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A desiccating prayer caught in the air where Klaus and Caroline’s love could have existed, and almost did. The words ‘if only’ aged like mold rather than like bourbon against their mouths, tongues, lips, when they raised their glasses in another attempt to drench that prickling sensation which itched beneath their skin that chilly Mardis Gras afternoon, his last. A ring of passion swirled behind their ribs where it preferred to hide in silence, and often had since they first met. The heat between them was a tempestuous beast they’d tried, but failed many times, to kiss to death.
In sinew was where this connected feeling between them lived wildly and fiercely without disturbance from anything, or anyone. Tucking itself safely into corners that few observers could find let alone penetrate with nothing more than a fluttering slice of an eyelash, or a look which could rip out the unshed tears no one would see these two almost-lovers cry over their unfair ending, a goodbye that was never supposed to cross into permanence. No, no - not yet. And sure as hell not like this.
(If only.)
(If only)
(If only.)
That was the knock which resounded like a hollow rock skipping across Klaus and Caroline’s hearts. Cracking them open with blunt knuckles. Punching their way through until pain bled free and out between every line; scattering the future into ashes, into stardust too delicate to retrieve.
(If only.)
(If only.)
(If only.)
This prayer, those short words - both reverent and repulsive in their two sighed syllables each time they were thought or spoken - they tasted of fire and burnt these two immortals’ throats raw with unswallowed hopes, with regret too chunky to miss in this dimly lit French Quarter bar. Nostalgia floated amid drunken and clueless human stragglers who danced to each somber note the piano man pressed into his black-and-white keys, the shuffle-slide of their feet poignant both in rhythm, and in their ability to track the number of steps they had left before the music died against their swinging hips. Not one person in the room suspecting, none of them knowing, of course, that this song belonged to them. To Klaus and Caroline. He, with the treble clef of forever grinding away underneath his sinking soles, sharpening each lyric against the crease of his closed eyelids. And she, the next verse he’d never hear, the crescendo of all crescendos, who fell into a flat refrain because their end note was too ugly to sing out proud; because it seemed wrong that this stubbled strum of his lips was the last she was meant to feel against her own mouth.
This ballad belonged to two immortalists who were positioned on a trajectory which was destined to stop everything between them. Killing their love before it could begin. It left them both feeling haunted and hollow in their final moments together, with nothing to do except imagine, and wonder, and wish what would’ve happened, if only…
If only their love could’ve had the opportunity to live.