The Unrequitable Muse
He found himself at her doorstep. Looking in through the window, always looking in. She came to meet him, just as she did a thousand times ago. Something radiated differently about her this time, something sparkled in her eyes that he never saw before.
“Come on in, kiddo,” she called to him. “Make yourself at home.”
A child’s cry rang out from the next room over. Its awkwardness shifted their tension slightly. He’d not seen her in almost a year, certainly less than nine months. A testament to that rang out clearly through the paper-thin walls her apartment could afford.
“You’re doing well,” his eyes scanned over the trappings, but immediately returned to that strange sparkle. She stirred at these words, like it was something foreign to her.
“Yes,” her lips parted in a sensual fashion. “I’ve moved some things around with the recent addition. How have you been?” The words escaped her mouth with such a dull lisp that you could sense her less than apathetic feelings behind them. He was here for their child, so she thought. He was there for them both, so he thought.
“Devastated.”
“Oh?” She stirred once more. He’d kept his feelings closely guarded, and this absence of will was a side of him she rarely saw. She waited for him to continue, hung on this word and let it dangle from the precarious ledge he’d placed it upon.
“I have never had a muse.”
“A muse?”
“Yes, I’ve scarcely received a compliment in my life. The only ones I can really remember came from you,” he began. “I started writing as a means of entertaining others, and yet in the end they cared nothing for me and nothing for my achievements. I looked for love in an unadorned public that was impersonal and often cold. You understood me; you accepted my flaws and enhanced my strengths. It was not until late I realized this, perhaps far too late.”
His sudden plain demeanor took her back a step. Forceful and passionate, these words never found their way out of his mouth before. Long ago were the timid bleats of a sheep in a flock, this new man before her was a wealth of pride. Something different, she felt uncomfortable at his words, but drawn to its presence.
“Where does a muse fit into all of this?” she queried.
“Inspiration.”
“I’d just as soon think that your inspiration lay in the next room, crying for his parents to feed and change him. Or have you forgotten all about that when you last walked out that door not so long ago?” She stormed from the couch to the adjacent passage. The wailing ceased and after a few adoring coos – she returned clinging the swaddle of ruckus.
He waited for her to return before continuing, his fingers folded neatly into each other. “Until now, my lone inspiration was to leave this town. Leave these people for something grander.” His steely resolve continued, ignorant of her last words. “To disprove who they thought I was, to rise above my class and social order. To become the man I thought I was.”
“Then why are you here…,” but her words were drowned out by the boom in his voice. It rattled the walls and made their child restless.
“Because I need that muse,” it roared. “Because I’m not strong enough to do this on my own,” beginning to trail to a rational tone before whispering, “Because in the end, I realized I never wrote for any of them.” He drew in an elongated breath that heaved his furrowed brows softly over his glistening eyes. “I wrote for you. It was always for you.”
She looked at him hard. For a long time they sat in silence, the only sound came from the coo of the child that lay between them. His innocent undeveloped eyes scanned between them both, in a world more complex than he would ever soon fathom. In the end, they all hugged, and this was the first time the little child’s family ever felt whole.
“Yes, that’s how it’ll happen,” I thought to myself, the events of the scene swirling into the back of my mind. “She’ll take me back this time. I’ll be the man she wants me to be, and maybe someday she can help me become the man I dream of becoming.”
I stood at her doorway, looking in. Always looking in.
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Dearest Johnny, |