The Complexities of Light
He is light, really, absorbing all of life's complexities which, in return, are haphazardly scrolled across his face reflecting all that is said and done. This is what she sees and thinks when
she tells him that she can't even begin to comprehend a future with someone who cannot admit that there is anything besides the here and now (even though both of them spent the
majority of their years in the past). Once her words finished echoing around the silent room, his eyes dimmed and stopped their usual hypnotic dance and his permanent smirk drooped
into a frozen frown. It is the stillness that gets her, cracks her reserve. So she sits silently besides the man that never wants to grow up wishing she did not invest so much into the
future. His first movement is the slight inclination of his head so that he could witness everything reflecting throughout her face, her eyes (she is as translucent as he is). Her hand
subconsciously intertwines with his searching for the comforting heat that comes with skin to skin contact. It anchors them to this moment, to the reality that their world has hesitated
and is mapping a new course. Soon "I'm sorries," are whispered into the thin air and he brushes wisps of golden hair away from her face as her green eyes begin to fill. He pulls her
closer as she buries her face into the crook of his neck breathing in familiarity, solidarity. It is here with his cheek resting upon her head, that he tells her that he loves her. And they sit
like this in their own little world unburdened by the what-ifs of life as the orangy-peach afternoon light filtered in.
It is dark by the time he speaks again, mumbling something incoherently about staying in this room with her forever. She sits up slowly from the position they fell into earlier, digesting
the words that were said. Tracing the planes of his face, memorizing the contours as she half smiled and told him that this place, that CRU, college, in general, was not like Neverland and
that they had to grow up sometime. Squinting, he stared at her (perhaps his future and past, too), eyebrows knitted tightly together, face strangely open and vulnerable. She has never
seen this side of him before, she thinks, as he captures her hand against his cheek rotating his head slightly to press his lips to the center of her palm. It is easy to sit here with him and
pretend that life is merely a fleeting suggestion such as the reflection of light that dances across the window promising things of grandeur that could only happen in this instance. He
apologizes again for not being able to see past those flashing lights and for being the conglomeration of random rays that are absorbed and reflected to produce what we see now.
Maybe they are not meant to be, he thinks out loud, hiding behind the curtain of hair that is perpetually too long. For if he is the ethereal light that continually paints the present with
hues and shadows then she is the earth, solid and commanding, orbiting into the future without yielding to uncertainty. But what they both do not understand is that one would not be
the same without the other. He makes her visible while she creates solid ground. She lets her lips graze his forehead tenderly as she whispers that, no matter what happens, she will
always love her Peter Pan. He smiles then, a true smile, unconstrained by uncertainty or fear and together they drift off, her head on his chest, dreaming of a not so distant future where
she gets her white picket fence and he understands that accepting the future means that he will not fade from her presence.
