Vulgar Display of Love-A Story Inspired by the Loss of Dimebage Darrell
I saw the memories every time I closed my eyes, the tension
drilling holes clearly to the back of my skull.
The images of her straddled above me, lost in ecstasy, were
constantly in my sight. I clenched my eyes tighter as her
image's eyes opened and looked at me. She whispered,
"I love you, I love you, I love you....."
I shook my head, the image faded, like she did in life. Months
passed since her whispered recitation of love and my heart
grew cold. The phone rang and it was her.
The topic of the conversation was ridiculously banal,
but her tone was needy, like it said, "Pleeeeease
love me"
My words were kind and cordial, but my tone was hollow. "Do
you want to meet for coffee somewhere?" I asked.
"No, " she replied, "I'm pretty
busy."
Her tone was one of defeat.
I hung up the phone and felt detached from her, an act of finality.
I opened my eyes and saw the empty room around me. A few pieces
of furniture. A stray toy in the corner from my nephew's
visit earlier.
I wanted to think my life was different, detached, without
her, but it felt like a lie. Her love was a lie.
Standing, I walked toward the bathroom. I pulled off my
shirt and looked in the mirror. A road map of scars lined
my chest. Most of them fading, a half-remembered hallucination
of two years of surgeries. But one scar, a thick concave
path down the length of my sternum covered where my heart
was taken. I've never had chance to feel detachment,
to say goodbye. Now a dead man's heart was beating inside
of me and the ragged scar that covered it reminded me of the
fact every day.
"Was the heart of her love for me that died beat inside
of me now?" I thought.
I removed the rest of my clothes and stepped in the shower.
The heated jets of water made my skin red and raw. I felt today's
thoughts sluice from my body, washed around my feet and
spiral down the drain like shedding skin. I let the jets
of water shoot the back of my head like a repeated execution.
The tensions from the thoughts were massaged away.
Night fell, the room around me was dark. I laid my head on
my pillow and listened to the wind. It rattled the ventilation
shaft on the roof of my apartment building. Its rattling
were like broken bones in an empty shell.
There was her face again, her eyes piercing the fabric of
darkness, the fabric of my room's reality. Her lips
pressed together, curled up in a slight smile, a smile of
need, a smile for herself. She thought it was a gift to grant
me a smile, but this gift was pain, this pain was her life,
her love.
I finally saw the image for what it was: an illusion, a delusion.
I breathed in deeply and saw the hole I was living in was not
a vacuum of pain, but a solitary emptiness that brought
lightness of heart, lightness of mind. I breathed out slowly,
and saw the darkness as a simple lack of light, a play of opposites
and nothing more. I saw the act played for the last time.
I closed my eyes, saw another day die, and drifted from reality
into the dominion of dreams.
Dimebag RIP
|
