Lorgnette

The curtains were so vast and lavish and lush and copious and anything but austere. Some affluence this balcony held; something so surreal. It was marbled on the exterior, with shiny rich, dark wooded floors on the interior. The chairs looked so gratified; this is where gods came to weep. 

I took my seat as the opera began. I pulled out my glasses, as to soak in every bit of detail to be had. So much to be seen, such beauty. The fresh, white silk gowns, and the harshly poignant metallics and the ravishing reds and maroons and burgandys.

I began to cry as the music began. So beautiful, the way the words intertwined with some primordial part of your soul. How the music ached to be apart of you; finding a home betwixt your rib bones until you wouldn't dare exhale as to disturb it. 

Oh and it aches and wrenches your heart until it feels like the beating is part of the drums that carry the sound up into the heavens. But you lean forward and listen, as if some powerful deity was whispering his dying breath. His dying verse, that only you could ever be expected to carry at the nape of your neck for all of eternity. 

The tears were falling faster now, steaming up the glasses. My lace gloves were soggy from wiping them but I rejoiced in the primeval feeling of being overwhelmed.  

It takes so much passion, so much heart to be overwhelmed. The heart, bleeding as though being severed, having that blood trickle down into the pads of your feet so as to feel weighted down, unable to move. Oh but your head is moving quickly, so light and attentive. Frantic, why can't I move, why can't I stop crying, why is there a disconnect in my chest. Why is there a void near my spine? Something that I can't reach nor feel.

I was practically bawling now, so overtly ingrained in this opera, this life that was befalling all round me. It echoed in every crevice of my body and through every pore and imperfection of the marble balcony. 

I put down the glasses, I couldn't see now, but I could hear, oh I could hear ! The sweet symphony of a thousand angels lifting stone to heaven and bringing back flowers. I could hear every flap of wing and though my eyes burned cruelly my face was numb, having been strained hopelessly by cold tears.

My lips were chapped as I called out. The opera was over, but I could still feel its life. Life like that never really dies. It is soaked up by the wood, by the velvet, by the people. It is carried across every field and every plain until everything becomes substantial; filled with the light of one life or a part of one. Nothing is really devoid. Nothing is really dark. 

I could only see darkness as I fell from my serene theatre chair, but I knew there was light; I knew there was life somewhere. I could hear it, running up the stairs, growing fainter, more distant, gone to aid in the life of another.