Time. Truth. Hearts.

Hysteria, hysteria is happening again.

It surreptitiously grabs the gun and points it to the sky, teasingly threatening to fire a warning shot against a danger that no one really cares about. The cells all scatter - they bump and grind - and the resulting heat from all the friction makes my mind naughty and dream of hell and all its characters. The warning shot will never come.

But the danger always does.

And as it turns out, more care should have been given.

Hysteria, hysteria is happening again.

The damage is always centric, proportionally given to the players to ensure balance between happiness and sorrow.

Are we now copacetic?

Hysteria, hysteria, hovering overhead like angry clouds of discontent.

It all starts with a single word.

No matter how you look at it, it will always heat, boil, and cool down to perspective. The ocean, dark as bloody vomit, only resembles the blue sky when your heart pumps love-filled oxygen into your brain. It always will bring a smile to your face as you watch the sun set, sinking like the sensibility in alcohol-driven conversations you like having with your friends.

It always starts with a smile.

When you walk down a street, employing the same swagger you have learned from your father, you look around for signs that prove that everything is connected. Strangers give you a smile and you take a mental picture, committing to memory what the present has no room for.

You walk up to her, the stranger with the brightest smile. She is a silhouette against the half-sunken sun. The wind blows through her hair and the smell of the bluest of oceans fill your nose.

You say, “Hi.”

You get another smile in response.

It was
in this space
that I unknowingly
shared with you,
that things
we loved
giving names to,
started owning us
tissue
by
tissue.
You
encouraged me to
be brave
when fear
was
God.
If anything
I should thank you.
For
wanting to
hear
my story,
the way I wanted it
heard.

Might not be much
for now,
but I love you.

I stood outside under broken leaves.

There were questions that needed to be answered and I was thinking of heading home, away from anything, to make some love with search engines. I somehow felt like I dreamed to feel. Like those Hollywood stars that were either scarless or in the event that they had scars, they accentuated their beauty.

Like Joaquin Phoenix.

Now that I think of it, only the scarred were beautiful. Only the uninhibited got anywhere. Only the brave got their share of motion.

In a world full of compromises and division, I begged to differ.

I longed for the day I could wear my scars proudly so everyone could bask in my greatness.

You don’t have to look
in too deep.
The testimony
is in the
poison
that
seeps out
as you
drift
off to sleep.
Sobriety
you’ve strived for,
battling demon after
demon,
easily achieved
with the gun
you keep
next to your
apathy.
Soon
you’ll be
singing
the last song,
right after you’ve
discovered
you were wrong
all along.

They say things come out better when you’re drunk.

Like that time when all I intended to say was a singular word full of melancholic senseless sense but what came out, if you pick it apart, was a majestic display of this-life-is-one-big-ass-bitch shenanigan. There was something always more. For now, though, you’d have to do with what my short circuited brain could come up with. You’d love it because you were like we all were.

This society’s dregs.

It was all in the way you look at it.

See her as she goes.

You might go, “Ahhh, there she goes again,” but spare her and just see her for that’s what she really needs.

The path always looks familiar. The ammunition always the same because it’s the same game. The sight, although isn’t always pretty, is a sight to behold still.

See her good.

Someone should tell her to stop but that will only egg her on as it was more fun that way. We only all need an audience and she has earned hers. See that she’ll be okay, better.

All is fair in love.

Especially when the casualty count is one.

This is disgusting, he would say. Yes, I would answer, feeling a little offended by his over analysis. Things were always a bit disgusting, I would have said had I been in the mood to be always the right one. We were barely conscious to notice that things far bigger than us were happening outside of the screen door.

I was defiant.

So I closed the main door to have a better environment to hear the voices, perpetually singing me to sleep.

That’s better, I would say.

At night, nothing really was the same as when the sun proclaimed its might. The darkness, like subatomic particles’ parts, bathed everyone with lent beauty and a promise that as long as you didn’t open your eyes, your mind would show you what you wanted to see.

It was the same thing that when you walked along the beach one night, though you very well knew that you shouldn’t, you felt you accounted for much more of this planet’s importance than what was remotely true. You felt as happy as you pretended. You didn’t even notice that as the hours passed by while you dawdled, everything else moved on in a symmetric spiral.

