Love letter to a leather jacket - original artworks and story by @mariandavp

I opened up the window to watch the sunrise again. I used to hate the sunrise; until I watched it with you. Do you remember that night, when we first met? We were sitting on that bench in front of the sea talking and smoking until the sun came up. Since then no dawn is enough for me… it’s something I can share with you even when you are not here. You see the day breaks for everyone. Good, bad, easy, hard, short or long, whether we are awake or not, whether we see it or not, sunrise is a universal ritual for a new beginning common to all. In the eyes of the sun we are all equal.

And now, tell me; should I see you through the eyes of the sun and realize that you too are nothing more than a black dot in the horizon? Or should I let myself see you form in the sun and accept the love of the light, the kind of love that evens everything out on its way down?

The sky shores seem to be on fire. The answer is burning my mind and the small universe that surrounds you. I am still lost for words. It’s hard for me to express something that I sense but have never experienced. My memory has nothing to retrieve. Only one word comes to mind; a word fished long ago from an old dream. You may wonder why I keep looking for answers in my dreams instead of my experiences. But my dreams are three times more than my days! Now listen carefully, you may like this one.

One night I dreamt of my unfulfilled teen love. I saw that we were sitting cheek by jowl, and the cigarette he was holding while we talked was burning my leather jacket. Before he puts a hole on it I jumped away from him. He pulled me close to him again and said “don’t worry it’s so thick that nothing can happen to it”. Then he hugged me tightly and leaned his head on mine. Bringing his warm breath on my cheek he said “I love you. You have fixed my life”. I got so upset in my sleep that I woke up hugging my pillows trying to recover the feeling of his arms around me.

Love, then. Stolen from a dream and overused, but that’s the word. Not in the sense that blinds and fanaticizes, but in the sense that embraces and tolerates. If I could convince you that I could make your life better, then you would love me. If you fell in love with me then you would judge me based on the criteria you already knew I fulfill. Like I do for you; I adjust my needs because above all I need to keep you up high in the sky; Because above all, I need your light. And now that I have defined you as light, as my sun and as my moon, I need to find a way to make you see me. Should I conquer the world or should I just change it?

How much I’d like to reveal the universe to you! To prove to you that your world is based on my world and that we are both pieces of a vast puzzle. A puzzle with more than three dimensions. Two pieces that somewhere they touch and elsewhere they are one, at one end they support each other, at the other end they compete each other… but eventually they are re-joined from the heart. We penetrate each other in such depth that our cells cannot distinguish their nuclei anymore. Because in essence, my love, our substance is one and the same.

But how could I ever explain this to you when you are not here to listen? Maybe I’ll write this to you one day. Maybe I’ll paint it. Or wait! What if I sing it to you, if and when I see you? My discordant thoughts may become synchronized with my discordant voice, and come out as a song so fascinating that you won’t notice how my hands tremble and how my feet paralyze every time our roads cross. Listen to my crazy heartbeat! Just with the thought of you. Do not ask me why. It’s still a mystery to me; to look at her next to you and not to be able to recognize myself.

The sun is up and the sky doesn’t burn anymore. Blue prevails in my emptiness but I don’t feel the need to paint it over. I’ve made up my mind. I’ll wait. I won’t be patient, because patience can be exhausted and I may be tempted to something about us. And this in daytime sounds simply absurd. After all who am I to change the world? No, I will wait.

I will keep writing my diary so I won’t forget, I will arm myself with the deadly shield of apathy and I will hopelessly hope that one day you’ll open your eyes and see that your share in life is to save and be saved.

original story and artwork by @mariandavp [the above forms edited abstract of original Greek novel Hippocampus published in 2015 translated and adjusted for publication on Steemit]