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The Walls of Jericho
By Moress Williams, Jr.
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Her name is Jericho and aside from blood kin, she is perhaps the most significant female in my life at this moment. She is everything that is me and everything that is not me and everything that is.
How can this be, you ask? How
can she be everything I am and then also am not?
It’s actually quite simple, you are.
For she and I are totally different on the outer surface,
however, if you were to peel away the layers of our psyche, you would
see just how similar we are.
Its funny that I should mention layers when describing us.
I suppose a better term would be walls.
We have both erected walls to shield us from life’s harsh
realities that we have had to face over the years.
Where I have enclosed myself in a tomb of brooding cynicism and
despair, she has erected a grand castle of relishful joy and humorous
wit. Though our walls are
so startlingly different, we have managed to forge a friendship of the
deepest and most heartfelt bonds.
She and I love one another.
Note that I did not state “in love”, for the love we shared
transcends the normal trappings of ordinary romanticism and courtship.
Besides to be in love and to actually love someone are two
totally disparate things. Perhaps
I shall explain. When you
are in love with someone, you are attracted to some amorously idealized
aspect of said person. If
and when that aspect is proven or found to be fallacious, then you are
left crushed by the overbearing weight of reality.
Now to love someone is when you see them as they are. With all of their faults and idiosyncrasies,
yet you love them nonetheless.
Even if circumstances occur which prompts one of you to leave the
other, that initial feeling of love is still there.
It is that letter love that Jericho and I share.
I love her more than any woman I have ever met or will probably
come across (my future wife will be loved only a slight smidgen more).
It seems like only yesterday when I first met her. We were at a summer workshop for some high school function
that I have since forgotten.
Though what transpired there has been etched in my memory for all
time.
At first glance, I did not recognize her true beauty for hers is
a somewhat subtle beauty that grows on you.
Mind you that the raging hormones of a sixteen year old male hold
little patience for attraction to grow.
Hence, for two weeks, I hardly ever took notice of Jericho. Speaking only occasionally, immersing ourselves in
superficial small talk over some insignificant matter of little or no
importance.
At that time my attention was focused on Lilah.
Ah Lilah, beautiful Lilah. She
was the type of woman who made you believe in the celestial heavenly
host, for undoubtedly she was one of them spending a tenure on our
mortal plain. Lilah was
eighteen, which made her only two year my senior.
Though at sixteen, two years might as well have been twenty.
Lilah’s hair was the color of golden autumn grass shimmering in
a radiant fall sunrise. Her
skin was a smooth hue of chestnut brown accentuated by her dimples.
Her dimples were like two chocolate valleys connected by a
sparkling, white, milky
river that was her smile. Then
there were her eyes. I
can never forget those eyes. They
were the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen
at that time. They
were an enchanting shade of hazel brown which projected a spell which
rendered me utterly mesmerized and speechless.
Surprisingly enough, my attraction to Lilah was not one-sided. For some reason or another she found herself to be also
attracted to me. She once
told me that it was because I showed this gentle honesty that she could
just not ignore.
Whatever the case, things between us were just not meant to be.
She want and expected something from me, that in my youthful
heart I was more than ready. Though it was my oftentimes burden of a mature mind
which caused me to deny her carnal request.
Taryn and I have written one another once or twice over the
years, but the last I heard she was married with children.
Having long since forgotten whatever it was we had at that
summer.
Which brings me back to the whole point of this narrative: Jericho. On the
last day of the workshop, there was an awards ceremony in which an award
was given for citizenship. One
for a male and another for a female.
By now you have surmised that the recipients of said awards were
none other than Jericho and myself.
After accepting our awards, we found ourselves seated side by
side for the duration of the ceremony.
It was at this time that I really took note of Jericho.
Her
eyes did not share the same sparkle as Lilah’s. No, hers showed a slight glimmer in the back of her
pupils, that could only be seen when looked at very closely and deeply.
The glimmer was reminiscent of moonlight reflected in the pool of
a deep dark well. Looking
into them, I saw that the glimmer in her eyes were just as much a
reflection of mine own.
They say that the eyes are windows to the soul.
Hers were more like mirrors which reflected a soul like mine.
Confused and misunderstood by others.
To which it remains so to this day.
After our initial meeting that summer, she and I communicated off
and on throughout the remainder of our high school years.
Occasionally seeing one another at least twice a year during some
other high school function or the other.
It was not until college that our friendship was forged in
earnest. It was
toward the end of my senior year in high school when I received a letter
from Jericho stating that she would be attending a school, which
unbeknownst to her at the time, would be across town from the one I
would be attending.
We came together that fall and spent nearly every free moment
with one another. We served
as a wall for one another. There
for support when crises arose and for shelter against the blanketing
storms of insecurity and bad relationships that blanketed us.
We were as close as a man and woman could be without being
married. However, then came
that one hot and humid August night on which we transgressed a line that
should have been strictly off limits.
Perhaps, the most surprising thing is that we had done it
intentionally. Though we
had never sat down and outright planned it, we had often discussed the
fact that if it did occur we could and would just go along without
anything in our friendship changing.
We had seen and heard how the monster that is sex had wrecked
havoc amongst the friendships of others we knew.
In our impetuously youthful arrogance, we thought ourselves above
such human frailties and faults. How
much more foolish could we have been?
The night began just the same as any other night we spent amidst
one another’s company. We
had decided to just “hang out” in her dorm room when she came up
with the idea to view films of a somewhat carnal nature.
While watching the films we were stimulated as our hands and
mouths took one sentience of their own, seeking out the intimate nether
regions of one another’s bodies.
No actual penetration occurred that night, but the two of us were
driven by a burning passion and imagination which left us both fulfilled
once the rapture had passed.
Suffice it to say, that was the last time I ever saw her.
Weeks later, I would receive a letter from Jericho, which stated,
and I quote: “We were
never as close as you made us out to be”.
This I knew to be a lie, because of how at other times she had
gone on and on about how fortunate she was to have me in her life.
What she was saying now was part of some warped defense mechanism
which arose whenever she felt herself becoming too close to someone or
something.
That was not all she wrote.
She went on to say that what transpired that night was
“sinfully” wrong. It
was that word sinfully that struck me the hardest.
I could not and do not believe that what happened that night was
in anyway wrong. If
anything, it was simply that right thing at the wrong time.
However, “sinful”, I strongly beg to differ.
This all happened two years ago.
During those years my life has had a void
that I have tried to fill with others, though dismally failed.
That’s not to say that I have no friends.
Just none that I care as much about as I cared for her.
I spent the better part of a year trying to cope with the loss of
Jericho from my life. However,
as each day passed, I thought of her less and less frequently.
Though she would never be forgotten.
For I realized that when two people share a bond such as she and
I, a few years of excommunication is small penance for a major
misunderstanding. So
I was comforted with the hope that she would someday find her way back
into my life.
It seems that now my faith and hope has paid off.
I received a letter from Jericho
saying that she really needs to see me.
I am both ecstatic and petrified, for I know not what reason she
could have to open the lines of communication between us once again.
So now it seems my course is set.
I must and will do everything in my power to bring down the walls
of confusion and regret that separate our two souls.
Like the biblical trumpets that brought down the walls of the
city for which she is named, I will use the power of sound.
The sound of my voice reinforcing the need to be in her presence;
the sound of my heart crying our its love for her;
the sound of my soul wailing to once more be intertwined with
hers.
However, amidst the previous ramblings and recollections of this
narrative, I find myself puzzled. Am
I trying to bring down the walls of Jericho, or more practically and
finally the walls of mine own.
THE
END
