DIY RESURRECTION

DO IT YOURSELF RESURRECTION

BY JOHN TUFT

This one is for a beautiful poet…

He sat in the dark, staring at nothing. He wondered vaguely how many times he could lose hope before he gave up altogether on hoping. What was the point of believing in the best, hoping for better? If all he ever got was disappointment. A man can only be humiliated so many times before it is the last time. This felt like the last time. He wanted it to be over, just be finished, he could not take it anymore. His insides felt raw, like his nerves had been scraped with a potato peeler. No drug could take away this pain, this feeling of utter abandonment. Was his life a crucible or a crucifixion? The question always haunted him and no savior had appeared to show him the way.

She woke up feeling disoriented. She had fallen asleep with sweet thoughts of him, blessed assurances of his love and devotion. But now she felt a disturbance in the force, the force of love that surrounded them and held them in its warmth and naked light. Even across all the miles that separate them, she always felt his love. But in the predawn soup of uncertainty, she could feel his discontent and she feared it centered on her. Was she doing something wrong? Was she not enough? The questions haunt her, and the darkness feels like being shut inside a tomb. While still alive.

He roams through the streets looking for something. He’s not sure what exactly, but the one certainty is that he will know it when he sees it. Won’t he? The true Passion is the search for love, to be known, to be seen, to be appreciated, to be loved. For exactly who we really are. Down deep. Beneath all the posing, posturing, clicks and likes, please subscribe to my page, my point of view, my life. He just wants real. He wants to believe that her love is real. But… He bows his head and the sweat pours like blood from an open wound. He wants to be cleansed, purified, made whole. Does it have to be through such agony?

She cannot remain in bed any longer. She puts on a robe and paces. Marking time is simply that. Willing the minutes to pass. Fast, slow, just please get past. Three days and three nights apart from him is an eternity. She knows he misses her. She aches for his presence. He gets lost in his head. He wanders still at times through his childhood uncertainties and fears. She wants to comfort, caress, bathe him in tears for they can truly heal. She decides. She crosses to her vanity table and anoints herself in his favorite perfume, cloaks herself in his favorite outfit. The urge is to run. Run as fast as she can.

He returns to where he began. Will he ever be enough? Old wounds sometimes have fresh scars. The hell of never feeling like enough is a depth where the floor is always falling away. Always, but never landing. Sitting still brings pain, so he tries to keep moving. Besides, a moving target is harder to hit. And his apartment feels like a tomb. Without her. He pauses. His whole life feels like a tomb. Without her. He starts to run. A jog at first, then faster, faster until he is sprinting, gasping for air.

She brings nothing with her but her love, her persistence, her belief in him. The anointings needed to assure hope’s safe passage. She boards the flight and prays her way across the country. At his building, she stops to consider what she might find. Undaunted, she pulls open the doors and strides across the lobby. At the elevator, a voice stops her. “Whom do you seek?” She tells the attendant. “He is not here. The one you seek is not here.”

He flags down a cab and fumbles with his phone. At the airport, he hurries, chased by his demons scrabbling at his feet. He weeps his way across the country. At long last, he stands before her building. A child delivering newspapers passing by, stops to ask, “Why do you stand there weeping?” He tells the child that he sees no signs of life in her window. She is gone, and he does not know where. He cannot leave. She is his purpose. He enters the room and finds the bed empty. He throws himself upon it. His cellphone rang.

She is alone in his bedroom. She threw herself on his empty bed. She raises her phone so that he will see be able to see her and calls on facetime. He answers and she knows immediately where he is. They sought each other’s presence. “Please don’t hide,” she says. “I want to see all of you — even the parts that are hurting. Especially those. Let’s not give up on us.” She could see him relax. “Every tear of yours is sacred to me — because they carry the truth of your heart. Maybe I came from the same place your prayers did, that quiet place where the heart asks for something real…”

She looks again. His face is calm, and he peacefully sleeps. She watches him. A tear works its way loose and travels across her cheek. It is powerful. It can roll the stone away from a now empty tomb. And it was good…

Words are magic and writers are wizards.