To be, or not to be.
23h53, the clock read.
It was almost midnight, she had writing to publish, judgments to read, and she was getting irritable. She’d been sitting at her desk for hours but suddenly the hum of the small fan heater at her feet seemed to be getting louder.
Why couldn’t she just figure it out?
After the break up, the one that broke her, she’d vowed to protect her herself ferociously from the affections of her heart.
In general, she’d found, hearts offer direction that is scrupulous at best. And hers in particular had a record of impossible obstinance and idealism to her detriment – her very undoing.
She stopped typing, a pair of hesitant hands hovering over the surface of the keyboard. She shook her head at the memory of pain and the fire that had refined her, as if the action alone would wipe the memories clear.
Since then, since that devastation, she’d sworn an oath on the scars that lined her forearm. Never again, went the pained promise, would she allow herself to be so consumed with the idea of the love of another that she lost her way, or her reflection became unrecognizable. She knew now just how treacherous the heart could be.
She’d even compared her previous (not-so-romantic) relationships to the story of Hansel and Gretel. After all, it was the children’s own affections and greed which had deceived them, she thought. Their desire for more crumbs meant they only looked up long enough to see the next crumb a short distance away, and then the next one after that, and so on. But never looking further to discern how far astray they were being led.
In fact, she opined, something could be said about that – the potency of instant gratification in affirming a myopic perspective.
Could that be what was happening now, between her and the man with the bottomless eyes?
She knew she loved him, perhaps even that she wanted to be with him in a doing-life-together kind of way. And to his credit, he’d been frank about his feelings and intentions for her since they met years ago. Unfortunately, years had passed before they were be able to contemplate earnestly the prospect of being together.
In a cruel irony, the years had taught her, among other things, no longer to trust (her) feelings. Sometimes, when he speaks about wanting her to love with vulnerability, she feels those years as a physical distance between them, and her heart groans with grief.
Now, she lifts the frame of her spectacles with the back of her hand to perch her glasses atop her head, and rubs her eyes generously.
02h31, the clock declared.
After a deep sigh, she rubs her temples and recalls an afternoon when it was his temples her fingers caressed, his head laying in her lap, eyes shut gently against the sun. Both of them submersed in a comfortable stillness. Neither one of them daring to speak over the sound of peace.
Sometimes, when I think about the books of the Bible, I marvel at the vast variety of wisdom contained in the Old Testament alone. I am stupefied. From the Levitical law, chronicles of the kings of Israel, to profound Psalms, and lamentations of the great prophets. It is these times when I consider Song of Songs.
From my reading of it, Song of Songs is a book about love, passion, and purity between lovers – whom many believe are King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Recently, I have been thinking about the haunting refrain in the story of these lovers; “Do not awaken love before its time.”
To be or not to be? The question (which, thankfully, was never mine over which to agonize) has already been answered. Mine is to submit.
– Lele M
Lele Muthali 