Delivery
snafu posted at 07:27 PM on May 6, 2006.
Once i gave a bouquet of tulips for a pretty girl who lived in a nearby dorm to my school. She opened the door in short shorts that looked as if it has seen better days and a big, loose white t-shirt that looked like it really had seen better days. It had a print of a teddy bear holding a mug of coffee with the words, 'This cup is bear-y hot' on it. I mumbled a few words and she took the flowers i held in my hand like she was going to eat it. I've given a lot of flowers in my young life and it's the first time that somebody actually looked hungry for a few buds. I mean, flowers are pretty and all, but it's not like it'll taste good boiled and served with bagoong alamang. After she got the bundle, she smiled sweetly, eyeing my clothes--a red Dashboard Confessional shirt, black denims and Islander slippers--then thanked me in a way that made me think that even though it's La Nina in the summer and people are hiding inside airconditioned rooms the way lizards scurry under big rocks to cool themselves, only I, with my bundle of over priced leaves in sinamay wrapping, have made her day.
I am Jon and i deliver flowers.
The other day, i came to my Kasaysayan 1 class thirty minutes late, to deliver three roses to an middle aged Maths professor in the campus. The roses were from her daughter, a belated happy birthday sort of thing. I think people looked at me weird in the math department's faculty room. Here i was, a sophomore student, skinny as hell, with red roses for a professor. They must have thought i was failing a subject and was trying, unsuccessfully to bribe my way into a 3.0. Three roses for a grade of three. Well, i would say that that was a reasonable deal but judging from the look on Mrs. Santos' face, it was clear that the belated part of the belated happy birthday sort of thing was unwelcome. She took the package from me, slammed it into her desk full of blue books and other papers. Great choice of a paperweight, i think.
I used to work part time as a barista in the coffee shop in the more trendy part of the neighborhood. The pay was good, the shop was cool, but it became too hectic for me so i bowed out of it, threw the towel, so to speak. Now, i kinda miss the music and the coffee there, but when i think of the other things, i think i still made the right decision. Anyway, I'm taking up Art Studies and i work part time. So far, i'm liking this flower delivery stint. Less pay, but the work is more..uh..rewarding. Plus i get to ride my bike around the place.
I've had varied responses from people since i started being the bearer of floral messages. Some girls, you really feel their joy receiving them. It's like all of a sudden, they're celebrating their birthdays (although some of them are) and you're the clown who's bringing the laughs to the party. There was a memorable girl who actually kissed me because she was so happy. It was just on the cheek but for a split second, i felt like i was her boyfriend. I know it's weird but it just happens. One minute you're standing in front of their doors feeling anxious or hungry (which happens more than the former), then they open the door and it's entirely different.
There's this one girl who lived in one of the villages around campus for whom i brought three dozen roses, which, i would later learn was from a suitor, who actually remembered me from my days making expensive coffee. I stood in front of their huge white gate all sweaty because it was a really stifling day and i had to ride my bike a million kilometers to their house and actually getting lost once before i finally found the address. These darn houses in these posh villages are so far apart! Ringing the doorbell, their dogs started making a row over who was to sink his teeth in my leg first and i stepped back on instinct until somebody opened the gate. The flowers were real heavy and it was still middle of the desert hot so i was getting impatient for somebody to finally relieve me of my burden. She opened the gate and peeked outside and when she noticed me, she beckoned me with a slight wave of the hand.
I said, "Delivery for Sarah" then she said, "That's me!" so i pushed her the clipboard i always carried for receiving and i said, "Right there." She took the pen i kept attached to the clipboard by a piece of yarn taped to the end and put down her signature. Or at least, tried to. My pen wasn't working.
"Sorry," i fidgeted for an extra pen but i didn't find any.
"Is everything okay?" she asked. I took my bag from which i extracted a fistful of pens. She was trying not to laugh by now, i could see her short hair, the style i always associated with athletic girls, shaking a little. It was then that i first noticed that she bit her lips, a detail that i would find endearing as i began to spend time with her.
"Yeah, uh...could you just wait a minute?" I hastily tried each of the pens to find a working one.
