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…