Incomplete

By Cyril Joseph

We sat on the hood, leaning against the windshield, heads angled differently, looking at the very same thing. The reflected sliver of the moon looked up at me, from the rippling lake ahead, and asked me to forget my collapsed house of cards, as the light drizzle made the reflection shimmer and blind my unblinking eyes. And the very same sliver of the moon looked down at you, from on up high and told you not to worry, that the night was ours.

There we were, freaks out of time, trying to build our world out of chaos. Stretched out in the night, indifferent to the showers that gradually got heavier. Still gazing up at the stars that disappeared, and the sickle-shaped moon that had censored itself behind the puffy clouds. We fled, with yet another unfinished on our record, in a life full of incompletes, to this moment of absolute peace. This pause before yet another fresh start.

Every thought is appealing until you finish it. But the second you do, it becomes outdated. Every world is worth building, perfect only until it almost becomes a reality. So you then destroy what you’ve nearly completed because of the glaring faults that are only evident to you. Yet another incomplete.

I saw a smile take shape through the wet hair stuck on your face before you asked me, what I would do if I ever did become whole. If I knew how to live a life beyond being incomplete. And I had no good answer. All we do is strive to fix the chaos. This unyielding effort is all that keeps us sane. We know only to patch up what’s broken. We know only to solve the disorder and to create new beginnings, over and over again. But that’s okay because we’ll never be finished.

“The night is ours”, you said, as you got off the hood, grasping my silence. You slipped your hands into the pockets of your jacket, and gestured with your head, “Let’s go!”. So we did...

By Cyril Joseph