"I'm really sorry." She began to sniff at the roses and toyed with the petals. By the time she was reading the note, i exhausted my supply of pens and not a single one was working.
"Uh..." i stammered.
"You need a pen?" Her right eyebrow was raised playfully. "Ha ha! I'll be right back." She was gone and i was left standing in the heat with dozens of roses slowly wilting in the sun and pens without ink, not really minding anything, waiting for the white gate to open for the second time.
Delivering flowers isn't a tough job, really. Ma'am Ana is nice to me and she sometimes puts out snacks for me when i study in her shop. I work at the shop during my vacant hours. Sometimes in the mornings and every afternoon. Ma'am usually just writes down the addresses on a sheet of paper she puts in the shop's corkboard and underneath it is the big container for the already arranged flowers that needs to be delivered. I load them in my bike's carrier and i make my round. After that i just do my school stuff in the shop until a call comes in, which is fairly constant actually. Aside from the usual occasions, Valentines and the like, people actually give flowers every day of the week. They give flowers for no reason at all.
I delivered more flowers to Sarah's doorstep after the first one. She turned out to be quite popular and a lot of suitors would give her stuff or ask her out. There were days when i saw her many times in a single day. On a particular day, i delivered two bouquets of tulips, three of stargazers, and three of roses. It was Sarah's birthday.
She told me this on my last delivery to her house. I asked her why the sudden flood of flowers and she said nonchalantly, like it was just a normal thing, "It's my birthday today." That's nice i said. Happy birthday. Sign over here.
"You're nice Jon." she said. I smiled and put the clipboard back to my carrier. Then i did something that i wouldn't have done normally. Something that i wouldn't even think of doing. I said, "Wait a minute." I took my favorite book, a leather bound Peter Pan book and i handed it over to her. "Here, happy birthday." she looked stunned, i think. She certainly didn't expect it.
"I'm only lending it to you so don't look so pleased. Ha ha!" I don't know what's come over me. What was i doing?
"Uh..thanks. Thanks a lot." she said. "I promise to take good care of it."
She didn't bite her lip a single time the tiem i was there. She was using it for smiling.
For sometime, i didn't deliver any flowers to Sarah's house. I delivered to all my usual places though. Everything was the same except Sarah's house wasn't on my round. I began to think that she might have found someone who brought her flowers to her directly. I imagined that she'll look like the girl who kissed me once on the cheek out of joy only this time, it won't be a delivery boy she'll be kissing. Or maybe she'll be like the girl who looked like she ate flowers. Or worse, she might have moved to another house, far away. So i thought, maybe i'll get back my book and maybe catch up on her. After all, even if we weren't really friends, we kind of exchanged conversations once in a while, and i think we were a notch higher than just mere acquaintances.
I went to her house, bringing a bouquet of my own--a mix of all the flowers in the shop. Actually, Ma'am Ana arranged one of each kind and said that i give it to her, just for the heck of it. Besides, she said, no one has ever thought of buying a bunch with everything on it. I rode fast and I got there just as the sun was about to set. I finished my rounds first of course, business first before anything else. Knocking on their gate, i had the same feeling that i felt with every door, that mixture of anxiety and nervousness. I was hungry kind of, but it was the kind of hunger that's easy to ignore.
She opened the gate and beckoned at me again, the way she did the first time I went here.
"What're you doing here? Another delivery?"
"Well, kind of. Here." I handed her my bouquet.
"This is nice...it's uh..unique." She looked it over then said, "Where's the note?"
"None. No note this time." I felt like I just biked my way three times around Quezon City. "It's from me."
My remark was met with silence so I decided to just go on with it.
"I haven't seen you in a while so I figured you're not getting enough of your usual floral dose." Floral dose? What the hell am I saying?
She was still silent so I said, "Some sign of life would be great just about now...ha ha..."
Looking down, she suddenly looked at me. There was a thin smile forming at the corners of her mouth. Or was it a frown? In front of their house, standing in front of their gate, with the young night enveloping us and the few stars visible were slowly making their presence known, she started to speak:
"The first time I saw you in the coffee shop, I thought you were cute. Now I know you are. You're also nice, sensitive, you're serious about what you do. I appreciate that. When you left there, I thought that I wouldn't see you again. But then you started to deliver my flowers." She paused. Laughed a little. "You think i'm weird don't you? ha ha! Well, I guess I am."
