The Pact

The Pact

Digital collage, 2021.

Let us be suspended 

In black and white

Cradled by celluloid 

Before our first kiss 

Frons to frons

Barely swaying a muted waltz 

As the hour of gold 

Turns to silver 

Delight betrayed 

By the feet of the crow 

Alighting at the edge of your eyes 

In the pop and grain 

Of paradiso terrestre

Sighs, a score 

Composed by Nino 

Let us be suspended 

In black and white

Cradled by celluloid 

Before all the agonies of tomorrow

Ever manifest

Let us be suspended 

In black and white 

Before our first kiss 

When all is possible 

So I don’t forget…

Cherish those you love. Hold them tight and hug them fully. For soon… For soon…

I was unsure how to caption this piece properly. I wanted to make some grandiose statement about romantic love, but like so many things I intend to write, the sentences would fall off into an abyss of nothingness. Everything I wrote sounded like an exhaustingly condescending Instagram motivational cliché. Barf emoji.

In reflecting on this past year I’ve been asking friends “What’s something you’re proud of? It can be big or small.” One friend (Lets call her T) responded that she is proud of forging ahead in wrapping up the affairs of her mother Diana’s extraordinary life in the face of crushing grief. Diana was, in the true sense of the word, a larger than life woman and the grief that has accompanied her death has been unpredictable. It’s sort of like a mad gopher popping up in unexpected places and chomping you on the leg.

T’s post about her mother was beautiful, but it was the photo that got me:

Diana’s vacant bedroom.

Diana was a queen, but this room is not the glossed up glamorous kind we’re used to seeing on platforms such as these. You know the type of rooms that are so generic they belong to no one, or so fragile they ought to be kept under museum glass. Diana’s was as a simple room, in walls of mauve. The carolina blue carpet with a pathway paved by decades of ware. A figurine of lady Diana on one of the white bedside tables. Her coat placed on the bed as a comfort for the cat in case he was missing her.

This simple, worn out little room held proof of life…

And it was well lived in by someone deeply loved.

So what I wish for you this year and all years is that all the loves in your life not be clean, tidy, or under glass. I wish for you that you use up your love and wear it out like that well-trodden rug.

Cherish those you love. Hold them tight and hug them fully. For soon… For soon…