Weekly Writing – March 25 2023

He was made of moonbeams and music notes. He was a sigh only in gardens and on lonely balconies, only outside of parties with enough melody to conjure him.
Only with enough of a nimbus of loneliness for a reveller, or a few, to drift separately into it. Spun off like debris from a slow, golden, smiling crash, giving up its glow in a sigh to the silver night.
He was an invitation to dance, but only to those who wanted to do so, but with not so many people around. Only those who had tried and failed to laugh with the rest.
He was also the stories they told about him – that he took those lonely souls away sometimes. But could humans be said to take away the air they carried in their lungs? What was natural, what was necessary to them, they drew into themselves without thinking and returned changed. He was a shadow they seemed to see just a little deeper in the garden, a hand outstretched – the promise, so much more comforting than a crowd, of being lonely with someone else.
He was only a he because the stories’ loudest tellers thought they had seen him in a frock coat of silver light. He was only a thief because they considered themselves important enough that they could only be stolen – never simply taken.
He was beckoning to a young man who had been sitting alone on a bench by a laughing fountain. His voice was the orchestra back in the ballroom, as heard from a wistful distance. His hand was outstretched because some of them would always long to take it.