Another Way

Our story begins, as so many do, with a bubbling conflict beginning to brew. The signs are there, it’s plain to see, the readers know it and so do we. But those whose lives reside within the words we write, the tales we spin, are all too often unaware of just what we have in store.

Lying beneath the sunstruck moon, our lovers sing a well known tune, their secret song from long ago, a long lost melody starts to grow. A hidden joke between two friends. That’s all it is, they know that’s true, just something old, not something new. The hummingbirds that flutter, flutter way down deep inside. They’re not a call for shame or fear, no need at all to hide. Reuniting, that is all, was too long overdue; just something old, not something new.

But we know different, don’t we now, as voyeurs often do. As we watch them play within the orchard, this blissful scene will shift somehow. That much we know is true. It’s not a matter of if, but when, and then the moment comes. Inconspicuous, so innocent, so small, a tiny dewdrop will change it all. It rolls its way along the curve of a hardened pear, as we observe, and it falls it’s way to freedom, kissing softly on her cheek. He sees it too and without thinking he raises his hand to gently meet that little dewdrop on her cheek. This is where it happens. The magic of a single touch, in the right place, at the right time. The world falls still and all they thought they knew is lost in a moment. This moment.

As they lean in closer, he can see it in her eyes, what we’ve known all along, the fractured line between truth and lies, the lies we tell ourselves, the ones they had so often told. It’s something new in something old.

Words remain unspoken as they both rise to their feet, stepping slowly backwards in their unsteady retreat. What might have worked out years ago, is now an awful mess. Though their feelings rise so rapidly, so suddenly revealed, each forlorn lover knows a truth - this love they must suppress. For in the lives that passed them by, they lost their only chance and fell, a little differently, in love at one first glance. Those they met in later years have shared with them their joys and tears, and built a life worth living. Every day they chose another, every day apart, and yet somehow this moment pains them, tears a small hole in their heart.

They have two choices so it seems, at least that’s all we’re told, to lie one way or the other until all the world grows old. Cheating and betrayal, or the lonely track that makes this the time to part. It matters not which way they choose, each ends with a broken heart. It’s a shame really, to know the world as black and white, always a struggle, always a fight. No room for brighter shades or a new way of knowing.

We know this story all too well. We watch it, write it, read it. We’ve learnt to laugh and cry along, as one pair's love proves it’s most strong, and never stop to question. In all of the greatest tales we know, the stories of love are also of woe; there’s always some concession. Isn’t it funny the things we’ll accept when it’s all we’ve ever known, unable to see outside the box to allow a path of their own. These are characters on a page you see, their world is at our whim. The most satisfying path takes part of her and part of him.

I wonder if one day we’ll learn to take a better look and find a way less simple than the ones found in a book.