Vanitas

Innsbruck, 1671

Back in the day it was just you and me, the wind in the Ulster fields and the noise of the windmill behind us.

You were so funny, you know? Smiling all the time, as if you knew something about living that my pessimism rendered me blind.

I’d love to hear your laugh again, to fell my breath spinning like a pendulum. I’d love to fell your skin against mine once more, to believe that our entire world was the space between our arms, in a neverending embrace.

But I was a fool back in the day. Me and my twisted soliloquies about my job and the war and the money I should inherit after the death of my father.

I wasn’t aware that I was dreaming on my own. I was dreaming with a future who wasn’t yours.

And you knew it.

You knew it since the begining of my materialistic turn.

You tried to warn me that I was hurrying the whole thing up. You tried to warn me that while I was dreaming with huge piles of xelins I was loosing our time together.

You realized that I was madly in love with you when I was afraid to lose you. But when I make myself aware that I got your heart — just like you owned mine — I blindly looked after my next aim.

As a consequence, I lost you.

Now I’m deprived of money as well. The gold mines dried up. But the lack of any means to survive beyond mendicancy are nothing compared to the pain of wandering with a void where my heart once was.

You know that it still lies among your things, just like a long forgotten spoil of war.

You always knew.

L.