I lie on the couch in my room and look at the wallpaper. Monotonous and as uninteresting as the last few months of my life. My gaze is detached, like glass. I realized that I needed silence because it is where everyone finds their truth. I realized a lot of things in those three days! Silence became for me a space where the soul spreads its wings.
I've been blindly believing your words for too long, emptying myself, losing control of my soul. But a man without a soul, without a heart, is nothing!
"Why are you crying?" - you asked me yesterday. And I was in pain! Your lies, like the finest blade of a sharp razor, had been destroying our relationship all these few months! I realized that I had "wasted" myself for you, trusted you and loved you so desperately! Giving yourself and wasting yourself are completely different things!
Because of my trust, the only effective thing was this lie.
Cracks have run down a vessel that can no longer be glued.
The wind of your words is in vain. I despise you now! You have killed in me all that you and I had! With words you can play tricks as you like, but what can you create with tricks...?
Lying had become your habit, and no longer amazed you by surprise. As a root gives birth to leaves, so your lies gave birth to suspicion and then to disgust. First small and imperceptible, then large and obvious.
Your "I love you" - and I want to believe you again, because you are too dear, too beloved not to trust you.
And the lies, like acid were eating me up from the inside...! You mastered the game of flattery and tender glances perfectly. Then - that lie again every day and..., you are cast away from me again... so far away again!
There's no more intimacy! I don't trust you anymore! Disappointment. Alienation. Fear of loss. Resentment. Pain. The incomprehension of... why is this? Why? Why? It's hard to build, but it's easy to break! What's broken is hard to put back together. The fragments are scattered, they have to be found and piled up.
You swear you'll never do it again. How simply, melodiously, and cruelly you lied to me! You kept "singing songs" to me about it! But I LOVED and, therefore, was blind. I trusted you completely! And now YOU have trampled it all away! YOU killed MY love!
I look out the window, admiring: the pattern of streets and squares, temples. I look into the silence that the city gives birth to, and involuntarily think that my soul is a dilapidated and abandoned temple, from which you took out my feelings stone by stone! You have taken everything! You left me nothing! Only emptiness and pain was inside! I wanted to howl - it was so painful, unbearable, hoarse...! I was falling as if into an abyss...! I couldn't remember myself! Everything was a blur! You killed everything in me! Tell me, why did you do it?
Enough.... Now you don't have to pretend to anyone, make excuses, lie again. The piece of chance that revealed the truth is your freedom. Yes, you live still: in the telephone receiver, in the tattered, past-life-like songs that were only ours; in the colorful notes, but you have no place in my "today". Do I hate you? Yes, but not you – your lies.
I forgive you, though you don't deserve it.
Your "I love you" - and I want to believe you again, because you are too dear, too beloved, not to trust you....
Published earlier on 07/28/2024.
© Copyright: Vladimir Yevtushenko 3, 2024
Certificate of Publication No. 224072800804
