It was over a year ago that I had a dream playing to my fancy as an artist, shrouded in her corner alone, thinking. The night had descended, and the curtains fell as the Romantic whimsy of dusk slipped away into darkness. My mind roared with the agonies of my passion; my heart felt laden with the sorrows of night. I remember the silence. It was palpable, the divinity of a world coated in the black ink that seemed to bleed from my fingertips--a world created in my own isolation. I could almost hear the raven himself cawing "Nevermore" unto my frivolous questions of love and strife, damning myself with the thought of the ultimate destroyer of Time. It was a world too temporary and yet too permanent to ever do justice to love. And I had shut the light. There was no hope of Apollo's chariot being dragged across the sky in the bright noise of the Wheel turning again; I had turned away. It seemed a godless universe, a self-centered demise beyond even the flames of Hell--only a dark and dreary quiet juxtaposing the world of suffering inward, eternal.

And they would come. They would bring the light, blinding in their society with no secrets, no hidden Word. The privacy of the soul was robbed from their hearts; there was only a glaze over their eyes of apathy. There would be a blank smile and a hollowness to their faces--genuine, kind, but lacking. They would click on the light; bring the sun into the middle of the room until its essence, too, had pervaded my spirit into the falsity of eternal bliss. My eyes would burn in the immortality of their emptiness, living without infamy and without praise, and the light would pierce like a dagger through my heart--the terror of moving on. Though I would beg and plead for them to leave me in isolation, they remained until the clock struck from what seemed like miles off, and they would turn away, lulled by the sound of Time. I would run in my blindness, clinging onto grief before it faded, and shut the lights. There was a purpose in my eternal torment: to find her again, the one I lost so long ago. My heart burned at the thought of the Inquisitor who took her away--who accused her of the affair.

And I was left in the darkness of my passion for what seemed years of obscurity, each day battling to preserve what was left of my divinity of grief against those who would so cruelly take it away from me. I could not tell when I opened my eyes, between the darkness of my mind and the darkness of the window, of the woe inside and out. I was alone. It had never before occurred to me to be afraid of the mysterious and furious passion that I felt just to mourn her--isolated, alone, delirious--but there was a certain hysteria that seemed to capture me of always being awake in grief. It was the culmination of the heartbreak that I had felt for as long as I could remember--the constant suffering, the churning of my gut, the darkness. I recalled how Thoreau said something about poets being the children of Aurora, goddess of the Dawn. He was wrong. Artists are only ever the product of the night. I hung my head in a sort of hollow shame about my presence, knowing fully well the ignorance of those who remained outside the door. But I was afraid to be in darkness, and unwilling to recognize the light.

There was a knock at the door--they never knocked. I could not speak, but there passed a time before the it finally opened, gently, quietly. There was light from the hall that flooded the room briefly, and I shut my eyes in resistance to the truth that was always told slant. When I sensed that it had gone, I opened my eyes and they rested upon a man bearing a candle in his right hand. It flickered, and I saw the flame reflected in his deep-set green eyes, betraying his passionate grief. He said nothing. There was a sadness in his gait as he approached; he swayed from side to side, slowly, with his eyes cast downward in the kind of distant gaze I had ever only been able to imagine. My heart froze at the very sight of him, coming to accompany me in his despair. The light shone dimly, illuminating the room until I could see the picture on the wall of the pear tree, leaves glinting in new life--brave, enduring through winter. I had forgotten about it. And a part of me started to resist the allure of his green eyes, just like that in Nature, but I felt unable to look away. The light was not so much as to blind me. In fact, I was suddenly drawn to the way it reflected off the gold ring on his left hand. There was a design on it, a deep groove that flowed like a river and connected the one side to the other, gently illuminated by the soft, dim light of the candle. The unity of marriage, I thought. The two become one. I had forgotten the beauty of a flame; I was taken aback by my own sense of mystery and longing for the quality of light that he brought to me, in his hand and in his soul, and my heart seemed to reach out in hopes of feeling its warmth. What could it mean? I began to tremble incessantly. There was an intolerable nostalgia in the man's eyes as he quietly regarded me--I could see the pain of grief, palpable, and as if the pangs on his heart became mine as well, new waves washed over me of longing and despair! How could he live without ultimate darkness, with the hope of this brief candle flickering, knowing it would be extinguished someday? It was impossible to understand! I could never live in the temporariness of a world dictated by the dripping wax of a candle! It was too much--far too much to bear!

And yet there was a sense of affirmation in the way that he sat down beside me and smiled softly, knowingly. His very presence quelled me; it was like I and all I had turned my back on had made amends. The darkness was no longer cruel and harsh; it was illuminated by the gentle light of inspiration. It was no Hell; it was a chosen sacrifice, for her. I had hope. I could feel the heartbeat of the man next to me. "Love is a funny thing," he whispered. "But even this, even the darkness in love, is the most beautiful thing in the universe." I smiled.

And even waking up, there was a feeling in my heart that would remain there for a long time. Grief may be temporary, but love is forever. It is in the contentment of life, and the pain. And even love--the universal force, the divine connector that pervades all and comforts all--may be done justice. There is no death. There is only the love that is ever stronger than life, preserved in every one of us and in each other. And there remained the pain in his eyes, the passion--but it was a necessary part of everything. There must be hope, too: a hope for the all of us in the unity and sanctity of the soul that flows beneath our feet and above our heads. It was love--only love.