If you had known so, you would have thought that you were that spiral’s center. There was no need to antagonize too much: the sun, in a few hours’ time, would make sure that you knew you weren’t.

You wouldn’t have to be scared.

Just don’t open your eyes.

A couple more days till the year of the tiger comes in. (Not technically, cause it is months before the Chinese new year but you know what I mean). And since I am bored and this job has been drying my brain into the size of a shriveled up bean, I thought that this is more productive: share my top ten albums for the year 2009.

Honestly speaking, 2009 is a bad year for planet Earth. “Too many nice people dead and too many bad people that should be dead still alive,” is how I sum it up. But this is not about deaths. So let’s get the ball rolling.

Disclaimer: I am an ordinary member of this citizenry so don’t expect albums that are “critically acclaimed” (but some do) to appear here. I’m sure Rolling Stone or Billboard won’t put Mariah Carey ahead of U2, as I will. This is measured based on the enjoyment level I’ve managed to squeeze out off the twelve or so songs from the album. But of course, I’ll put everything into consideration.

Ronaldo Cruz’s Top Ten albums of the Year 2009

Number Ten
The Fame
Lady Gaga

Okay. I just have to put her here okay? After all, of the few times I went clubbing this year, I enjoyed dancing to her songs. Just Dance makes me do just that, and Paparazzi is too catchy to be ignored. And I do appreciate the fact that she is eccentric and fun to look at (fun is not equals to beauty. We clear?). My main beef against her is that I think she equates eccentricity with creativity. No matter how much I enjoy listening to Bad Romance, come on guys, it sounds exactly like Poker Face. I guess she’s here on my list because as much as I want her dead, I can’t wait what she comes up with next.

Line from the Album: Papa-paparazzi.

Number Nine
Prospekt’s March
Coldplay

For those who’ve been following Coldplay’s career, you’ll have two contentions against this album being here. One: This was released November 2008. Two: it is an EP. Well anyway, November and December are like the weekends of the year and most of the songs from this album carried well into the 2009. Containing songs previously released in Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, this album opens up to a “worded version” of Life in Technicolour (hence, Life in Technicolour II) which was released as a semi-instrumental in Viva La Vida. I remember listening to this song and feeling exactly what Chris Martin wanted his fans to feel: a concoction of emotions that transcends whatever needs to be transcended. I also like the fact that they went outside of their formulaic lives and recorded Rainy Day which is the naughtiest Coldplay could ever get.

And oh, Coldplay is my favorite band in the whole wide universe.

Line from the album: It’s a violent world.

Number Eight
No Line on the Horizon
U2

I’m placing this album here for one reason only: Moment of Surrender.

I listened to that song and that is exactly what I did: surrendered to U2’s superiority.

Line from the album: Vision over visibility.

Number Seven
Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel
Mariah Carey

Too many people didn’t give a damn about this album. They say Mariah is outdated and so and so. But the thing is, most people didn’t even bother hearing the album first. Goddamnit. As one reviewer said, this album is an album, not a collection of individual songs. Rolling Stone and Billboard (I’m selling out here) liked it, too. I put it here cause I felt that Mariah was very sincere and mature (Yes, thank the heavens) in this one. Betcha Gon Know, H.A.T.E. U., It’s a Wrap, Up Out My Face, and Standing O. Listen to those songs and not to that crappy I Want To Know What Love Is.

Line from the album: If we were two Lego blocks, even the Harvard University graduating class of 2010 couldn’t put us back together again. (LOL)

Number Six
John Mayer
Battle Studies

Three Reasons: It’s John Mayer, he sings love songs, it’s John Mayer.

Line from the album: If you want more love, why don’t you say so?

Number Five
Ocean Eyes
Owl City

I got enamoured into checking this album out mainly because Perez Hilton didn’t like the song Fireflies. My first impression was that it was a gay version of The Postal Service and/or Death Cab for Cutie and I kind of dismissed Owl City as that. But it was too late cause my bit torrent client said that the download was almost complete. Like much of the album’s cliche lyrical content: The rest is history.

