My Flawed Perfection

This is a description I wrote about someone who is...well you'll see. Extremely amazing.

I’d never met someone who was such a walking paradox. Maybe that was why he was so intriguing. Maybe that’s why I could never get away. Despite all my attempts to run in the other direction, I could only find my way back to him. He’s strong. Very, very strong. And yet not too strong. There are no absolutes that can describe him, and that’s why the English language fails so miserably. Humans are creatures of absolutes, despite our attempts to deny such a fact. We want to label water as “hot” or “cold”. That is the way it has always been. There are those people who say there are no absolutes at all. They call all water “lukewarm”. I tried that with him too. Yet not even that can describe him. He is not one or the other or halfway in between. He is like water that is both hot and cold. He is selfish and selfless. Fearless and afraid. Perfect and flawed. He is the most dependable person I’ve ever met and yet at the same time never constant or predictable. He is flighty and skittish and jumpy and scared and yet all at once he is strong and stubborn and steady and so terribly brave. Kissing him is like playing with fire and sinking under a cool waterfall all at once. It is hot and dangerous and full of passion and heat and yet relaxing and soft and safe and cool as well. Touching his bare skin is like feeling all that strength pouring into you and yet marveling at the fragility of it all. He can be so strong and quiet that you wonder if he has a single though or feeling running through that mind behind those beautiful eyes. And yet in the next instant you realize that he is perhaps the most emotional creature you have ever met. Stubborn. Moody. He goes from laughing to irritated to distant to affectionate in a moment, but it is so very controlled. He is moody because he wants to be, when he wants to be. He is always longing for someone to understand him and yet he does everything that can be done to keep anyone from doing so.

All his efforts to keep me away only drew me to him more. I was draw to that strength that he radiates. The passion and the fire and the talent. I was never blind to the flaws. I saw the selfishness and the pride and the fear along with the love and the compassion and the courage. And yet I do not endure his failings. I do not weigh the good and the bad. In a way unique to only him, it is all equally attractive. He draws people to him with a kind of sultry allure that never lets you get too close. The closer you get, the more the imperfect and the perfect become one. It is all a turn on. It all becomes impossible to resist.

People like him are dangerous. People that play so many sides in this game of humanity. People who are victims and leaders and lovers and warriors. People who are both protectors and in need of protection. People who are both the villain and the hero.

And yet, I am not afraid. I think that maybe people like him are the most human of all of us. I don’t think he is good or bad or perfect or flawed or strong or weak or hot or cold. I think he is simply alive. I think he cannot be labeled, classified, told what to do or where to go. I think that he is both what the world understands and what it doesn’t. I think he is both what it is afraid of and what it longs for.

He is not my sun or my moon or my ocean or my warmth or my stars. He is not my adventure or my safety. He is somewhere in between and yet all of it at once. He is the mountains and the earth and the ground and yet he is also fire and water and sky and sea and wind.

I cannot explain to you what looking into his eyes is like. That would take an infinity. And even then you would not understand. I cannot tell you what it is like to be held in the arms of someone like him. There aren’t words for that. I would have to create my own. I can’t explain the perfection in the way he walks and laughs and kisses or the emotion in his voice and his hands and his smile.

In fact, I am no closer to explaining him to you than I was when I wrote that very first sentence. I’d never met someone who was such a walking paradox. Why? Humans want to have a reason for everything. An explanation for everything. We think that there is always a way to explain something.

But the reality is that I could write all about him for a million years and you would never get it. I could sing a thousand songs about him and create a thousand illustrations and paint a million pictures and write an infinite number of words. But that’s all they would be. Words. Words don’t explain anything. Words don’t explain anyone.

See, the world hates him because he really just shows us something about everyone and everything that is alive. No one can be explained away. Nothing can be classified beyond existence. We can’t study someone until we know every detail. People aren’t like that. None of them are. People don’t like that understanding. It’s unsettling. Getting to know him is unsettling. It makes you try to categorize him and define him and label him. It makes you want to fit him inside of your box.

            It won’t work.

            He has too much of his Creator in him to be put in a box of human measurements. There is too much of infinity in those eyes. Too much perfection in those hands. Too much of the impossible in that laugh. Too much of Him. Too much love. You can’t categorize love either. But you can get to know it. You can become a part of it. You can mean something to it.

            That’s what he taught me. That’s what I learned from that selfish selflessness. That terrified bravery. That comfortable danger. That flawed perfection. I learned that the only way to get close was to forget the boxes and the charts and the words entirely. To lose yourself in feeling, in thought, in emotion.

            You won’t ever understand US anymore than you’ll understand him. We’ll live in your world together forever and you will always be outside of us, trying to cage us in your little boxes of words. We don’t need your words to communicate. Emotion existed long before English. Passion existed before language.

            Would you like to know what he’s really like? I can’t tell you. I can’t explain it. I can’t put it in a box you’ll understand or translate it in a way you’ll comprehend.

            But I can show you. Disregard my exuberant use of vocabulary and oxymoron and its meaningless attempt to explain the impossible and just listen. Stop reading. Listen. Smell. Hear. Taste. See. Feel.

            He is rain and storm and sky and shadow. He is diamond and gold and granite and stone. He is flame and fire and sunlight and star. He is passion and laughter and midnight escapes to worlds that are more real than this one. He is inside jokes and playful giggles and wild kisses and dreamy eyes. He is real and he is alive and he is mine and he is not.

