Page 125 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #3

…......When Hannah began to cry, I wasn’t terribly surprised. I am, as Mark noted, empathic. I closed
my eyes, wrapped her in my arms and held her against my sorrow. “Give your pain to me,” I whis-
pered, “It will be alright. Give your pain to me.” And when she did, her tears left her, and they became
mine. Tears I could wind around my heart, bury in my sepulcher, but tears I could not cry. Not that
nyght. Not ever.

A few hours later, as we worked together, I turned to face her. I couldn’t feel her. “Where are you,
Hannah? I can’t feel you.”

Perplexed. Puzzled. Hannah looked like she couldn’t even begin to understand what I had just said.
“I am here,” she said. “I am here. In the moment with you.”

For a moment I wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question. “Okay, just checking.” I brought the
camera up to my eyes and let the moment pass. Truth be told, I wasn’t there in that moment. I was in
the bone yard of grief, putting Hannah’s sadness to rest in the remains of my heart. Hannah would
cry again. And as I had earlier, I held her against me. “Give your pain to me, Hannah.........” Each tear
she shed another nail in the cross of my sorrow became................

And then it rayned. Still falls the rayn.

“And having held you in the nyght, having brought your lips to Mine, having given yourself to Me
as the flower leaves her love for the nyght to find, you would leave Me. And I would be alone again.
Alone and barren. Alone and knowing for the first time in all the years that I had lived, what it was
like to be loved…. And this heart of Mine upon the cross of My sorrow would I impale.” I have no
idea where the words were coming from, or if I did I didn’t want to know. I just wanted the sorrow
to end. If only I could cry. All the days have I lived and one more would I give to cry. Just once.
Just one tear. “So much wiser am I now, My love. I know now that I cannot take that which can
only be given in love. And yet, wounded and angry, I tried to take what had never been and could
never be Mine lest in your love you opened yourself to Me. And so I turned away from you. Angry
and afraid. My anger and My fear long ago died and so it is that I see what was right before My
eyes…….”

Mark seemed surprised. “I am not fooling. Our conversations are often quite profound,” I said. Mark
laughed as though he couldn’t begin to entertain such a thought. He made a joke, as he always does
in such moments, a kind of self deprecating joke. I was teaching one of our seminars, the one called
“Art and Emotion” and I had just quoted him. I have to come to terms with his reaction – this is not
the first time he has done this – and I find it perplexing.

And then it rayned. Still falls the rayn.

I remember the tears washing over my arms, falling around my face, caressing my eyes as though
begging me to free my tears. But there is nothing left. I am cold and empty. I live only to feel some-
one’s pain, to bring it into me and bury it with all the tears I carry and cannot cry.

“And this more than any word I could ever speak I pray thee know, My precious love, in all the

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