The Perpetual Sun-shower/ Die With You
There was once an ordinary man who fell in love with an extraordinary woman. He was an iron will, a cage of antiquity, but her love buttered him with uncanny compassion. He carried fate in the palm of his own hand and his story was destined to be great. So he made a nation out of tiny stories. He turned sampans into a towering ship in the sky, harnessed revolt into quiet acquiescence. He drew a family tree from a half-mermaid/half-lion, and quite remarkably, led the rising sun to the equator where a little red dot bloomed. But little did he know, his greatest story was his very ordinary love. Somewhere in his fortress, there laid a shining contradiction, the only exception to his rule. There she was, the majesty beyond the ivory walls. Intelligent, independent and kind, she was an unrivalled woman. But classical as well; a hopeless romantic, the kind that reads Plato for leisure and Austen for romance, a fervent purveyor of the old world. She was Alice in his concrete jungle. Though, as all exceptions are, she became his compass for humanity. As all weaknesses are, she was his human nature. As all stories go, she was his story. When she lived, the air he breathed in her atmosphere was morning dew. When the days dwindled and her every breath became a race against time, he hymned to her familiar stories of adventures down the rabbit hole. He hymned her songs until she closed her eyes. If we listened closely, there was always something in his voice that was not his, a tiny tremor of a woman’s love.
Outside their house in Oxley Road, the man’s life was without sentiment. He cleaned the streets into dazzling skyscrapers and perfect morality, painted four colours over cordial faces. But at home, he was Papa- he was mortal. In the beginning, somehow with an intuition that would guide then even in death, they already knew that they were joint in life. Together, they left home for college and returned. One day, while strolling along the Bridge of Sighs, in unfamiliar recklessness, he asked for her hand, just because. He could not wait; it felt right, he was just an ordinary man in love. It was the only gamble he ever took in life and she rewarded him with a loyalty deeper than love, an unquestioning equanimity, and the kind of solace that makes hard truths easier. Her departure left a void in his life. Often, he would instinctively reach for her across the bed and the grasp of cool air would still surprise him. Soon, he flickered in and out of the aliments of old age. Sometimes, he saw her silhouette in the doorway, dressed in her favourite knitted sweater, her gentle voice beckoning him over. Throughout their life together, there were a great deal of caterpillars and cheshire cats, but her love was the simplest solvent. For she had tumbled down too many tales to not know fact from fiction.
The old days became a recurring imagination. His staunch aversion to ideology was misguided, because loving a woman like her was luxury. To her, the world was filled with unbridled magic. One summer day, with a hint of the passing rain still lingering in the air, she surveyed the gardens in curiosity. Startled by the unusual silence, she realised the birds were missing. He watched her from the reading room as she paced around the gardens. She always understood the secret of life and took small pleasures in everyday beauty. So he built a garden city for her, and every evening they would stroll around the gardens so her wonderland will never be lost. When her legs failed, he pushed her wheelchair. He didn’t need to see her to feel her smile as the raindrops fell from the leafy canopy onto her shoulders. Quite inexplicably, their story was always blooming. He had long ago denounced stories. But stories led him to her wonderland and made an unwavering man capable of profound love, the kind of love that springs eternal. He built the outside world with formulaic lego blocks, peppered in pastels and amenable grassroots. But inside their house, there was magic. Through her eyes, he could accept happiness so simple, it was magnificent. He could accept sitting in a concert hour for three hours, just because she wanted to. The roaring orchestra would enliven her. Even in sickness, she needed her music. In her absence, the world seemed much quieter.
Behind every successful man is a monumental woman. Throughout three quarters of their lifetime, she had worked ceaselessly to support a man who built his entire life outside. As the second stroke rattled her body in increasing velocity, the words began to leave her and her slim hands would shake as she tried to read them with a ruler. The world as she knew was out of sight, so he became a story-teller. Every night, cuddling by her bed or through his son’s iPhone, he would read to her. He made adventures out of his everyday life, read her favourite poems, became Mr Darcy and the lot. She barely responded. But one night, he dozed off while reading Frost. He awoke to her hand on top of his. Outside, the earths moved whenever he shook his fist. Inside, there were two people who remained unmoved even as the years fall away. Completely consumed and content with life together, their hearts could never leave each other.
She fancied the greats, Machiavellian gods and fairy kingdoms, but the reality she enjoyed was simple. There was no need for Bonnie and Clyde, she was neither Cleopetra or a desiring Juliet. She was his and that was it. For all the stories she held close in a lifetime of reading, this was her favourite. There was nothing spectacular, in fact it was rather boring, but it was a lifetime of ordinary love.
This kind of love cheats time; keeps the rocking chair beside her towering bookshelf moving even in her absence, bears it out in the time of doom. Its bud never sickles in trials, blooms even in sickness and pounds relentlessly against life. It kept him breathing even as his body waned, a slow tumble towards his eventual demise he felt one her body turned cold. He only lived so he could die with her. It was an inexplicable bond; they made no sense without each other. Every night, his hands would hover over her urn and he imagines the warmth of her lips. Sometimes, he is overcome with a strange sensation he cannot shake off, the strange feeling of her cold forehead on his lips when her kissed his final goodbye. He spends every morning in her library and runs his hands over her dog-eared pages, trying to remember her in all the stories she read.
One cool, Saturday evening, the skies were swamped in pastel hues. A blazing pink was pocketed between orange explosions and a deep, dark blue swimming through the horizon. The rain showers had drizzled over the garden city for the whole day and the sun was beginning to set behind a duvet of clouds. Suddenly, the air from his lungs collapsed and he crumbled to the ground in heaving fits. As his eyes fell to the mosaic tiles, he thought, quite incredulously, to himself, “Have I gone mad?”. And then, black out.
There was a piano. It sounded like Bach, must be one of her favourite songs. There was also the tip, top, tippidy tap of rain. He swam in between the spaces in his head with sudden joy, for he thought he had finally collapsed within her abyss. He could feel her close, her hands reaching for him in the distance. For sentiment, and because it could not make anymore sense, they will swirl into each other into an eternal afterlife. Together, they would fall very slowly down a well of always, it was the only way a man like him could explain death. And then just like that, he felt her. There was no need for air, if he could not sing her songs. She carried him gently like the rain. For him, there was no God besides the testament of her love, burning brightly in the darkness. Quietly, he closed his eyes and fell, like a child.
Then, he saw everything, he saw her. He saw her against the dying light, a perpetual sun-shower in his eyes.
