“Satin” Is A Night Word

By Cindy Rae

For Valentine's Day, 2016

**

Words appearing in blue are song lyrics to “Nights in White Satin,” by the Moody Blues.

Nights in white satin…

It is you, Catherine, it is you, and the song keeps echoing in my mind but all I can see is you, feel is you.

The night wraps around us both, but white satin wraps around you.

Softer than skin. Softer than moonlight. And I stayed on your balcony, someplace I should never have been, and then the old song followed me

home; strains of it coming from some distant radio across the park.

It wove itself inside of me, and I can't stop hearing it, and I can't stop thinking of you, as I do.

Your patterned satin robe was dark and gold. Yet my mind wraps you in the purest white, and I dare to yet be a part of you, even after I thought I could never.

Never reaching the end

How I wished this night would never end! How I wished that as I was

sitting there, on that narrow strip of even stone, listening to you read!

And even as I wished it, it all ended. The story ended, the book ended, the last chapter ended, and the night ended. The threat of the rising sun chased me down, as it always, always does. And as it ever shall.

And yet...

It was not "me" the dawn chased down, Catherine. The Vincent who came to you on your balcony was not the same as the Vincent who left

it.

I am someone else, now, someone new. I was one person at the

beginning of the night, and a different one at the end of it. The Vincent who set the book on your stones, thinking to creep away unseen, doesn't exist anymore.

And I do not know how to find him, nor even think that I should look.

I barely know my new self.

But I do know that “satin” is a night word.

Letters I've written,

And I write it here, in this journal and on these pages.

Never meaning to send

And I know I will never send this to you, never tell you of all this night meant to me, for how can you know? How can you know, when I didn't

know myself, Catherine? How can anyone know what this is, who has never felt it, and how can anyone feel this and still... breathe the same way?

I am changed. I am changed. I am changed, and I will never be who I

was, again. Mine was a different life, before yesterday. Before you.

Beauty I've always missed, with these eyes before

I saw you before you saw me, that night you were hurt in the park. And then I saw you in an entirely different way, inside a bond I cannot

control, nor even fully understand. And that bond linked me to you, and I felt what you felt.

There is such beauty in you, Catherine. Such beauty. Such courage. A kind of beauty I would have missed, but for our bond.

Did you know how brave you were the day you began to change your

life? Did you know how courageous that was, Catherine, how beautiful

it was, to feel that inside of you? To feel you find your strength and begin to use it?

Stare at your sun too long, and you may feel a piece of what I felt. Just a piece. The brightness will blind you and leave you in tears. The

luminous shine will humble you and leave you awestruck. Light struck.

And I felt it. I felt it all. I feel it, still.

I can so seldom see the sunlight. But oh, how I can feel it, inside of you!

It feels like your strength. It feels like something both incandescent and gorgeously smooth. Not rough, not coarse. Something bright, and

gleaming and sleek. White satin. White satin, shimmering in the

moonlight, yet shining with the strength of a sun. Did you know that

strength feels like sunlight, Catherine? I didn’t. But I do now. Thank you for that. Thank you for the gift of it.

Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore.

I can't, I can't, I can't say what the truth is, and I've tried.

When you are as I am, you can tell yourself so many things, so many

things to help you through the length of your days. But you must never, never tell yourself a lie, even if many of the truths are hard. And mine were indeed hard, my Catherine, and my aloneness was the hardest truth of all.

But that hard truth was mine to claim, even amid my family and my

friends. It was mine, and I had to hold it as the relentless truth that it was, knowing I dared not self-deceive. My aloneness was a sorrow I

would try to bear with all the grace I could, as I lived with it, and a sorrow I would die with, one day. It was a blunt truth, and an

unforgiving one.

I had no hope for any other reality to break the will of that one, harsh truth which overshadowed my days. I had no hope, Catherine. Not for

any of this, and certainly not for ever finding you.

No hope. Not at my age.

If I ever had any, it ran out long ago, and I do not recall that I ever had much.

I would always be alone, inside my heart. That would be the hard truth which would always be mine to own. I would remain close in

friendships, yet barren in love. One, of an eternally unmatched set. Half of an unfinished whole. An unmated sock. An unpaired glove. Always.

It was the truth. It was my truth, and I held it as such.

