Lost in translation
Suddenly the words on a page weren't prepared to confess about the missing beats she stole from my heart everytime she looked at me...with every love poem, every late night texting,every syllable kept demanding for a voice , every "I love you" became fed up of being hidden behind syntax, veiled and denied...So we spoke, but only in whispers, hearts wrapped in code, afraid to expose the depths of our souls.
Trauma's ink stained our lips, our teeth told of frost bite from fear's icy grip. Our minds knew of death tales told by the heart reaper at vulnerability's cliff... our bodies knew better than to fall in again but since when does the body ever listen, since when does the heart beat on command,since when does it ever learn...
"I love you," we mouthed....but the syllables were fray, tugged by the last tension cord in our throats to deny the heart its capitulation...and like that they were lost in translation and drifted far away.
" I love you"... Maybe she didn't hear it the first time, I said it louder hoping to change the tunes within her heart's clamour and for a moment her lips formed... I watched them as she fought to break them out of the mental chokehold, then shyly, as if to yield to embarrassment she said..."Je t'aime,"...I formed a sublte smile to hopelessly stop my heart from shattering from the wounds left on hers ,more than the pinch her words left on mine... for as much as they meant "I love you,"... I knew these were expressions woven in threads of uncertainty.We had woven a tapestry of longing and doubt, but hoped saying it in foreign tongues would be enough ...
She, my queen, wore armor of past wounds, her heart became a glass fortress, guarded by silent dissolute tunes.
I wondered why she allowed them alter every love song I tried playing, I wondered why she composed an opus with them....I wondered if she would ever pay heed to my dulcet tones...
We were both shook...her more overt than I but still...Insecurities had graffiti-tagged our love's walls...Fear painted over passion, so as a hail Mary I replayed...
"I love you," ...but she hesitated...at that moment my lips yearned to cross the borders of hers to rescue those three familiar unfamiliar words from the entrapment of her design, to let her know that mine is not the intention of her previous assailant...that I am different but
her tongue remained twisted like vines, seeking connection....yet love remained unspoken, lost in reflection..."te queiro"...she whispered again...
Seconds dragged to eons before I realized how long I was holding my breath... I slowly collapsed into her shoulder before glancing back at her pulchritude ... tracing constellations on her skin became my regimen...each freckle a star, a secret within...a secret that cut through her bleeding heart...I empathized...but when will she unlock her heart's vault?
When will she say, "I love you," without fault? When will she notice that Fear, had been the phantom conductor, orchestrating our silence... puppeteering our dance of misery...
I prayed that as we waltzed through the ballroom of our missed chances, our long penned love letters would sing gracefully in the choir of our new found voices , if we ever did find them...that "I love you" would not only mean a declaration of adoration but a war cry, a victory song ,a battlement, a balm on every wound , a purple heart for every time we've resurrected...and I guess she heard my prayer for I said it one last time to let her know I'm not afraid to die again if I must..."I love you"
" I love you..." She replied....
