A long padded hallway, the whisper of the breeze; there you are again. Quietly moving the world with your presence, captivating the attention of the universe itself. You are beauty. You are grace. You are my world.
I reach for you, longingly filling my eyes with your glistening aura, and yet you elude me. Your presence begins to fade as tears blur my vision. I whisper, “don’t go,” but it is too late. With a secretive smile emerging coyly from your lips, you slip away into the darkness, leaving my arm extended into nothingness. I reach for no one.
“Who are you talking to?” A voice appears out of the night, followed by a concerned face. “Henry, what are you doing out here in the cold?”
It occurs to me that I have rushed onto the roof of my apartment complex in a desperate attempt to reach the beloved angel of my dreams. Elizabeth, my pretty-faced neighbor, has awoken to see me in my moment of vulnerability.
“There is no one there, Henry,” Elizabeth cautiously ventures to explain. “There is no one there.”
She slowly reaches to touch my arm. Her touch sends my arm shooting back, as if white-hot electricity has been transferred through her fingers. Pain engulfs her. Her eyes fill with submission for a moment, and then a sudden burst of determined life emerges.
“She isn’t real,” Elizabeth cries out in fury. “She is in your mind! Can’t you understand that? You cannot love what isn’t really there. She is a ghost of your schizophrenic existence. Please, stop chasing after her; I beg you. Chasing ghosts will never bring you happiness, only pain.”
Her words hit me like an ocean wave, knocking the breath out of me with one bitter swoop. I can feel the blood churning through my body as reality and fantasy collide in my head. My happiness, my obsession, my dream and my love…She can’t only be in my head. Such beauty and luminescence must be real…it must be.
“I know she seems very real to you” Elizabeth says softly. “I only wish that I were as real to you as her…”
She trails off, her bottom lip quivering and her eyes dampening. She reaches to touch my hand and I whip it away for the last time.
“No one can ever take away my happiness,” I shout. With those final last words, I run and leap over the edge of the building. Falling, falling, I see my beautiful love’s face smiling at me as she falls with me. I knew no one could ever take my happiness away. Voices rush through my head and shadows bounce across the walls as I near the hard ground and the soft satisfaction of demise. This world was never made for me. My fragile house of cards built from love of the unreal will never fall, for I am going to where dreams dance and live now. In death, I will find my life.