Outside the Lamp Light

"What's the matter, Miss Turtle?"

He sounds far away. I don't answer. Instead I'm hiding. I'm hiding my own anger and despair from everybody by posting this here instead of on my other blog.

"Miss Turtle?"

I ignore my good friend. His presence pains me for he was initially based on the person I'm feeling such anger and despair over. Mr. Gryphon has grown into something else entirely, a completely different character of his own but that doesn't mean he still doesn't say things that remind me of that person every once in a while.

I initially created Mr. Gryphon as a way to keep that person around me for a little while longer when the real person was no longer in my life. I needed him to be around me while my heart was breaking.

"Miss Turtle." His voice is loud and clear and I look up into his great yellow eyes.

"It's so futile. You can't force someone to care about you," I say. The words come out in a near growl, strangled by my own grief.

Mr. Gryphon sits back on his heels. Looking at him I am reminded of bookstores and pale ladies. I don't know what happened there. It seemed so clear at the time what was happening, but now it's just a bad joke.

We are still in the darkened landscape. The lamp flickers about 10 feet away from us. I am sitting on the cold ground, leaning against a very old tattered couch. I am just outside the lamp's guiding light.

"What do you want, Miss Turtle?"

"Doesn't matter. Wanting something that's impossible, that the other person is incapable of giving is stupid. Not so smart, Mr. Gryphon."

Mr. Gryphon looks at me for a long time. He is searching for something in me, but I don't know what it is. I recall something about being the best at my kind of writing and how achieving that would make me better than half the people that crawl the planet. I recall being inspired and fascinated by this person. I recall wanting to be that person and that this person represented the very best of what I wanted to be. And I recall all of the adventures me and Mr. Gryphon have been on and these two blogs. I recall learning for the first time that my writing can delight and move people.

I recall writing The Coda, a 52 page story based on the demise of this relationship, and being delighted and amazed by it. I turn away from Mr. Gryphon and I reach out from the inside of myself, I feel the depths of my being pushing and stretching at the confines of my own skin barrier. I reach out far into the world, my heart straining from the effort. I reach and I reach. It's the only thing I can do because wishing and asking and praying won't work. I close my eyes and gradually come back to myself. I'm exhausted from the effort, but I turn towards Mr. Gryphon again.

"Do you want me to leave, Miss Turtle?" His voice is kind and gentle, he knows the pain I'm feeling from this latest disappointment.

"Mr. Gryphon, why is this love looked on with such contempt, or worse, with such indifference?" The tears from straining to reach and reach finally run down my cheeks.

"I don't have an answer to that question," he says. I wince, but I know it's best to leave things there. There are no answers and no responses no matter how much I wish for them.