His eyes follow the candlelight through the wineglasses and into her eyes, not knowing what will happen, trusting the night to catch him if he falls, to bury his hesitation. This time, there is no space for analogies, of abstract and ambiguous relationships—it’s the real and fleeting moments of life which stay with you forever. He saw the world through a wedding ring, the sparkling diamond refracting his gaze and warping it around its cycle, bounding him to choke on the diamond ad infinitum. This ring, however, would never be worn. Its circle would desperately attempt to grip at emptiness. He was selfish about the ring and wanted it to stay upright with no one holding it, he wanted it to glitter on its own. But rings have an end. Its warmth slowly disappears and fades into history, and history soon fades as well.
He lost the ring in a flowing river of wine, the rushing swell of waves above the grand caverns held together by bass chords. The river kept flowing through the centuries for us to momentarily dip our feet and play, looking into the tributaries flowing towards a village you’ve never been but know that generations have passed their lives living there. On that pair of rocks a couple made love and they floated away, holding each other by the arms and let go by the sea. They passed by meadows and birds sang to them, so they thought, swimming in their ecstasy were the echos of hymns sung by choirs centuries ago. So this is the river of human life.
He saw these rivers under the reflection of streetlights, the puddles soaking the sounds of footsteps tapping out our time. His heart becomes adrift as the seconds pass by, it will soon sink into the puddles and be blown away by tomorrow’s wind. The darkness of that night held within it a warmth that he wrapped himself in with such enduring trust, that this blanket traced out by Christmas lights would remember their imprints as they stepped through the night. Words and music float—they can make their voices suspend in the air by threads ever so slightly longer, before the threads break under the weight of time, and the words fall with faint echos that he could still hear today. They could dance and make the air dance, and others would join in this magnificent celebration of what is beautiful, to hear this dance again in the silence that follows. It would be a calm river then, gently ebbing under the touch of the wind. But this wind never reaches the deep undercurrents rapidly swirling out of control, pulling apart the delicate threads they spent all night weaving, until the river banks widen and lets out into the tumultuous sea, the dark waters finally surfacing to crash into the jagged rocks and be split and broken apart into a mist that forms a rainbow. Here the sun would be out, but it was the light of Jupiter which shone at them, even brighter than the moonlight hidden behind the clouds. A single beam of light grazed through her hair and into his eyes, through which he could no longer see because he had tears in his eyes.
Presumptuous Ponderings 