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I would have burned the stars for you.
I would have pursued you relentlessly until, knowingly, all my options were exhausted. I would have laid waste to everything that is good. I would have bent to my knees, my face contorted and streaming with tears and snot, as I confessed my wicked betrayals to those who loved me and relied on me. I would have done all this, knowing that lying with you in my arms later, it would have all made sense. But this was not to be.
In 2016 I will get my first tattoo. It will be a half-Mandala on the inside of my left wrist. I will try coke for one time only in a bar in Las Vegas. I will ride over a thousand miles on a red motorbike in a single day across Europe. But when I do all these things I will feel nothing.
Love is like comets orbiting planet Becks.
The first was Comet J. She bounced off the surface of the planet in 1994. There was no early warning. She came from nowhere. And when she impacted, the four hearts in the blast zone were instantly eviscerated. She span off into deep space, leaving the planet titled on its axis and smoldering. Changed forever. After more than four seasons of pain there was numbness.
The second was Comet S. Funnily, her own orbit never even took her close. But planet Becks reached out to her as she swung by in her majestic arc. An insane space-wish. A ridiculous interstellar desire to become one with this brilliant shining star. For their atoms to be fused. For a new world to be created. The attempt to bring their trajectories together was clumsy. And S just smiled a sweet smile down from the heavens as she passed.
Her orbit took her past every year.
Every year the project team reformed to chart her trajectory. To observe, to plot, to log, to codify and to categorize. Each year as she left on her long journey away from Becks, a melancholy would descend on the team. But they were committed to their work. And diligently performed it for ten years.
Until for reasons I will never know or understand, she changed her orbit and came crashing into the lower atmosphere.
For two weeks she was in low orbit. The project team was re-formed with a new mission. Bring her down!
In San Francisco a massive intercept site was built. Thousands of space-metal grappling hooks were cast and attached to five mile long Kevlar ropes.
As S circled the planet they were fired into the sky in a systematic pattern.
For two weeks thousands were fired, each with its own unique code, message and purpose. Some missed but many hit and fell back to earth dented. Fragments of S found on the surface suggested contact had been made.
But none of them hooked. And slowly her orbit ascended.
The project team wept openly as they watched her leave Becks’ upper atmosphere. How could they have missed? They had failed. A once in a lifetime event. And they had failed.
The intercept site was abandoned. They couldn’t even face decommissioning it properly. It will lie there, slowly being reclaimed by nature, as a memorial to a beautiful but ultimately futile mission.
I’m lying here awake. All night. Thinking of you. Torturing myself the way the lovelorn do.
My wife lies next to me. Also awake. She knows that I know she’s awake. She knows that something is wrong. And probably assumes wrongly that something happened in San Francisco.
I try to make conversation but fail.
Why can’t she reach out to me? It’s as if I’ve never left California.
The pain will subside.
It will be replaced by the numbness of what is right and proper.
And slowly a hope for a third comet will come.
You have to have faith another will come.
When it does I will be in my mid-sixties.
I hope this comet will be inappropriately aged, skinny and covered in tattoos.
I don’t believe in doing things by halves.
Dearest most beautiful S,
I can’t believe you broke my heart twice.
The first time was my fault.
The second time was yours.
I would have burned the stars for you.
A planet should die knowing it has loved and been loved. And maybe with the last comet, those two things could happen together.