eyes so that they were dim and sad and shifted colors as if unsure of which one they really wanted to be.
They were deep cobalt, and then cloudy glaucous, and then dull blue-grey, fearful and hurt.
As we stared at each other, my hand still wrapped around her wrist, there was a fateful instant where something in the air seemed to come undone, and we were both keenly aware of it.
And finally, after weeks and weeks of endless tension and held breaths, relief crashed over us in a downpour, brought on by the heavy rain, because the storm had finally broken.
II. the forest
Loving her was like walking through a green forest. It was a journey that at the time seemed to last an eternity; only, once I stepped out the other end and looked around, the time had passed by far too quickly, and it would never come back.
Those were the best years I have passed in my life, and I know that I will not get more like them. Each day was a blessing, each hour a gift, each minute with her absolute heaven. When I looked away from her, even for a second, I felt as if I was wasting something special. When she was not in my sight, I would be ill at ease until she appeared again.
What she loved to do most was talk. She could talk for hours about the smallest things, things nobody else would ever consider worth noticing: the green of the grass, the nuances in the birdsong we heard each day, the colors of flowers. She would chatter away happily, and I was her willing listener until the end.
In the beginning, when we first stepped into the forest, her love of life would amaze me, and I would think, unbidden, back the circumstances of our meeting. It seemed incredible that this woman who was fascinated with such things as the flittings of bees would ever attempt to end her own life.
We never talked about it, about that day the storm broke and what she had almost done. But it was never far from my mind, and even as her eyes settled back to electric blue, I knew it was never far from hers, either.
Given this, she had her dark days, when her eyes would become the color of the sea on a stormy evening and she would retreat into herself, brooding about secret things she refused to share. It was those times when I knew and remembered best that everybody has a little piece of darkness hidden away in them, some more than others, though most times our souls are lit too bright on the outside for others to see that.
I will not attempt to sugarcoat her character, and how easy it was for me to forget that at her very core, in the deepest parts of her mind, she was profoundly disturbed, shrouded in despair and disappointment. It is just that she was incredibly skillful at hiding it behind a mask of excitement and vivacity. And it was because of that mask that in later years, long after she had gone, I would reflect upon our time together and feel as if I did not ever get to know the real person she was.
The first word that comes to me when I think about the middle of our walk through the forest is ‘precious’. I would not trade those times for anything else in the word; indeed, I would hold them tightly to my chest and covet them all the more. And because they were precious, by their very nature they were fleeting.
Therein lies my mistake: I took it all for granted, and when the edges of the forest came into view, I wasn’t ready to give any of it up, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that there was still time, that we still had time.
Nobody can fight against fate, and I lost.
As twilight began to filter in through the trees, and as her dark days became more and more frequent until they outnumbered her good days, I knew the end had arrived.
She withdrew completely into herself: she hardly ever talked, she did not notice when the seasonal flowers had bloomed, and she was moody, a shadow of how much she had once been. I feared, I was apprehensive, but I did nothing against the rising darkness, and that was another mistake on my part.
It was the one that would cost me everything.
It was hard, and it still is hard to this day, for me to not blame myself. How can I not? If I had just loved her more, if I had just made her a little happier, perhaps she would not have walked into traffic on a sunny afternoon. Perhaps I would not have seen her broken body on the news channel when I turned on the television that evening. Perhaps she would still be here with me now, pointing out the way the autumn leaves drift to the ground.
It is a small perhaps in a big world, but it will stay with me for the rest of my life.
She did not leave a note behind, and the police say we will never know what her real intentions were; if she meant to leave this world, or if she was simply the victim of chance in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But I know more than I have ever known something that she walked into the busy street that day with a purpose in mind. She was sad. She was disillusioned with life. And most of all, she was tired.
She was just tired, don’t you see?
And though my anger was terrible in the first days following, I gradually came to see past the hurt in my heart, to stop blaming her, even as I began my own struggle with self-blame.
It was strange, at first, how nothing seemed to change. The days still trundled by, the clock still counted the seconds. Life went on. I grew up without her and grew more as a person, and I think I understand her decision a little more now.
And there’s been something else I’ve always understood, from the moment I saw her with her eyes closed on that rooftop, taking a final, brave breath.
She was one of the strongest people I have ever known.
III. the gravestone
Here I am now, at the very end our story. Soon, the artist will finish his triptych. He will make the finishing touches, he will dab on the last bits of paint. What happens after that? Is it all over? Is our love simply gone?
The truth is, I don’t know the answers to those questions. They are not clear as black and white are, or day and night. Rather, they are grey, the dawn and the dusk. I would like to believe in eternal love that never fades, but I cannot, because our love did wither and die - as all things must - with her passing. She is not here for me to love, and that makes all the difference; I cannot love a memory, only honor it.
I stand here on this small green hill, far away from the sleepy city. I have braved a lightning storm, walked through a quiet forest, to be here today. At my feet a gravestone sits in the ground, blank but for the little scratches that mar its white surface.
It seems like such a thing could never represent who she really was, but it’s also humbling. It reminds me that no matter how big or small, good or bad, famous or unknown we are, we will all die someday, and that is the plain truth.
It’s what you make of it that matters, and it was all the better for us because we did not look back.
We grew up in those short years, and I’m still growing now.
We are never done growing.
-