The album devoured me with pictures of a perfect world wherein no matter how grim situations are, as long as you see in a good perspective (manifested in Adam’s cheery voice), things will turn out okay.

The album is a hate/love thing. It can sometimes get too saccharine. For some, it can be too much. But for me, I loved every second of it. While this album breaks no barriers, it certainly is, hands down, the most enjoyable album for me.

Line from the album: I’d like to make myself believe that planet Earth turns slowly.

Number Four
Hot Mess
Cobra Starship

I first heard of Cobra Starship when I was in LAX Superclub. What really caught my attention, as stupid as it is, was Leighton Meester’s vocal contribution to their first single. I went home, downloaded Hot Mess, and let myself drown in it. What really made Hot Mess such a good album for me is the fact that I can listen to the entire album without skipping any songs. That Gabe Saporta didn’t delve into the serious stuff too much endeared him to me. The album pretty much has everything for everyone.

Stupid band name aside, I hope they make it really big.

Line from the album: I may be rude but I’m the truth.

Number Three
Wolfgang Amadeus
Phoenix

The fact that Phoenix is a French band, and that I love them, weighs a lot. For me as for everyone, I think. I’ve been in love with this band’s songs for two years now. If you haven’t listened to their cruelly catchy and sincere song Lisztomania, well, you’re literally missing some percentage of your life. The album, like any album should, have its own personality which will help it thrive into a classic.

And oh, Rolling Stone agrees with me. They placed this album as the second best album of 2009.

Line from the album: This love’s for gentlemen only, wealthiest gentlemen only.

Number Two
Hello Hurricane
Switchfoot

Raw. That’s what this album is. Their last effort, Oh Gravity!, disappointed me. But disappointments make great room for surprises. The songs in this album are, how do I put it? Amazing.

From the anthemic Always to the painful cut Yet, to the Chris Cornell reminiscent Mess of Me, to the climactic Sing It Out, this album blew me away. I don’t pay attention to Switchfoot much, but admittedly, they are the only American Band I’ve followed through the years.

Line from the album: This life is a lie that’s come true.

Number One
Perfect Symmetry
Keane

This album was released October 2008. But like Prospekt’s March, I listened to it mostly this year.

There’s no album that can pretty much sum up my 2009 life better than Perfect Symmetry. For those who know me well, they will tell you that the album’s title track is my all time favorite song. Once in a while, an album comes out slowly, and then holds you in a tight grip and you just know, you will never be able to stop listening to and loving it. Not that I would want to.

Love Is The End soothed my soul. Lovers Are Losing gave me hope. Black Burning Heart fueled me. Perfect Symmetry, the first time a song has done this, put me in my place.

It’s one of those albums that make you want to grab some pen and paper and write the songwriter just to give your thanks.

Line from the album: Spineless dreamers hide in churches.

Almost Made The List: The Boy Who Knew Too Much - Mika

Disappointments of the year: Alter The Ending by Dashboard Confessional and Waking Up by OneRepublic

There. I can go back to my boring job now. And while everything else can bring me down at fluctuating intenisties, there’s no better way of picking yourself up than through music.

Ron: So Chris, what do you think?
Chris Martin: Of what?
Ron: Jon’s new album.
Jon Foreman: Shut up, Ron. I don’t take criticisms well.
Chris: Oh that. I love it. Especially when you were singing it out, Jon.
Jon: *flushes* Wow, thanks, Chris.
Patrick Stump: You know, guys? Two out of three ain’t bad.
Ron, Chris, Jon: Huh?
Patrick: Me and you, setting in a honeymoon.

I take it back.
Love, apparently, is all around.
In the tubes.
Intertwined in links.
And most certainly,
there is a formula
equating almost
to divine intervention.
I take it all back.
All that is ever good
is at your disposal.
I take it all back.
You’ll be happy.
But in and of itself,
you are alone.

Merry  Christmas.

It is during those little moments, droplets of sanity as I sometimes call them, that I truly stop pondering about what is true and focus on what is not.

There is no love.

What you may think as such is just a byproduct of all those clicks on the tv remote coalesced with the number of views of an online video streaming link. The end result is something that simultaneously makes you stir, build up, and climax - just like sentient love - but ultimately results to an end. It will not care that it hurts, it will not budge that you die. Fake love is as potent a feeling to those who doesn’t know its true counterpart.

