Don't Hide Your Love Away

He stood motionless in the hallway.  Body leaned against the wall, stern and undivided in his torment.  There was not a sound and the echoes of silence resonated through the cavern of defeat slowly chipping away at his stone skin.  But he doesn't move.  Synaptic recourse has come to a complete stop but his brain still fires at the speed of sound.  The sound of her voice as it leaked through locked doors.  There were no words, just the audible distinction of cataclysmic collapse.  Alone he stood - across the way - she seemed a million miles away.  Unreachable, unattainable, and unforgiving.  And again, there were no words to speak and the silence that ruminated spoke volumes that would topple the greatest of mountains as they tried to stand tall before you.  Nothing lasts forever, but it wasn't supposed to end like this.  It was never supposed to be like this.  Regret began to rear its ugly head out of the gaping cavity where his heart once lay, hidden deep within a cage of calcium and cartilage.  Protect it, he thought.  Hide him from this hate as it began to ravage his very being.  The blood boiling in his veins still could not move him. 

Utterly motionless. 

The door finally clicks open.  Slowly she emerges - eyes hidden from view.  Bloodshot from the raging catharsis of emotions that rained from them mere moments ago, she could only look down.  And he could only unfortunately do the same.  The strength he preached to his friends, to himself, was nowhere to be found.  He could only look down, ashamed of his actions, ashamed for the way he had treated her.  He brought this on himself, and there was nobody to blame but himself.  He had not been his best self, the person he took an oath to become, to serve as a testament of hope so that nobody would ever have to stand alone in their journey as they traverse through this life of seemingly endless hurdles. 

He hid his love away.  Maybe another day he thought, maybe it'll rise again.  Like night fall, the sun always stood to rise the next day, even when our thoughts had become clouded with the impending storm.  The sun always rose.  And in this most pivotal of ventures, he had no actions left.  He hid the fire that was fueling his desire, his desire to live, to love her again, and again.  And in doing so, he had lost all that he loved within himself as well.  A sympton of this disease, of the loveless life he sought for so long, so that he would stop hurting.  So that the weight of the world would no longer break his already fractured posture. 

Run. Hide. Repeat. 

Always ready to leave, he had no stake in his permanence.  At the first sign of danger he would always slip out the back, through the door he had always kept open with one foot already turned in a direction far from home; because home is where the heart is, and his heart, was nowhere to be found.  He had long buried it so deep that the endless clawing through the earth during the countless sleepless nights could not uncover the treasure that would change the world.  Like Pandora's Box, but instead of the terror and pestilence escaping from the doorways of Hell, a simple melody would resonate.  A song for lovers.  A tune that would tie two broken hearts, mending them to one so that they could beat perfectly in time with each other.

Don't hide your love away. There's no reason to, no reason to hide what keeps us alive. We have no reason to hide the heart that keeps us breathing. One breath at a time, a singular exhale of relief and the frosted condensation of the air escapes into the clear night serves as a reminder that we still have the ground we walk on, no matter how shaky and unstable the journey may become. The journey into the unknown depths of the "L" word as we no longer begin to define it -- instead, let it redefine us.