29 January 2020

A love note to an unknown address in Los Angeles



They will one day walk among flowers. Botanical gardens with exotic names will beckon. There will be butterflies and bouquets. They will encounter one day the industry of a cormorant, preening of a peacock, an eagle’s high-elevation majesty, a line of ants and the stealth of a cougar.  

They will see the same mountains again and again but in different colors at different times of the day and in different seasons. The world will renew itself for them, each time in different form, like a snowflake so much like another but yet distinct in configuration. There will be water in a bottle and a glass. It will come as ice and hail, drizzle and thunderstorm. 

Their friends will have names. Some names will remain and some will not. Friends will grow tall. The architectures of learning will acquire different names from junior high school, through high school to college. Favorite books will be displaced by even more enchanting stories. Tunes that run in the head will be nudged aside by the melodies that take up residence in the heart. 

Maps will speak of roads. Signposts will give direction. The rules of the world will lead and mislead, contain and agitate. They will change the rules with a smile, a side-step, a step-back, a fadeaway, a swish, a pump fake and a no-look pass. And with unmistakable love that seeks not love in return. 

In the perimeter of an orchard they will stand and breathe the fragrances of pomegranate and guava.  In the center court of life they will rise and rise and rise. They will reach out and touch unnamed ceilings and with caress bring roofs crashing down. They will then reach down. Using  broken shards and shingles they will manufacture exquisite pottery and upon it inscribe the names of all things felt that today have no words. 

In inevitable skies of innumerable color and cloud formation, all the words of all the prophets will be written for their eyes only. And they will learn that which those who came before learned and those who will come later will come to understand. Simple but evasive truths about vicissitudes, the commonality of solitude and loss, the specificities that will not be resolved by word and the grace which alone nurtures the best of the human condition.

Some nights are darker than others and darkness is not always bested by dawn. And the darkness, it revisits at the most unexpected moments and in the most unexpected ways. And then, giants will appear in even more gigantic dimensions, not as presence but absence.  And then there will be a breeze that comes with music, music wrapped in fragrance, and perfumes congealing into words and moments.  Everything will be fine then. This they know or will come to know one day. 

For now, there are no words for her who to him was mamacita per semipro ‘little mother forever’ or for them, angelic princesses of unsurpassed beauty. For now, there will be tears and let them be shed. But then again, untrammeled love is mercurial. Appears to come, gives impression of exit, stays like a shadow, a soft light and a beacon, and all the world's knowing never answers fully questions that begin with ‘why.’  

But answers there will be. Among flowers. Upon a butterfly wing. In fruit juice and soda fizz. Rolling down a mountain. Dropping off the glance of a stranger. Or a friend. In a stubborn snowflake upon an impossible windowpane. Encased in a drop of water, a drop of poetry, a bead of sweat and a tear. In everyday ornament. In the subtext of a story reserved for four, distinct, utterly loved readers: Vanessa Laine, Natalia Diamante, Bianka Bella and Capri Kobe. 

And these answers will arrive in the name of every man who truly loved his woman, every father who adored his daughters, every daughter for whom there could be no greater heroes than her parents and every sister who was best friend to her sisters. 

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [January 29, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com. www.malindawords.blogspot.com   


Other articles in the series 'In Passing...': 

[published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]