"You don't have to say anything else." I walked over to her and took her hand in mine. We looked at each other and I guess, i could only say that, working with flowers as long as I have, it was just in that moment that i understood it at all, the way some moments change everything. I understood everything about the delicate petals, the fragrant smell, the colorful wrappings and why, when dealing with abstract feelings and such, flowers fill in where words fail. Words didn't fail us this time though, because soon after, I heard what must be the funniest, most hopeful words i've heard in quite a while.
"I'm more of a book person, actually." Sarah said as she leaned closer to me.
I am Jon and I love delivering flowers.
A Hint of Sadness
snafu posted at 05:48 PM on September 18, 2005.
A Hint of Sadness
She says she’s starting a project and that
I would take no part of it. I would be just a shadow. I would be someone
unknown. I said that I was fine with it although deep inside, I knew all along
that I was jealous of her paintbrushes. I was jealous of her writings. She did
them all with the air of a child playing with her favorite doll—comfortable and
without hesitation. I often wondered how someone so ordinary could be so
talented. Once, I asked her this question and she just smirked at me. ‘And what
is it to you?’ she said. I never asked her again.
One day, she surprised me with a crayon sketch of myself. It was done in long
playful strokes and all the colors were there, mixing and folding into one
another into a bizarre rainbow of my face, looking straight into some distant
point, my almond eyes squinting ever so slightly along with my bushy eyebrows.
In the picture, I was serious and yet betraying a certain mischievous character
that she concluded must be my core personality. In honor of this assertion, she
drew my face into a page of coupon bond, frayed at the edges, and, if someone
looked closely, had the markings of another picture, before being erased.
“You could’ve used a fresh sheet of paper, you know?” was all I could say.
She called me up
just last week, ‘to check up on things.’ She asked all the trivial questions
people use to be updated on someone’s life at an exact moment. How are you?
How’s your job? What’s new? Did I disturb you by calling? Do you still remember
me? I was not in the mood for talking but I could not bear to give her the cold
shoulder. After all, she was the one who called, and well I, I had a feeling
about her voice from the moment she said hello. I’m fine, I said. My second
book will be published in a month. I now wear a goatee, and no, you did not
disturb me by calling. In fact, I had been waiting for the time when my phone
rang and it was her on the other line, wanting reminiscing about old times and
hoping things could’ve worked out right, that you and me might possibly be on a
beach, talking about literature while sipping some strong beer. No, you didn’t
disturb was all I could say, to tell the truth.
She said that she was in a sentimental mood over the past week and well, even
though I must be busy with my book being published and all (Really? That’s
great! I’m going to buy one, so sign it okay?), would I be willing to blow a
couple of hours in a restaurant or maybe just walk around the park we used to
go to? I listened to the silence on the line before she spoke again. “Hey,” she
said. “It’s okay if you don’t want to.”
What else was I supposed to do?
It was during this meeting, at this quirky place in Quezon City, that she
told me of her project. After the necessary niceties and small talk (she had
perfect manners), she ordered our drinks and dived squarely into the subject.
She said that she never really wanted to pursue whatever it was (up till then
she didn’t tell me), that she just kept the thing away under lock and key,
never to be opened until the day she couldn’t chew her own food. It was her
favorite expression. She would, for instance, cough up the line whenever I
asked her when she planned to change colors and switch over to support my
favorite basketball team instead of the one she supported who has just about
the same success rate as someone trying to make a hole in one. I would say,
“Admit it! Your team is the punching bag of the entire league” and she would
say, “…at least we’re resilient.” Now, as I looked upon those deceivingly
strong features—high cheekbones, slightly squinting eyes with delicately long
eyelashes, and a smile that formed a perfect crescent (on its back) on top of a
square chin—I was reminded of how she would look after her team lost after a
well fought game: she would grin like losing was the most natural thing in the
world, act like nothing happened but silently mumbling to herself how close
they came to winning. And then I would notice a slight wavering in her gaze,
like she’s trying hard, in her very gut, not to cry. Not to look hopeless. Not
to look defeated.
