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HOUSE OF CARDS…
When we met it was as if I was finally getting to know
someone who might at least end up being a dependable friend. Though our differences were pronounced I perceived
that we had the maturity to balance our philosophical differences. So we talked and talked and talked until we
had virtually run through every possible scenario in our mutual lives but of
course this was just the groundwork… nothing had been built, we were still in
the conceptual design phases of our association.
We knew there were some challenges to our association but
after a couple of years we revisited our interests and the very first layer of
structure had got erected. It was a
delicate balance at best, we were wholly unfamiliar with one another so we had
to literally hold the cards in place so that the occasional breezes and bumps
of the table, the wind caused by casual passers’ by, etc., would not disturb
what we had so patiently built.
It was a promising enterprise; we had developed a
philosophical connection and a sexual sophistication that allowed us to
construct additional levels above the ground floor of our relationship of
cards. The weight of each new level acted
as ballast to hold the lower levels in place but the lateral forces pushing our
eloquent but delicate structure ever so gently and at times with brutal
strength threatened to overturn everything we had invested in. Notwithstanding, it was still only a skeletal
structure, a flimsy edifice composed of the singular paper cards. Each card was an element of critical
importance in our relationship but the only cement binding them together was
the gravity of our compassion and desire to come together. If one of us let go
the house of cards, vulnerable, would collapse leaving all we had painstakingly
built in ruin.
We never had a chance to complete the wonderful edifice we conceived,
only its skeletal frame, a wish, a desire, a dream but one utterly
unfulfilled. I never did figure out why
you left the structure incomplete but I thought about an ancient building left
by a civilisation that mysteriously disappeared in Pre-Colombian Latin America
and I thought about a fabulous temple in ancient Khemet that had been
revolutionary for its time but lay incomplete and ruined for thousands of
years. We never got to enclose our
structure with any skin, there was no façade and no roof, no foundation, no
interior rooms, all bare all empty all unfinished! So as I looked through the fragile house of
cards I realized it was now doomed to failure, it would inevitably fall and in
time be utterly forgot… I realized then that what we had built was not love… it
was only a house of cards…
Written by D. Vollin
