(Learning to Accept) The Look

The Look (Nothing Gold Can Stay)
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

(original photo)

(Learning to Accept) The Look

I can’t go on any longer like this.

We’re on the precipice looking over. Or, rather, at least, I am on the edge of falling in.

Every time you look at me now I almost stop breathing. I can practically feel the perspiration pore out of my skin. Everything gets brighter and then whiter, and then, the vertigo begins.

So far, it’s been pretty come-what-may, here-we-are, it’s your turn to spin.

And so far, seemingly, I have been pretty lucky: go directly to go, collect $200, get out of jail free; everything seems mighty right between you and me. Almost, too much so.

Thus, the trepidation creeps in. Because that’s when women like you suddenly step back; almost like clockwork, you slowly slink away, while I woozy and wonder and awe in the wake of your being.

I’d like to continue casually—no expectations, no invitations we might not accept, no family introductions. Alas, (alas, alas, alas) I am but a sorry, weeping willow in the lingering waft of your every breath and sigh and crack of beautiful laughter, of every smile and smirk, and of every tender, yet calculated (tick, tick, tick), look.

You’re going to leave me, aren’t you?

Of course, I’m much too scared to disclose that thought to you—if only in a futile attempt to prolong the inevitable, to stretch out the parting and make it a harder, longer goodbye.

Nonetheless, I, I will continue feigning, continue pretending that I am partial to the game, and that if I erroneously take you and us and this more seriously than I should, that I know and realize and accept that…well, that, I am to blame, for nothing good ever lasts forever.

Does it?

For we both know that perfection is ephemeral.

Don’t we?

Anyone fortunate enough to experience that eventually needs to learn to accept this fleeting beauty of life and to move on before one leans over the edge a little too far and meets the jagged edge of reality below.

For I know, I know, that I should appreciate having caught that look on camera, and that it should suffice and carry me on and through to the next beautiful moment of a life that is bound to be rife with them.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

— Nothing Gold Can Stay, Robert Frost —

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(R&O thank you for the inspiration)
Lorenzo