The waitress came over with our drinks, black coffee for me, iced tea for her,
and well, we talked. We talked about college, about graduation. We exchanged
stories about acquaintances and what were they doing now. Who married whom and
who are still on the market. She referred to her project every once in a while,
never really saying what it was and how I was supposed to stay away and yet be
involved. It was pretty confusing if you weren’t used to her. She would
suddenly come up with a remark like “yeah, I could use that for the thing. You
know? Hhmmm…I have to think about it. But how is dear old miss taking it?”
After almost an hour of this, I could make up a mental image of what she wanted
to do. This was our system after all. This was our game. She always started out
with something vague. Something she would be shy about at first but gradually
faded out to a playful hinting at what was it she really wanted to say. After a
few years of playing, I had become pretty good at it. Sometimes knowing what
she wanted to express before she could even hint at the second clue. Although a
little rusty (I haven’t seen her in a while of course), I was confident with
what I came up with. Her project consisted of gathering a variety of things—a
collection—of mementoes that she would get from everyone that has made an
impact on her life. Well, anything at all for that matter. She wanted to paint
a picture, make a collage on the world according to Yumi. And I think, as I
think about it now, that for all the things she said about me not helping, what
she really wanted was to share this with me. I never realized until not too
long ago that with all the noise and the laughter and the friendly banter, she
really was shy when I was around.
I met Yumi at a writing class I took up in a bid to further my beginnings of
writing for our school organ and to see if there was something there. A mutual
friend introduced us to each other and confirming to what I usually did back
then, forgot all about the girl with er…the girl with the long eyelashes. I
always felt awkward (I still do, in fact) meeting new people. I never knew what
to say and when I do speak up, I mess things up by saying something obvious.
Something no one would say in any conversation, especially when you’re just
being introduced. Once, I made the mistake of saying to someone “Hey, did you
get enough sleep? You like kind of haggard.” My victim was not sure what to do,
so she looked at me with reproachful eyes and retorted: “Sorry! While some of
us just bum around and write whatever, there are some who actually study!” she
walked away from me and well, let’s just say we never reached the point where
mere acquaintances become friends. It was the same with Yumi.
During the course of the semester, we would occasionally be able to talk, not
in the friendly, amorous way of some people but rather, we talked like there
was this great distance between us and when we spoke, it felt like we were
doing so out of respect and because we knew each other’s names.
Gradually, our little conversations took on a more real feel to it. By the time
our final piece to be written came along, we would let each other read each
other’s manuscripts. It’s amazing how small talk can accumulate until you can
finally keep up with someone, talk with them, and share their ideas with them.
Although most of what interacts between two people is only on the surface, I
say the best way of building a mine to haul up whatever riches lies beneath, is
to start on the surface. Before the semester ended, we were close friends and
would remain so up until I made the mistake of falling for her.
I don’t know how to explain it but I suddenly looked at her in a different way.
This may all seem stereotypical, and I really think it is, but to describe what
happened to me whenever she was around, though it has been put forth in a
million songs and poems, is still as unique as when Adam first described what
he felt for Eve. Common, everyday words feel like clay in Michelangelo’s hands,
phrases like paint for Da Vinci’s brushes. My best line for what
she did to me had always been ‘I saw a hundred shades of gray in a single drop
of rain.’
She was talented. She painted, she sang, she could wiggle her ears voluntarily,
the way some people wiggled their nostrils. She wrote serious work about
important things, the kind of essays that could win you trips to foreign lands
or maybe even in a magazine for politicians, works with titles like “The
Current Socio-Political Influence of the Upper Middle Class and its Effects on
the Status Quo,” “Impeachment, When to do it and when to not do it,” and if she
was feeling quite nicely, she would lighten her critical pen and write
something like “How OFWs Should Spend Their Free Time.” With all her
seriousness though, she was a remarkably silly girl. She was a walking
contradiction if ever there was one. Once, she wrote a tongue-in-cheek account
of a friend’s dating habits where she detailed her friend’s style, his pick-up
lines, even his chosen clothes for looking all suave and slick just to impress
a girl. It was entitled “I’m Not Myself When I’m With You.” The day she
changed, in my eyes, from the girl with the long eyelashes to the girl with the
eyes I gladly would’ve drowned in came a few months after we first met. Up to
now I don’t know the exact moment when it happened. And I wouldn’t dream of
pinpointing this change to a single event. I guess i am just grateful that it
did.