And now a night has passed to morning and I know my truth is as

changed as I am. And I no longer know quite what my truths are, or

where they might be. Just what the truth is, I cannot say. Not anymore.

Not now.

I only know that I was beside you on your high terrace, and you wanted me there with you. The old pages were illuminated by both the light

from the doorway and the light from the moon. You cradled the cover

of my book as I sat across from you, and as the light shined on the pages you read, my heart was too loud in my chest to hear the words,

sometimes.

And yet, I swear I heard every one of them.

It is as if everything good in the world is also true, Catherine, and as I sit here, that knowledge fills me, as you fill me.

And I love you,

And the dangerous words are there, they are there, and I dare not think them, yet I do. I dare, Catherine, I dare. And in that single act of defiance, of bravery, of foolishness, there it is. You are brave. And I am brave, with you.

I am shattered.

Shattered and scattered.

Broken... and re-made.

How is this possible? And yet, it is so. And I know it is love that has done this.

Yes, I love you. Oh, how I love you,

And it can never be, we can never be, and yet it is, and we are. I should never dare, and yet I do, and I didn't know, I didn't know, Catherine, that it could be me. That it could be me that love stopped for. I didn't know.

I didn't hope. I didn't dare.

And now I do. I know. I hope. I dare. All of it.

Perhaps for no other reason than I cannot help myself.

I am different, now, and I am changed. I am a thing re-formed and re-

made, and I am in love with you.

In love with you.

And even if it comes to nothing, even if it comes to heartbreak, as

everything tells me it may, or even must, even if you cannot return it in kind, I know this love is true, and I feel it, I feel it for the first time in my adult life.

Whatever it is that I am, I know this now, and it is a thing I have never known. I do not simply “feel this love.” I am in love. Deeply, and desperately, and fully. In love. With you.

The satin song washes over me, old, and plaintive and real, and I had to write it all down even as the new day's sun clears the tree line in the

park. Even as you begin to step into the day that awaits you, I had to write of it, I had to.

I don't want to sleep.

I don't want to sleep, Catherine, because this day is too beautiful and my heart is too full, and I don't want it to stop, don't want it to end, don't want a dream of anything that is not you, to interrupt it.

I used to sleep to escape my day, and hope for a good dream. Now I

don't want just to sleep, ever again.

My reality is too sublime, as I write here, waking.

Gazing at people,

How can anyone be anything, do anything? How? How can they simply... walk through the day as if it was unchanged? How do they do it, Catherine? How? I ask the question because as I see the people, I know I have no answer. And yet I can't help but repeat the questions in my head. The world has changed, all of it. How can anyone be as they have been, with the universe so... altered? Does no one understand that last night, a miracle occurred? That nothing will ever be the same

again?

The poets tried to tell me of love and they all told it wrong, said it wrong, said it less, so much less than it is. I am shattered. And I am re-made. I do not recognize this Vincent, except that I know him so well. I am holding a love in my heart as if it were a book in my hand. And it's mine, this feeling of love. Mine to hold as a precious secret, or mine to share with you, and I thought never to have it. Never, my love.

Some hand in hand

Did you ever see a couple walking with their hands entwined,

Catherine? Old or young, did you ever see it? Even as it turned your heart tenderly toward them, did it ever make you feel wistful, make you feel sad, because that gift was not yours, as well?

Envy is a poison I dare not feel, and yet...

Such was my burden, my lot, and my place, and I tried to accept that with dignity, Catherine. I tried to have only joy for them, even as I had no hope for myself. I tried not to hope. I did. For years. Because I knew whatever this gift is that love was, it would not reach for me, it would not hold out its hand to me. Not to me.

But you did. You took my hands in yours on your balcony, and asked

me to stay. You tugged on these hands, and dared to defy the dawn, and told me there was still time.

And suddenly there was, Catherine, there was all the time in the world.

There were eternities between our two heartbeats, and I knew I shouldn't stay, that I never meant to stay, and yet there I was, and I was staying, and you were reading to me in your soft, sheltering voice and it was a dream I'd never dared to have, and it was happening to me.

It was happening to me.

Can you know what you gave me when you asked me to stay? Can you

know you gave me a dream I didn't dare have?

Just what I'm going through, they can't understand,

And I know they can't, for how can they when I can't? I can't

understand, Catherine, because I thought that I was not made for this

kind of night, that this soft, changed day would never come for me, and I believed that my solitary, lonely truth would be the only kind I could claim. I believed it, I did.

