As has become my favorite form, freely letting words become spoken, become visible, become clear, I could not have planned this video of the Rugova canyon, taken from the back-seat of my father’s decaying Volkswagen back in 2022, would marry with these words, written just a couple of short months ago, four years later. Between the two, a river born many moons over again and again, bed and heart shifted again and again, so much has been learned, and truly nothing at all.
I tend to hold truths alone. I tend to see them too soon. The future unfolds before your mouth, before words roll off your tongue, the scent of it lingers in the air. I sometimes wonder if it was meant to keep me small. If you were instead meant to hold me, and I grew too terrified to stay. The truth was terrifying. A burden to bear alone, one you wanted no part of, yours, the truth, was never up for debate. I learned to hold mine, somewhat the same, but believed it a story made for two. And here is where you won each time; I felt it a negotiation. The truth, mine, had begun to steer my sails away from your body of water. Your body of soul, met mine with conviction. I thought, what deliverance it is to feel loved like your body loved mine. I thought, I’d let the truth be, for a while, it needed no invitation. It barged in like the midday sun to reveal our bodies sweating with joy. Grief, now, comes in. It knocks a timid knock, it begs not to be too much, not to overwhelm rooms you have never been in. I so very often cried, In those rooms, and your arms. My tears flowed easy with you, and so without. Safe, lonely. Today, these tears feel warm. In their stead, I feel I miss you. My truths left my mouth With tears, with you, without you. Of yours I was terrified. I begged them to leave the tip of your tongue, to jump onto mine, to trust me their taste, if only once, and I’d have understood why you’d never wished us into the future. The truth, yours, begged my patience; it begged to be left alone, abandoned. And how could I? Your eyes, the snappy tone, the terse, the rude, the guilt, the voice— mine grew exhausted. Perhaps our truths were never meant to match. Perhaps, we see the world made up of opposing temperaments, our languages too different. Perhaps it would have taken us decades to reveal what had me beg for your attention. Your nature anxious, I begged, for you to meet me where I stood, alone, at the door of the future; This path, the dream, I was terrified took us no further than where we had arrived. And I had built us a world in this path, this dream, it took us home. My truth, alone, was meant for its own. I bought into comfort, your safest insurance, always needing a place to land back to. And I was ready to burn it all down, if it meant we’d build up in a land neither of us felt we belonged to. But to each other, the truth was I was convinced there was Hope. And there, where we were, was not evil. It was not deadly, it felt stagnant, if not contemptuous; It felt it had a gripe with reality, as it took shape each day, suspended in disbelief. Put on the same worn out clothes, and thoughtless disdain, to leave to the place of the lost, and slowly dying. Each day, the homeless haunted me, towards Hermanplatz. While I built towards our home, Alone. And mine, the truth, grew angry. It grew estranged. Ridiculous, to trust in fate, a promise never made, a hope hanging onto itself, the rage a testament. Was it meant to destroy ignorance, this bliss we were drunk on, the suspended disbelief I know you felt? I do not know. Being content a liability, contempt grew in its stead; They were close neighbours, and I rang the wrong doorbell each time I did not confess the truth. It preceded me anyway. It slipped the tongue, patience grew thin, the veil tore, once, and it was enough. Faith, I had lost it. And my body diverged, from yours; sought land beneath its feet. Where the truth once carried could run rampant, So I learn to grow roots, and let the truth be.
Dashni,
Bubamarrë 🐞