It is perhaps a little uncalled for, to be thinking of these events once again
while sitting directly across the one who caused it all. How many years has it
been? Reminiscing about what had happened just made me feel like I had a
toothache and my jaw was numb.
She continued on the details of her project, listing off the things that she
said she needed, the ones I was supposed to help her gather. I said, “If you
didn’t want me to interfere, then why should I help you hunt down trinkets and
other knick knacks? I thought I was to take no part in this at all.” I
regretted having said this the moment it left my mouth. I sensed her tensing up
a bit after I took on my defensive air. She sighed, the way professors sigh
when their most promising student, the teacher’s pet suddenly revealed himself
to be nothing more but a common book worm—someone who just memorizes details
and stands by facts like they were the only thing permanent in this world. Her
answer came, an annoyance clearly discernable in her tone yet softer and
perhaps a little more forceful: “I need you. I need your help with what I want
to do. I just don’t want you to interfere with my choices.” It became clear to
me then, that she didn’t really need me to do this project; she just wanted me
to be there while
she finished it. I hated myself for my childishness.
I was touched by inspiration the midnight after she handed my
heart back to me, all those years ago, bruised yet a little tougher. I was
struck by lightning in the middle of my delirious stupor: I will write a great
something. It was vague and it might seem silly but I believed in it with all
of my being. I will write a story, a novel, a play, a poem—anything—and it will
be great. It will capture whatever it is that I was trying to say or capture
and everyone would be talking about it for years to come. It was conceited,
like predicting your own success, but the inspiration felt like it was coming
from beyond me. Who was I to refuse? I was merely a pawn, a puppet for whatever
it was that destiny had in plan. I vowed then that I would do whatever it I can
to fulfill the demand of that moment. And so I wrote.
She on the other hand, carried on as if nothing had happened. She continued on
with her life, her school work, her talents and her hobbies. She took up
sports. She went back to nature, which really meant was she made a tour of the
best beaches around. Every week saw her doing something that was, well, normal.
It has been 3 years after college, 7 years since we first met and I guess I
could say that we had the best of friendships (which we had) and that we have a
mutual respect and admiration for each other (which we did) without sounding
the way everyone who says these about themselves—sometimes too limited and too put-up.
We had been busy with living, true, but we never forget the people who had as
much influence on the directions we would take in life as much as we have on
our own. Our collective past wouldn’t have been the same, our histories
wouldn’t have been rich the way we knew it to be.
But I didn’t know that when she said she wanted to travel, that it would be a
travel of a different sort entirely. And that the people who you always wanted
to be with, maybe some kind of cosmic joke no one laughs about, are the very
same people who goes away.
We left the restaurant and walked out into the rain. She loved the rain but I
always said to her, “Everyone loves the rain, whether they say it or not. It’s
impossible not to. If people love it for making everything look refreshed,
shiny and more vibrant, or the way the drops fall down to the earth, connecting
the sky with the ground, then people should also love it for its dark and
dismal effects. Making everything look gray and gloomy once in a while provides
contrast to everything else. If I wore a gray shirt and you, something bright,
people would notice your shirt all the more.” She would make a face at me
by this point and I would raise both my arms, as if to say, “Why bother?”