There is no formula for happiness.

You can’t write it down on a piece of crisp index card and go around wreaking havoc and expect that in the moment that you think you’ve gone too far, that you’ve caused damage beyond repair, you can consult your cheat sheet and steer your life back to happy tracks. You are as God is. And God didn’t rest before his work was done. Which will cause confusion because…

There is no God.

The God of today is a god of the bums: romantic bums, economic bums, life-in-general bums. People who summon superior beings to have someone bless a plan, do the work for them, and surrender to when the fatal blow comes. We all search for fallbacks and apparently, a deity pretty much does the trick. But wouldn’t failure be less bitter when you’ve done all the failing work?

You are not alone.

No matter how everything points to support the fact  that you traverse your road solo, leave a draft open through which a sliver of you being wrong can pass through. In the end, even if you are indeed alone, it is always better that you can lie to yourself that you never have been. Otherwise, point an accusing finger at your reflection and say with gusto, “I told you so.”

I read too much.

And what I’ve read says, “In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever ‘in and of itself.’”

Merry Christmas.

Julia was nineteen when she finally found out what I meant when I said no.

It perhaps stuck to her that things were sometimes so sublime that given the right circumstances, and if you tilted your head at the right angle, red could be blue and denial could quite possibly be some weird path to delayed gratification. The wavelengths of the colors extended and her perception extended with them so that one night four years ago, when I caught her standing by my room’s doorway, the jerk of utter surprise I shivered, she mistook as assent to take two more steps forward.

“Julia,” I croaked to her silhouette.

“I couldn’t sleep,” said Julia, stating the obvious.

I sat up and turned the bedside lamp on. I scanned the bed for my shirt for I had taken it off during my intruder-free moments hours before. I sat there, not the victor in my quest to find the missing shirt, looking much younger than I should have had as she stood there, purposefully looking much older than she’d ever dream. I coughed loudly to break the silence like an axepick to a skull. Julia had a sharper axepick and a better grip as she broke the stillness with another step forward.

“I was wondering if maybe I could sleep with you in your bed,” said Julia.

That was the night, after twenty three years of nights and days, too, that I started believing in the power of words. Had she used “by” and “on” instead of “with” and “in”, things would have been less complex. But things never were less complex for we all were devilishly deviant and had too much fun being so.

“No,” I said.

Julia, offended, left the room in hurried steps which echoed both surreptitiously and ostentatiously. It was funny that my last memory of Julia were not of sight but of those determinedly hard thump-thumps echoing like warning noises for trouble unknown.

I didn’t sleep that night.

As for Julia, no one would know except that after four years, as she removed the make-up off her face after sleeping with a man for the first time, a twenty dollar thrill, she finally understood what she should have had earlier: There never would ever be a need to justify when one would say, “No.”

You eat bullets for breakfast
then puke them
and admire how they
glisten
under the
incandescence.
You wonder
how senseless,
seasoned
for more than
twenty four hours,
breathes
sense.
You jump over
edges:
your idea
of fun.
You say to me
love has
endlessly
made calls
at your door.
I laugh
for you’ve
listened
to too much
rock music.
Did you really
believe
when he sang
that
you and I,
we’re gonna
live forever?

Let me try this.

I scoop up some sand and have the rust clinging cling no more. There will be glints and sparks and people will say words of wonder you’ll have to look for meanings buried a little too deep. If you don’t then you stagnate, if you do then you stagnate faster.

Let me give this a shot.

I tilt my head to the left to see whether it is right to think so highly of you in this abyss of a situation. I check whether the compass needle I have attached to my heart still understands the magnetic forces. I verify and give out a laugh as you show me your location.

I think I want a second shot of tequila.

I surround myself with words and watch them freeze upon your cold shoulders and stares. We’ll have to wait till next summer when the frozen speech bubbles burst and the flow of comprehension floods our brains with more questions.

You are orgasmic beyond belief.

You are my North.

Nine lines.
It took me exactly an hour,
sitting on my
odd orange chair,
to think of a clever way
to say
I love you
in just
nine lines.

