This is a tragedy. This is a portrait of an emotional cripple, a failure, a man whose fundamental relational faculties are broken. This is also a ghost story.
He hoped that someday she would understand. He hoped that she would be able to decipher the codes that he laid out for her in his words, in his actions, in the tilt of his head as he looked at her, in the light that reflected from her eyes to his and back again. He saw heaven in those eyes, but he was broken. He could not use the tools of language to communicate his vision, so he relied on unwritten symbols, on the play of the light, on the labyrinthine illusions of movement and time. He could not trust language; it had betrayed him too often for him to entrust it with this most precious responsibility. But this mistrust had crippled him, leaving him unable to make her see how he felt. He could not expect her to acquiesce to his ultimately impaired mode of communication, and yet language was even more impaired. It would fail him, he would fail it, and the words he was trying to say would be erased forever, replaced by other words, words that would sound the same but would somehow fail to conjure the appropriate meaning to her.
Indeed, his words would fail in the same way that these words are failing. They are failing to convey urgency, they are failing to communicate the deep feelings of regret and loss that he felt at this infirmity of communication, this inability to simply come forth and speak. Simply put, it was a tragedy to him, just as it should be a tragedy to you. This man is lonely and lost, unable to trust even the words that fill his thoughts, let alone the words he tries to speak. He has no center, no confidence, no security in himself or his ability to communicate meaning, to mean anything to others. He often wonders if anyone is even aware of his presence as more than an impotent spectral breath, haunting the edges of perception.