We rushed to her car glistening, with drops of water still on our arms and
faces. We were breathing faster from the running and felt a little giddy at
first. There was nothing but the sound of our breathing and the splatter of
rain on the car. I looked at her once more, admiring her cheeks, vibrantly pink
from running, and looking like a shiny apple. I took notice of the shape of her
eyebrows, the bridge of her nose, the delicate, yet strong smile (it sounds
contradictory but I don’t know how else to describe it, it just is). Her hair,
rich with curls, clung to her face and her neck as if to smother her completely
in a ripple of blackness and a shine of water. Her eyes, still the same, still
the same. She had never looked as beautiful as she did then and it was ironic
and heartbreakingly sad. Because I finally realized the gravity of what she
said to me, the objective of her project and what it meant to her. She was
making a collection—her last farewell. Yumi, the one love of my life, told me
that rainy afternoon, in our favorite restaurant, over black tea, that she was
dying. And that was the sad part. The ironic part was that as I looked at her
inside the car, with the rain pounding on the windshield, with her hair
clinging to her face as if to swallow her, I knew at that moment that she had
loved me as much as I had loved her. I looked at her eyes, the ones that I
would’ve been glad to drown myself in, and I imagined that each drop of rain
was a tear. It was a deluge of deep sadness. All mine.
It was Saturday and I decided to invite her for a day out, a break from school
and from studying, and a walk (we were juniors then, not quite as naïve, yet
not quite jaded with academics).We always took walks. It was lunchtime when we
met. She ordered a chicken sandwich, no mayonnaise, and a Caesar’s Salad. I
ordered grilled chicken with rice and gravy. We both drank orange juice and as
usual, with the both of us, we were already laughing and talking about all
sorts of things. She took out her leather bound sketchpad and took out works
one by one. “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, today’s auction will be for
the benefit of The Society of Street Children Without Criminal Backing, also
known as The Real Deal,” she said, sounding very much like the an uptight,
snobbish auctioneer. I clapped my hands.
“This first piece, was made by premium quality charcoal on premium quality
paper, made by a premium quality artist (or so she says) and features a premium
quality sunset landscape. Bidding starts at the premium quality amount of 28
million pesos.”
We played that game over lunch and she paraded her works at the moment and I
played the part of a wealthy billionaire all set on saving the world one
auction piece at a time. After lunch, we opted to the bookstore and pretended
that we owned every book in the place. We decided to leave when the guard
started giving us dagger looks.
And so we found ourselves walking to her place (which was really far away) and
we looked around at people. We did this all the time. We looked at the people
passing us by and we would try to guess what the unique thing about that person
was. We hunted for quirks at every turn. “That guy,” I would say, “has a
collection of Batibot
merchandise.” She would counter with “That girl was once a Batibot
puppeteer!”
“…bites only the toenails of her right foot!”
“…prefers tall, lanky guys!”
I threw a fastball at her as a guy who obviously worked out ran past as wearing
really, really short shorts.
“That guy orders a cheeseburger meal and extra rice!”
She looked at me, puzzled all of a sudden. “What?”
I laughed. “You see, he takes out the burger patty from the burger, eats it
with rice. So ends up with a burger steak with rice and a cheese sandwich with
drinks and fries.”
We grew silent after a little while and I was thinking on how to tell her what
I felt about her. It was hard with a situation like ours. The only questions
that mattered were ‘Is the love strong enough to absorb the friendship, make it
as a foundation?’ and ‘Is the friendship strong enough to endure even after
love has gone?’ I weighed these questions very carefully as we were nearing her
house. As it turns out, I would have help reaching my decision. We were
crossing an intersection when she just, she didn’t look, didn’t pay attention.
She just walked as if she forgot where she was. I pulled her back in time,
before a car went speeding by the spot she was in just a few seconds ago. I was
shaken up and I embraced her as tight as I could, a hug that reassured for me
that she was still there. She looked at me slowly; like she was being careful
not to show any emotion, but as our gaze met I caught the very thing that she
was trying to hide. In that intersection, right after she almost got hit by a
car, she gave me a look of sadness.
I told her I had fallen for her that night and by midnight I
knew that I was destined to write a great work. I just hadn’t figured out then
that the one great thing I would write would be a eulogy—the last part of her
project and the one I would be reading at her funeral.