She walked into the the room gingerly.

She traced her steps through with alcohol on her breath and another neatly filed memory of a just passed great night not far back in her head clouding her vision. She knew that somewhere on the floor was a mattress. Somewhere on the mattress were two of her friends, sleeping because it was that time of the night.

She was silent and would do her best to remain so.

Little did she know, her footsteps had awoken me and knowing where she had arrived from, I had instantaneously feigned sleep.

In a few minutes I knew she would need me.

I would fail her for I wouldn’t know what to say to her. Truth be told, no one would know.

She waited for the cue so she could start her slow spiral way downwards a road she was all too familar with. Sometimes it would be a photograph showing her side by side with the very man who broke her heart and her life with it. Sometimes it would be an innocent joke passed around by friends that would unintentionally hit, sting, and wound at exactly the right place.

Right where it was hard to take and heal.

Sometimes it would be a movie or a song, which I was certain was never written directly for anyone of us insignificant beings, but in our cleverly selfish ways, we found premise in. Those were the lines from movies and songs she would cling on to, owning them, singing them, saying them, until her wounds bled an amount that would justify the hurt she felt.

She stilll would sing now and then.

Most of the time, I would sing along.

But that night that she confronted her past, as she finally found her way to the mattress to join us, sitting instead of lying, the cue for her breakdown would come as a simple text message. A few characters, perfectly phrased and way too clear with its message: She wasted four years of her life.

Her response was way too clear, too.

She cried herself to sleep.

I wasn’t able to say a single word.

Loquacious me, not even a single word.

**********

The next few months passed by in a flurry. If anyone would have taken snapshots of the hundreds of days that followed, a dozen would have shown us red faced, drunk, smelling of cigarettes and purposefully merry. In fact, that year I forever would remember as the longest year of my life.

I’m pretty much sure she’d agree. But if only you could see her now, better than ever.

This is my ode to you.

The one who never gave up. The person who bravely faced life after love. The one who cried a bucket and didn’t care that she did. The one who deserves nothing but the best.

You and I, we walk the same path to rediscovering happiness.

Our stories intertwine.

And by telling your story, I am telling mine.

I want to tell you something though, those four years you spent with him were not wasted time. In fact, there never is wasted time in this life. Everything adds up to who you will be tomorrow.

In all honesty, I don’t know why I’m writing this.

The only reason I can see is that I’m happy that we’re okay now.

That we made it through.

That we like life and its many characters again.

That we are happy again or whatever this thing is called.

And as much as we thought otherwise, we still are capable of loving and receiving love without having to pretend that the person we embrace is someone else when we close our eyes.

All I’m trying to say is that it’s about time.

It always boils down to time.

Because while alcohol, cigarette sticks, clowning around, songs and movies surely help, only time really can heal a broken heart.

Yours and mine.

It was probably about the same time as the instance your atoms were given the right to coalesce to form your existence, ever defiant and slightly haughty. You were staring at the pavements wondering whether they were there for people who wanted to walk or to serve as an invitation for those who’d never dare venture into what was unknown and henceforth a bit too frightening.

Of course, it was love.

That you knew that your purpose was really not self serving was the pinnacle of your wisdom. That you believed that you would be able to win unscathed was the height of your folly.

Of course, of course.

It was all about the anticipation: the befores as opposed to the afters. You would revel at the cruel fact that nothing would be as you had dreamed. You modified your taste to suit their tongues; your words to conform to their ears; your soul to fill their voids.

In the near end, nothing would significantly matter.

You would stare love in the face as everyone wondered why you weren’t scared when you should be.

Okay.

I had been listening to keyboard clicks as usual, a cup of coffee, two-three-three, coffee-cream-sugar, with that highly delightful smirk on my face all the wrong people seemed to like, when I realized that the thing I thought was classified as something was actually more of anything than anything I could have ever imagined.

I wouldn’t bother making sense. I would leave that to the more enlightened people of the world who didn’t know what it really felt like to bleed.

This was highly classified to begin with. Nothing much extraordinary. Underwhelming, in fact. Its simplicity and whiteness rocked me to my core.

It was simple, really.

I bitch-slapped love.

