Song of silences

An anti-fairytale

Our friendship is a song of silences
Distance, time, distance
Punctuated by encounters -
Brief, irregular, infrequent -
Each with the aftertaste of incompleteness

Through the silences, life went on;
Gently scattering disappointments my way.
But I believe in fairytales.
And before I knew it,
My protagonist's face was your face.

To while away the silences, I fleshed out
My skeleton understanding of you.
I magnified the traces of good;
Reduced your flaws to those I could forgive:
The scars of your own struggles.

Did life create the silences, or did we?
Even when we are together
There is so much left unsaid,
So many questions unasked
So many shrouds we refuse to lift.

I love the silences and I hate them
(And I hate that I hate them)
The notes of our song are
Brief, irregular, infrequent -
And I cling to their echoes.

Still I know the bittersweet truth:
That the object of my affection
My passion
My obsession
My frustration

Is not you.

It is a mirage that shimmers
Somewhere between you and me,
A figment of my imagination.