Reflections on Closness

He said to her: life was nothing but a dream worth living or worth dying for depending on what you choose here and now.

She said to him he was right in his assertion although she preferred to think of life as the infinite organic pattern of fractal geometry.

He got up to leave. Closed the door neatly behind him. He picked up his shoes from the floor just outside the apartment. He was calm in putting on each shoe. Like it was the first time he had done this very task. Like learning to tie a shoe lace when he was 3 years old, it warranted his full attention, a meditation, an innocence.

She was breathing steadily. Still feeling his words like a lingering touch of an oracle. He was incapable of understanding her. Even if he feigned it for so long.

She was the one he had always come to for every advice and now he suddenly had it all figured out. She, like a piano teacher who suddenly hears the simple tune of scales that are perfectly executed yet without feeling, lost her faith in progress. There was no understanding, there was only technique. He was never going to be a virtuoso. He would never play Chopin or Rachmaninoff.

She heard his footsteps descending slowly. For the last time. Lovingly she listened to the sound but she could not help but feel relief that he had finally gone and realized his path was not hers and her understanding was not his.