I think I am beginning to understand the tales of impossible tasks. The ones where a true love must be rescued from somewhere east of the sun and west of the moon. Or where the hero must pluck a jewel from the crown of a godlike king to prove their love.
“What fantastically over-the-top tales,” we say, until the day we find ourselves willing to give anything for an impossible task with a shred of hope.
The truth is that briars surrounding castles are easier to chop through than the binding contracts of the mundane world. Curses and spells are easier to break than the stability of an established life.
What I wouldn’t give for some seemingly nonsensical instructions to follow:
I will make a dress each of sun, moon, and stars.
I will fetch water with a sieve.
I will count the grains of sand on a beach.
I would take up any one of these unlikely tasks if it meant I could have you.
It would at least be a sign of my conviction since I cannot promise happily ever after. I have no guarantees to offer, no magic beans to trade for the life you have now. I could weave us a dream of a thatched cottage where we grow old together, but it is no more certain than the promise of gold spun from straw. I could be offering you a raging fire instead of a hearthstone. A rainstorm rather than a sip from a chalice.
I retreat into this land of myth to try to find sense, because if nothing else, stories understand my feelings. Once upon a time is deep time, the time of melting glaciers that can sweep the landscape overnight–the way your words swept away my walls. Stories understand what can be forged in the molten heart of a mountain. They understand love to be as deep as the caverns of trolls, as persistent as the north wind.
But the stories of valiant rescues and quests fulfilled against all odds cannot be my stories right now. In those stories the love is already pledged. In those stories, I could don my armor and slay anything between us.
You live in another story where I cannot claim your love. Like the voiceless mermaid, my only choice will be to melt away into the foam of the tide. There I will ride the waves, taking the action of inaction, and surrender to what may come. Maybe one day you will find me and gather me up in your arms. Or maybe I will find my way to another shore. It feels too passive to me and nothing like the tempest I wish to stir, but I suppose, in this way, it is my impossible task.