            He looks like fire and cloud and love. He looks like the dappled sunlight that comes down in emerald green between the leaves of a forest high above you and dances across the ground, playing games with your bare toes. He looks like sound. Like music. Like a symphony and a melody and a harmony and something else. Some kind of music you can only see and not hear. 

            He smells like rain and happiness and safety and green grass. Like sunny days spent running through field and splashing through creeks and falling down breathless under the stars. He smells like a boy playing superheroes and a man fighting wars and everything in between. A musky, wild, free smell. He smells like running. Like laughing too hard and not hard enough. Like being alive.

            He feels like a strong tree and a small glass heart and a galloping horse underneath you. He feels like jumping off a cliff and defying gravity for longer than it is possible. He feels like slipping beneath the waves and laughing at the feeling of being suspended underwater and  then never coming up again and never again needing to breathe. He feels like the sunlight warming your head and the wind whipping through your hair. He feels like what a lovesong sounds like.    

            He tastes like the stars and the forests and the cool mountain air. He tastes like rain and like sunshine and like ice cubes in the summer. He tastes like sinking into the soft safety of your own bed after being gone for weeks. He tastes like dreams, like sleep- in mornings, like crackling fires to warm your toes.

            He sounds like a sunrise and a moonlit slow dance and like your whole body being set aflame. He sounds like that feeling you get when you want something so badly that nothing in the world can stop you. He sounds like a general leading troops to battle and like Romeo singing to his love and like the sun calling after the moon. He sounds like beautiful chaos and like little flames and like a raging inferno. He sounds like what it means to be human.

            Do you understand now? That’s alright. I didn't think you would.
 

Reviews

[Devon Michael]

So passionately written I can't help but like it. Amazing how deeply you're paying attention to this person, and how much there is to see when you look hard. I can't help but envy the boy his audience. If only it was as easy to look in a mirror to find the same exuberance we have when we look so carefully at other people. Great story, don't lose your fire.

[Rachel Grace]

Thank you so much (: He's pretty amazing and your encouraging words mean a lot. And yes, for those wondering, he has read this.

[Justin Xavier Smith]

Trust me when I say... I understand. I understand all too well. There's a person in my life and I could literally write novels about her (hell, I already wrote an entire novel just to deal with my feelings for her) and it would never, ever be enough to explain my feelings. It would never be enough to describe her or encapsulate her or give you even the slightest idea of our very special connection. The one that we share with no one else and neither of us can deny it but neither can we acknowledge it. Not now.
Life is crazy. People are crazy. I loved this piece.

[Coyote Poetry]

A detailed story and description of someone. You allowed the reader to vision someone who who special and filled with life. Good title led me to the good description. I like how you led to the very good ending. I like the story that leave the reader with a question. Thank you for sharing the excellent story.
Coyote

[Ov3R_sKiLl3D]

An beautifully written story really enjoyed reading it ...
keep writing :)

[Isla Rae]

Absolutely gorgeous. Like you said, there are no words. This was perfectly, imperfectly beautiful. :)

[Lavender Soya]

It's beautifully written. I found myself reading intently, the metaphors and other figures of speech were excellently arrayed. Kudos! And I couldn't agree more with the previous review, your work deserves more than words. Have a nice day ahead! :-)

[jonah]

yes, I didn't understand. I really enjoyed all the metaphors and combinations of words you use here, the games with senses. it was all very playful, very genuine, leaving a strange feeling of awe, of explosive amazement. but it was way too strange...extremely exhausting, incomprehensible. that's why I didn't really enjoy the piece itself. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, but this piece struck me with a cold light.

[The StoryTeller]

Wow, that was beautiful... I envy this guy, you paid a lot of attention to him. I love it, "He sounds like what it means to be human." That line, more than anything else, calls my attention. To be human isn't to fit inside a box. It isn't to conform to society's norms. It isn't to be all good, and no bad. It isn't to be perfect. It isn't to be what it wants it to be. In other words: Humanity is what humanity does not want to be, because humanity wants to be what it thinks humanity is, when humanity isn't truly humanity until it is, truly, just humanity. I know that might have been confusing, but that's my thoughts. This is truly beautiful, and I can't put into words what I want to say just as we can't with so many true things. We categorize everything, and I think we always have the words to say to say what we don't want to say. It's when it comes to what's in us, and what we truly want to say, and what we truly believe, and who we truly are, and what we truly feel, and what we truly think: That's when we have no words. We know we're wrong for making society and humanity and the boxes the way they are. But we're too terrified to step out of the limits set by ourselves, by our fear. I have a serious (I already had this, but it's like... wow... now) new found respect for you. I thought I love your other work, and I do, and keep writing that, but I want to see so much more of this. Please. Beautiful. Truly, remarkably, undeniably, imperfectly, perfectly beautiful. Sorry if I lost you in this long comment, I just really felt I needed to tell you all of that.

[Rachel Grace]

Thank you so much :D I really actually like how this piece turned out. So glad you enjoyed it.

[The StoryTeller]

I didn't just enjoy it, I loved it. I'm actually kind of inspired to write something now... maybe not similar, but with that same point. I've been trying recently to say that in my own writing, that point, and I just haven't been able to. You kind of helped push me along. Anyways, this is great. :)

[Jon Mahaffie]

I don't write this type of prose poetry myself, and I kind of envy those who can. Don't take these feelings for granted (it seems like you're definitely not) now, they're much harder to channel when you're older. He sounds like a very interesting guy. Just make sure to keep your finger up to feel the direction of the wind.

[Rachel Grace]

Thank you :)

[Pandora E.]

I wish I could form some coherent phrase to exasperate my love for this but I am in awe. This deserves so much more than words.