Dandelions

„What’s up, Honey?“ His voice was warm and soft. He run his fingers through her hair. Where had he come from? She shivered. “Everything around me somehow falls apart and I’m trapped in the middle, and all I can do is watch how everything I love changes. I can’t stand this anymore!” she cried.

Had she really spoken this out loud? For the first time ever? Had she tried to express her feelings in actual words, her own words, without using a song to say it? She held her breath. It wouldn’t help. People would keep judging her, keep punishing her for her mistakes, keep watching her suffer, just like she did every single night alone in the darkness; where no one could see her tears and her pain.

The world was a cruel place, rough and without shelter for a soul that had already been broken.

“It’s alright Honey, I’m here. I will protect you”, he whispered. Cold traces of old tears became the streets for the new one, which wouldn’t stop running over her cheeks. His voice comforted her, but she couldn’t see him. All she could see were blurred lights and a lonely silhouette at a place, she would never reach, but she longed to be at. How far out of reach was he?

She woke up. Her pillow was wet from all the tears she had cried in her sleep. Where was he?

It was sunny outside, warmer than before, spring opened up his arms for her, but without comforting her. She went through the streets, along the river, through the forest, and finally across the wide meadow far away from the buildings and the people. Out here, she was nothing but terribly free.

The wind blew through her hair and made the dandelions fly. Lonely and lost they went up in the sky, without any aim or any hold.

She was just a little too late.

Without an aim, all the people felt the same loneliness. When there was no one left to come home to, everything got lost in the wide nothing of the own existence, and before you realized that you were losing yourself, it was too late. Where was this place this lonely silhouette waited for her, a whispering shadow, a voice full of comfort and love and refuge? She would do anything to come home again.

Words had too much power. You couldn’t control them, because they had a certain dynamic which wasn’t controlled by any earthly force. She had never wanted this, she hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. And now it was herself who was broken, shattered, torn apart by this, a thousand pieces, because she couldn’t live without him. She couldn’t. Every single day she spent away from him, she died on the inside, a little more with every cold word he told her. She would do anything to make him return.

The dandelions were dancing across the meadow and flying into the sun, every one of it on itself, horribly free and lost. Her heart was beating slowly and she almost believed that, if it was beating just a little slower, maybe it would stop. And when he thought of her then, maybe he would remember the love that she had given. That was all she wanted, he was supposed to know that he was everything and that she could never be without him. It got harder to breathe, crying was easier. It hurt in her chest, made her pant, but it was better than suffocating slowly from this endless goddamn freedom.

Maybe she was a dandelion. Or maybe she was the crow, the black bird, the threat, the bad, the transience, the wrong, the danger. And what was he? He was perfection, he was care and love, he was the right, the only truth, the beautiful and the pure, exactly what she needed. But didn’t it always need something wrong so there could be something right? Wasn’t it that way?

Endless tears were flooding her face, made her weak and got her to her knees. And as she lay there on the ground, crying, alone and way too free, a dandelion landed on her. Softly, the sleep of exhaustion took her away from this place, wrapped her in dreams made of cotton wool, silent and soft.

“I’m with you”, the voice whispered. “Let me hold you, Honey. Let me love you, let me save you.” She felt his hand touching her face carefully. “How can you rescue me?” she asked scared. He smiled. She didn’t see it, but she knew it. “Just listen to me.”

And he wrapped her in a sea of notes, tones and lyrics, of guitars, drums, bass and his angelic voice, until she finally understood that he was the music. In all her freedom and loneliness, through the shade of tears, she couldn’t do anything but smile.