I'M GOING TO THE DARKLANDS


 

We were standing at the edge of the lake, at the end of what we call a day, and my candy apple brain was sending me images of light filtering through clouds and reflecting off the water---clouds and water, these things I had learned to name and to see. It was an almost impossible swirl of delicate colors and streaks of luminosity. Fiona, the girl I had learned to call by a name as well, stood nearby; we had walked here together.

I looked over at her, and saw tears on her face. She looked back. I nodded towards the sky, thought of the fragile beauty bringing her tears.
She said, “No, it’s just…there’s no words. Can’t be said. What they call…'this'...”
She started to stretch out her arms as if to indicate all that appeared, then stopped and shook her head.

"No, no…" I said, in apparent agreement, then my voice trailed off.
She looked back at me, a few feet away across an impenetrable distance that didn’t even exist.

"An' we can’t even share it," she said, looking into the seeming distance.
I didn’t say anything. I just looked at her face, noticing the way her delicate ivory skin caught the fading embers of light like a painting.
She went on, “It’s like he says, this is close as you get."
I knew she meant Michael Markham, as he is one of a very few people she will tolerate me reading to her without shushing me and telling me to stop saying such foolishness. Last week I shared a couple of my favorites, and she had tears when I read:
"We can laugh at something that brought us joy and cry at something that broke our hearts. But we will never be able to get closer than this imaginary space between us."
and...
"A certain untouchable melancholia arrives when it dawns that the closer you get to another, they simply disappear into who you are."
We stood there, little figures against a disappearing landscape, then she said, "So that’s all, then…?"
She was not really asking a question, but I answered, "Yeah…."
She was silent a moment, then she spoke, not really to me...
“and here I’m crying and there’s not even any more feeling sad…”
I had a thought to go over and hug her, but we were way past those kinds of gestures. I waited for words to arise, but we don’t speak much, spending most of our time together in silence, and anyway, there didn't seem like anything to say…
I just looked as the gloaming formed a luminous shroud of mist and dying light, and everything began to blur into a seamless grey that made the lake and the sky and the trees and Fiona vanish into that ineffable neverland of what never was or ever will be, and then felt my own tears fall as I watched helplessly as the darkness of love swallowed the world. <3

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