Distance Everlasting


A strong friendship and an innocuous affection for two people who have never
been graced with love is a thing that can turn into something that is quite
the opposite of harmless. It may turn into something quite dangerous. No
doubt fate has a part to play in this. But love becomes dangerous when the
victims of fate do not like what fate has dished out to them. What do people
do when confronted with something so horrible and painful that death may
seem to be a better option? When people enter this state it sometimes
becomes difficult to discern what is logical and what is illogical. In the
end who can tell what may happen? We shall see…


He sat upon the floor of his room, staring at a picture on his wall. The
curves of the figure in the picture, the face so beautifully perfect and
symmetrical, the piercing green eyes staring back it his own, driving him
mad with an obscure form of torment he had never experienced before. Oh how
his life had been perfect with her there, never a moment of regret or a
feeling of loss.
The weeks had stretched on and on for seemingly years. He felt so much older
than he had, stretched and weary. His eyes burned in his sockets from the
tears that flowed out at ever thought and remembrance of her sweet little
smile, or the smell of her hair.
He was forced to eat by his mother, his father not understanding what was
wrong with him. For the first weeks they had condoned his sadness, knowing
that it was human to feel such loss and pain. As the weeks passed, however,
his mother became extremely nervous and worried.
His father became angry. The father would come to his son’s door, knock and
pry and try to "dig him out of the whole of self-pity" he was in for an
hour, sometimes more. Every unsuccessful attempt brought out the father’s
rage. He would rave through the house screaming about how he didn’t know
"how anyone who was 17 could really understand love", and how he’d seen what
this sort of thing did to people. "When will you come out and face reality?"
he would ask. "When are you going to get on with your life?"
The truth was, the young man didn’t want to live any longer. The only person
he had ever loved, the only person that had ever loved him back, had been
taken away. She had been taken away to never again be returned to his loving
arms. The feeling went beyond that of loneliness, beyond simply missing
someone. This was like dying, a lifetime of dying.
He couldn’t even escape the pain in his sleep. He was plagued by nightmares,
sweating in his sleep, waking up sore, no doubt from thrashing around and
tensed muscles as he was unconscious on the floor of his small, dark room.
After a while, even his mother became slightly annoyed with it, saying one
night as she sipped at a cocktail that had been one of very many, "His self loathing is almost superfluous."
His lamentation was perfectly sound to him. Why should he start things over?
Why should he pick up the pieces of his broken and shattered soul and try to
behave normally again? He instead decided to forsake what little life he had
had. All of his calls where met with a reticence and near anger that
frightened many, including his own mother. He had become a dark figure, pale
and gaunt, reminiscent of death itself.
No. He would not return to the prodigal, arrogant peers who looked down upon
him. When he thought about it, he could never remember "fitting in". He
never remembered liking school either. He always seemed to be one of those
kids who received disparaging looks regularly, the type that was always in a
corner where no one would notice, except the occasional teacher and the rare
friend. Very rarely did he find someone who understood to him. Maybe that
was why he missed her so much. Maybe that was why he couldn’t stand the way
things were now without her.
Now, all he sought was the serene silence of death. And why not take a
little trip? He could be reunited with his one true love. He could rejoin
the only person that had every made him truly happy.
Until this moment, he had been the very image of ambivalence, thinking it
arrogant and selfish to take one’s own life. But now, staring at the
enlarged picture of his girlfriend, his soul mate, his favorite picture, he
made a choice. He picked up a knife that his mother had sent in with his
plate, a nice juicy steak nestled close to a big, ripe baked potato. It was
sharp and glimmering with a dream and the insane hunger that no food could
satisfy. As he slid the blade down the length of his forearm, just before he
felt the first shock of pain, he looked at the picture one last time. The
last thought that slipped through his head was how beautiful she was. She
had always been gorgeous. Maybe if she hadn’t been so gorgeous she never
would have gotten into that car, too far away for him to stop her, and taken
the long brutal plunge over the edge of the road, through the trees that
ravaged her body. His eyes closed as he thought about her, the only life he
had had slipping through his memory. One more inhale, one more exhale, the
breath to end all of his suffering. A dark space, an empty place, and never
again would he be loved.

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Two lovers in simple bliss
The sun rising and setting with each sweet kiss
The universe responding to their every whim
Every thought played out as if the outside were in
But in this bliss true sadness begins

Two lovers lie, so far apart
Between them a distance that could weaken and sorrow any heart
When God chose to take the life of one lover
A grave promise was made by the other

To join the one lost that was so dear!
For the one that they love to be near
A stab in the heart could not equal the pain
That being without them would pertain

But the action it seems, is not as it seems
Not always do actions follow the dreams
With the wish to be closer a cut was made
But in that cut was something forbade

One may not take one’s own life
For to murder thy self is murder still
And as the cut was made that one simple thrill
And the scream that was sounded, so thin and shrill
All was made for the purpose to unite
But in the end only brought the devil’s delight

One lover in heaven, the other in hell
And no remedy to offer dispel
A distance that cannot be breached now lies
Where the simple matter of death once stood

Instead of a lifetime, eternity waits
The love lost forever in a test of fate