My Painted Ceiling

In that instant I wanted them all to be true. All the clichés, all the tear jerking love stories, all the fairytales and legends that end with horse rides, sunsets, famous kisses, and happily-ever-afters. All of the things that made me gag, I wanted them to all be true.
When I was alone, in life before all of this, I embraced sadness because there is something haunting and beautiful about a damned hero dying, Juliet plunging the crease into her broken heart, Jet Li’s ghost dancing for a blind girl who is still smiling. But there is nothing in this world that is as beautiful as this.
Lying on our sides watching the tears run from one eye into another and then through and onto the mattress, we whisper, “I’m so happy,” while laughing at the irony and sniffing.

And there it is. A perfect thought. Since the garden and the forbidden fruit debacle there has been a constant shortage of perfect thoughts. Michelangelo was thought to have had one while painting a ceiling, Newton also while drowsing under a fruit tree, and it is a certainty that the person who invented pants was superbly blessed. I’ve been looking. Under rocks, across prairies and beaches, in sanctuaries and graveyards, nursing homes, soup kitchens, diners, wine bottles, beer bottles, ketchup bottles, above the clouds, beneath the water’s surface, and under the cushion of the couch. And there it is.

All loss is sad. They are little deaths that lack the finality and distance that comes with a coffin. The separation between two distances, be it the width of rice paper or the span of an ocean, stretches on forever when you cannot cross it.

Here we are. In Kansas City International Airport, it took forever to check in. We hold each other; both right shoulders wet with tears.
Why is this so hard?
And I realize that she means more than the world to me. It is an interesting feeling, waiting to watch love fly away. I wish ten minutes would last forever. Then I wish that three minutes would last for ten. Then it is time to go.
She gets in line.
We hug.
We kiss.
We say good bye.
We say, “I love you.”
Then I turn and walk away.
Then I turn around and run back to her grab her and hold her again.
People pass.
You don’t care.
Nothing matters except this moment.
We can’t stop crying.
We cry enough for a lifetime.
People pass.
I don’t care.

Now she’s gone.

We are still lying on the mattress.
I’m still crying and she looks at me and asks, “What’s wrong?”
I whisper back, “You are my perfect thought.”

My tears could last forever.

The sun is trying to break through the clouds. I'm singing the same song I sang to her on the way out to the airport.

"You are my sunshine,
My only sunshine,
You make me happy,
When skies are gray,
You'll never know dear,
How much I love you,"

And for an instant the sun's rays illuminate my face. I laugh at the timing. But it is for only an instant and the clouds tuck it back away.

"Please don't take my sunshine away."