I thought love would not stop for me. Not this kind of love. Never this kind, this heart-filling, soul-making kind.

Some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend

Father has worried for me, and I can tell that he holds a dark splinter of pain near his heart. I do not know why he fears as he does, but I know that he loves me. I know that he fears I will be shattered.

I cannot tell him that the shattering has already happened and that the shattering was the least of it. It was the re-birth of who I was, of all I might yet become (Oh, what possibilities shine there!) that made this

night what it was.

Just what you want to be you will be in the end

Do I even know what that is? It is all so new, that I swear I do not know the difference yet, between a hope, a wish, a dream, a promise and a

prayer. Is there one? Does it matter, if there are any? Does it matter if there are none? If one comes true for me, are they all now true, all now mine?

That seems impossible, yet what does “impossible” mean after the night I have just spent?

What am I now, Catherine? I have not known the answer to that

question, ever. I did not know it yesterday, when I dared to think I

should leave a book on your balcony. How can I know it now, when so

much has happened? I am changed. From what I do not know, to what I

cannot tell. I only know that I hold a different truth and that it is a good truth, a brave truth: I love you.

I love you. And as this is a beginning and not an end, perhaps it is all right that I do not know what it is I want to be, yet. This new truth shines, in my heart. Is there a path that leads us on? Is there a place for me Above, now, anywhere but by your side? I’m not sure that there is.

I’m not sure I want there to be.

As clarity comes, there are still mysteries aplenty. What is it we want?

What is it we can have? What is it we can become? Do we even know?

Can we even know?

Are those questions that even have answers? Are they riddles? Or

something more like equations? But how can it be any of those, when

the only thing I know is that my truth has changed? How does one solve an equation when the numbers change in the middle of the problem?

How can the riddle have an answer when the question is no longer the

same as it ever was?

Your heart draws on its strength like raising water from a well, and I am there, with you. In all pain, in all bliss, I am there, Catherine. A bond stronger than friendship of even love ties us with threads that are both gossamer and steel. What will we be in the end, Catherine? What will I be, now that I am no longer alone, in this world, now that I have a love?

Will the promise of it fulfill me? Will the heartbreak of it shatter me, yet again? Do I even care if it does, right now?

No.

For the first time in my life, I am in love. And nothing will ever be the same again, as it never can be. My brain feels like it is on fire with all the possibilities that now present themselves before me. They sparkle like scattered stars across an indigo night. My possibilities expand like a young galaxy, spiraling outward, and I am at their center, awestruck by the view.

Let me bring you beauty, Catherine. The loveliest words ever penned,

let me bring them to you, let me read them to you, let me feel your heart turn toward them as it turns toward me. Let me do these things. Let me sit like a beggar at a banquet, and yet enrich the table between us. Let me bring you words to draw your heart to mine, as I dream of things I'd never thought to dream of, before.

Of nights in white satin. And reaching an end I cannot see, and of being something I can scarcely now imagine, when I get there.

Whatever I become, my beautiful, beautiful Catherine, I only know I

want you there with me.

To have that is to have all. Because I love you.

Yes I love you.

Oh, how I love you.

How I love you. How I will always love you. You have captured my

heart.

You will change my life, forever.

I cannot bless you enough for that, and as the old song fades to nothing, I cannot help but carry the message of it, still.

Whatever happens. Whatever comes.

I love you.

--fin--

Wherever you are when you become swept away by the words of a love song, I wish you love. ~ Cindy

Nights in white satin

Never reaching the end

Letters I've written

Never meaning to send

Beauty I've always missed

With these eyes before

Just what the truth is

I can't say any more

'Cause I love you

Yes I love you

Oh how I love you

Gazing at people some hand in hand

Just what I'm going through they can't understand

Some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend

Just what you want to be you will be in the end

And I love you

Yes I love you

Oh how I love you

Oh how I love you

Nights in white satin

Never reaching the end

Letters I've written

Never meaning to send

Beauty I've always missed

With these eyes before

Just what the truth is

I can't say any more

'Cause I love you

Yes I love you

Oh how I love you

Oh how I love you

'Cause I love you

Yes I love you

Oh how I love you

Oh how I love you

Songwriters: JUSTIN HAYWARD