"Memories of a distant night." That was the first line, and for all these nights, it had been the only lines. He sat there with the weight of all the nights since that "distant night" in his heart, and until he finished the lyrics to this song he would continue to accumulate more weights in that heart of his.
He hasn't come up with a title yet. His musician partner has given him some idea of what the waltz would sound like, but the details of the song will depend on his lyrics. One of the most famous orchestras is waiting for their work to be done. But that wasn't the problem, that pressure meant little to him these nights. He just sat there, looking at the first line and thought about that night. That was the first night he spent alone, alone without her, in what seemed like a lifetime already. He should have been happy that night because later that week he would be joining the love of his life. But that night his heart was heavy with guilt, and somehow, somewhere under that staggering weight of guilt in his heart he knew he would suffer loneliness because of leaving her. He thought that was how guilt worked, to make you see a future that was catastrophic precisely because of your actions.
But through most of these years he had lived in that premonition in his heart. He had lived mostly in bitter solitude in which he was hurt and he had hurt others. And in his most dejected states he would recall, as he had been this week trying to come up with the lyrics, the moments they had spent together, but strangely, more often, he recalled the moment they were breaking apart, the moment in the end when he bid his final farewell to her.
He gave out a sigh and stood up. It was too quiet in his little apartment, so he opened the window and let the breeze and the noise of the city come in. It was a full moon, and the silver disk shone shamelessly just high enough above the horizon that it wasn't discolored by any redness. He remembered that after he closed the door behind her apartment, and the closed the door of the apartment building, he looked up and saw that the lights to her apartment had been turned off already. Then he noticed the same silver disk above. That white moon, their common companion for so long but now he would share it alone. Somehow he wasn't in anyway animated to share that with the person he was in love with now. Somehow the moon was a culprit, the culprit that constantly brought him back these memories he had wanted to erase.
He turned around and paced around that piece paper with the singular line. And little by little, he remembered what she said to him before he could not bear the guilt and left. She wanted him to forget her and disappear forever. And holding all her tears back she told him that having given him her heart and soul she had only now discovered that it was all an illusion. That he could just disappear like this could mean nothing more than that everything was just an illusion. Watching the moon outside her apartment building he imagined telling her what he was too much of a coward to tell her in person just a few minutes ago, that he felt her pain, that he was leaving her because he had found a new love, and that he had a heart that felt the pain of this good bye. But he was too proud; in front of her weeping and speaking barely audibly to him, he seemed just so cold and insensitive. Perhaps that's the guilt. Not so much that he had left someone he no longer loved but who deserved his love, but rather, he thought, now staring at the one-line paper, that he had feelings, that he wasn't a stone, that he was wounded by the words she said.
But even after that moment he didn't talk to her, or contact her, to tell her any of this. And now he was to write a song about it. No one asked him to write about this episode in his life, but he somehow wanted to, inspired to.
And so he sat down in front of the piece of paper, and wrote, "This is how you reproached me, without knowing, that I felt your pain in my heart."
And at that moment, after striking the period in his typewriter, he put his head on his forearms and started crying.
