Musings Before Dawn
He awakens to the light of shadows, sporadic rays of a pale, insipid glow dancing in the darkness. Often he rises at this time: the wee hours of the morning where even insomniacs can sleep, the time when late night movies are finished and the only company he has are the salespeople on dull, unfriendly infomercials. It's no longer in medio noche, but an epoch that has no name, and a time where minutes and hours no longer seem to exist, when moments transcend all scientific barriers. When he awakens, he finds his hair matted to his forehead; faded, odorless sweat tingling underneath his clothes. Scientifically, he thinks that it's natural to sweat when sleeping – something about a circadian rhythm and body heat, he thinks – but he likes to think that it's his troubling, disconcerting dreams that cause him to desire a cleansing shower in favor of breakfast.
When he awakens, he thinks of her: or rather, the absence of her; because even in her absence she has a presence. The crisp, unfamiliar scent of hotel sheets remind him of a past rendezvous; with her, of course; and even the thalassic, nautical color scheme of the outrageously commodious hotel room is something that she would deign.
The Boston PD has certainly taken a turn for the better, hasn't it, Farm Boy? They're putting up their best cops in classy rooms that resemble gargantuan submarines.
He can't remember when she became a part of him; when her personality began to vicariously live through his; but he now realizes that her absence leaves something of an infinite abyss in him: an emptiness that cannot be filled through tears, laughter, or philosophical, vatic catchphrases created to somehow lessen this indescribable, bottomless grief.
Losing someone isn't something to get over, really; it's more like something to get used to.
It now seems peculiar to him that even in her brightest moments, she always seemed to occupy this foreboding, ominous sense of doom. Her eyes resembled two muddy pathways to tragedy, and her smile appeared fabricated: as if she knew something awful was happening, but she hoped that maybe a simple curvature of the lips could cover it up. Jordan wasn't a really happy person, he concluded; but she was beautiful, heartbreakingly so, and most people often equated beauty with happiness. Happiness was something he could acquire down the road; but beauty, externally and internally, was something to treasure.
Even in her brightest moments, when he knew that she was trying, fruitlessly, to eradicate all remnants of this gloom, she seemed to be merely living in the absence of it. No matter how light it all seemed; no matter how light it all really was; shadows always lingered. Her beauty was her sadness, he knew, because it was so utterly selfless and so painfully hers.
The darkest hour is before dawn.
Maybe he awakens at this hour because it is her time: not just the blatantly depressing atmosphere, but the hint at something better; something happier. It's during this time when slices of the sun can be seen through the liquescent sky, when the ghostlike silence awakens those like him; the true insomniacs, if you will; because they know what is coming, and they must treasure what can't last.
All she wanted for him was this, a sense of peace with what she couldn't fathom. For some reason, she associated peace as something without her: that she was only war, conflict, and anything akin to the sad, dark, and angry.
He wishes sometimes that it could have ended differently; that despite the clichés, she would have made it through, and they would be together, as lovers should. But it's when the sun finally rises above the clouds that he realizes she couldn't be here, in this moment: she was simply too beautiful.
Fin.