THIS LOVE OF MINE

"If you ever meet someone greater than myself, be sure to introduce him to me."

As soon as Dillon had made the bold statement in front of Sophia, he'd sensed it might just come back to haunt him, but he didn't care back then. He valued his own (some might have said delusional) sense of self-worth over the possibility of one day having his heart broken by her leaving him for another man.

And then the fateful day came to pass when she did just that and he could hear his prescient words spinning around inside his head like a record on repeat.

Still, he was arrogant enough to believe she would come to see her leaving him as a grave mistake and waited like a Trappist monk for the moment she would eventually re-appear at his door asking to be forgiven and let back into his life.

Ten years went by and Dillon's ego remained remarkably unphased by the considerable passage of time in which Sophia had shown no sign of regret since her departure though tiny cracks were starting to be felt inside his heart like the thawing of a great frost.

Every night he diligently meditated on her image and every morning he woke fresh with the unwavering belief that she would absolutely return. In the end, his patient path had become his way of life like some form of semi-masochistic spiritual and emotional discipline and his devotion to her remained as constant as the stars and moon.

Friends close to Dillon eventually gave up in trying to talk him out of his romantic obstinance praying that one day he would wake up from the folly of his love-obsessed pride.

He wasn't quite so delusional though that it hadn't occurred to him that she would have no idea about his steadfastness to the concept of their forever love and so he tried to talk to her telepathically each night before he'd close his tear-filled eyes.

But the silence in return was deafening.

Twenty years had vanished in the blink of a bloodshot eye and for the few remaining visitors that came to check on their friend, they were shocked by what they now saw. Eating little food and sipping just a few drops of water at any one time, it became increasingly clear that Dillon was beginning to sleepwalk into his own personal version of Sokushinbutsi, a sort of emotionally catatonic, ascetic mummification.

Thirty years had now passed and the exterior of the house had become a jungle of creeping vines. It was finally when Dillon's concerned neighbours had alerted the police about the strange smell coming from the eerie place next door that they bust down the door only to discover the old man's statue-like corpse sitting upright in a meditation pose. He was holding a photograph of a radiant Sophia in his skeletal, rigor mortis hand all the while a record span round and round on the turntable in the corner of his darkened room.

This love of mine goes on and on,
Tho' life is empty since you have gone.
You're always on my mind, tho' out of sight
It's lonesome thru the day,
But oh! the night.

I cry my heart out it's bound to break,
Since nothing matters, let it break.
I ask the sun and the moon,
The stars that shine,
What's to become of it, this love of mine?