She was there on the launching of my new book. I was sitting on a table in the
middle of the room, signing copies and shaking hands with everybody. She
appeared at the door suddenly, as if she materialized out of thin air. I
watched her as she took out my book from a shelf and methodically walked over
to the back of the line and waited for her turn to get her book signed and for
me to shake her hand. Her turn came after a few minutes and she smiled at me,
that delicate, strong smile, and I smiled in return. I said, “Thanks for buying
my book. To whom do you want me to address the autograph?” She thought briefly,
I could see the fleeting moment of concentration on her face (she squinted a
little when she did this, and her eyebrows would almost meet) before she said,
“Address it to Mayumi. Write I will remember you.”
Memory box
snafu posted at 12:05 PM on September 1, 2005.
...i wrote this a long time ago and yet as i read it again, i'm reminded of what made me write this piece--what made me want to write in the first place. i'm putting it here so as not to forget about what has passed and what hasn't come to pass up to now.
--i am your prisoner since that day--the knight without armor, nor sword, nor horse. i am the darkness that surrounds your light. for no light can exist without shadow. and no shadow exists without light. no one can live without death.
To Airen
I
no one's happy living in the slums of life. Misery begets misery. loneliness is loneliness. love is hopeless. it kills. oh! how it kills! the parasite that rots flesh, organs and blood has taken root in my blood. it swells in my mind, tears at my heart and devours my soul. i scream and i hurt and all this in silence; the silence of the cloudless, moonless night with no stars, only shadows.
i met you in a perfect day, that sweet november. and i didn't know! i didn't know you would be my death. That you would pain me. you would haunt me. you would defeat me. if only i had known! i would never have come. i would never have listened, never would have received you in, my distraught and aimless existence. but still, time does not pity anyone. as ruthless as a predator hunts his helpless preydoes time brings the chance that i get to glance upon your face, your eyes, your smile. such is the irony that i would fall for you--you who i can never have.
and then before i knew what was happening, i had fallen into your unknowingly placed trap. the manacles bind me to you, it's teeth digging in my leg. my strength is drained. you have captured the prey. there is nothing else to do. anyone care for lunch?
the instance of our first meeting is etched in my mind.
i am your prisoner since that day--the knight without armor, nor sword, nor horse. i am the darkness that surrounds your light. for no light can exist without shadow. and no shadow exists without light. no one can live without death.
ever so slowly, time passes and the cogs of fate begin to turn. all events are recorded; inside time's chest and i aim to nudge one out. poking through the lock, the keyhole called dreams. i use a fragile pole, a stick that is my memory. i try and i fail. i remember and so i forget. how much time has passed? i am exhausted and so i give up. i sit by the proverbial chest and as i was contemplating the means to kill my dreams, one slips out. one very tiny speck of time has shown itself. a grain of sand can tell the story of the universe.
all time is encompassed by a single star. a man can hold the essence of his being in the palm of his hand. a second can change a life.
and that is exactly what you did.
i began to see the beauty in the darkness, the hope in the hopeless. death became my friend and life embraced us both. i had new eyes and new heart. the slums of life wasn't so bad after all. the manacles did not bind nor its teeth bite. there are just shadow between street lights. a single chain looks like a loop. a loop without limits. the parasite was my spirit long forgotten; my soul enters into my hardened shell.
II
a hot summer's day and i am walking under the sun. i am going home but then i pause i look around. i kept on doing this since a long time ago--little glances of hope. i'm never going to see you again. Might as well accept the fact. except that you were there. you really are beautiful. the color of night suits you.
and i approach, slow at first. i look at youand i try to catch a stare; closer and closer, step by step, i hear you breathing, i smell your scent. i walk past you and you didn't notice. you didn't notice.
i try once again. i fake going back and turning around, i look at you once more, with your hair pulled back, a slightly annoyed look painted at your face. i laugh inside. you look cute annoyed.
and i pass by you again. i had enough. i call your name. you turn towards me. i wave a "hi." you smile back. i am the happiest man in the universe.
so how are you?
"a bit annoyed, actually!" you flash the mischievous grin.
we talk. we chat a bit. then i say goodbye. goodbye.
"goodbye."
for the third time i walk pass you again, content with the world. i look back once and you were still there. i look back again and you were gone. pathetic. idealist.
wish you looked back.