And I got what I deserved.

Gravity,
Playing its games again.
You
And your feet,
The ground your playground,
The stars as marks for score.
Repose,
Mistaken as rations
For your soul.
Like millions of other souls.
Hands raised,
Mouths gaping,
You couldn’t wait
Your turn
To sing songs
Taught to you by
Your semi-loved father.
With the die showing
Your face,
You made your move:
One step closer
To a miserable,
Fitting
Defeat.

It would have been the most beautiful only it was ugly. It would have been pretty classic only it was a hands down sell out. It would have been the kind to be remembered for ages only it was ephemeral. I would have told everyone only you wanted silence.

From the carefully poison-coated capital letters to the properly accentuated vowels and choked up consonants; From the temperamental outbursts to those quiant coffee aided aftertalks that always seemed to make more sense than they should. From the mind-blowing intellectual orgasms to their carnal counterparts; From you to the next; From the next to the next; From the next then back to you; From you to love to hate until everything got jumbled up.

Until everything became you.

Until you became nothing.

To looking back from looking to; To wanting to from needing to; To sunsets from rises; To insignificant from adored; To faking from being.

I took a breath.

I watched as the hearts paraded in front of me: life in its grandest. I felt the invitation to reanimate in the way the colors were played out. I would keep the pact as it was beautiful, out of beat, forever the deviant, human. It was the most beautiful.

It would have been you only it was not.

But then again, would it really matter?

You were sleeping as a call for gratitude echoed quite like the way it had done so for countless of times, for countless souls, for countless reasons.

I thought you were quite debonair tonight. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t say that enough.

There was something with your way of doing things that reminded me that after all, I only knew a percent of what I should. You could very much put me in my place quite like no one had ever done for so long. You just didn’t know it.

Your seek for asylum became my source of comfort.

Your mind’s restlessness validated my long contention that I could absoulutely not be the only one.

Your obsessive compulsiveness countered my blatant disregard for placed protocols and my deviant wrecklessness.

You blindsided me like I was a novice.

For that, I could eternally be grateful.

I just have to say it,
cause even these
flickers and statics
remind me of
how the
promises
died
without so much as
a flash
or a sound.
This must be
what she
was pertaining to
when she wrote
nonsensical thoughts
like oily marks,
coffee rings,
ransom notes,
you hiding
and me
seeking.
Somewhere
in all this
mutual mess
inhabits a ring,
deformed
where it had made
bloody contact
with your face,
reminding me
forever
of reality
and its
malleability.
Don’t get me
wrong.

I’m just saying.

In between the reality of manufactured truths and those lies we grew up loving and depending on, I found a flaw that could be abused and misconstrued, to your advantage or otherwise, to help you get by. I was banking on the fact that there was always a fallback to anything I did.

While time leisurely took its time to pass by the streets, throwing irritated glances at me , I perfected my headstand and pushed myself to the limits as to how long I could go without food-water-and-air. I was a big Beatles fan and I really was considering their mantra of all-you-need-is-love and those psychedelic crap Lennon seemed to have a knack of conjuring from that beautiful, drug infested mind of his. In fact, the older I got, the more naive I seemed to have become.

In my free time, I managed to derive the formula which stated that delta h, or happiness minus sorrow, would approximately equal the summation of ramblings I made plus half of the distortion I created through my incessant singing, all over the nth factorial where n is the number of times I’ve had an orgasm sans love.

It was all fun, as I celebrated my intelligence with a bottle of champagne and some good music from those obscure artists with black fingernail polish, which seemed to have been a requisite for obscurity, until I realized that the more I came, the less happy I would be. I was thinking of all the people I had tasted and I had to stifle a laugh. It looked as if I would be winning the Nobel Prize for outstanding contributions to Physics and Math but be very unhappy about it.

I was getting tired of all the paradoxes and oxymorons and all those smoking guns and red herrings, deus ex machinas, and instant food processing devices. I was getting tired of it all. I was getting tired of the fact that a big chunk of happiness was derived from repetition. From the constant thumps of a basketball on the vinyl floor, to the routinary humps of a good friday night fuck, to assembly lines, to pay days, and the idiosyncrasies of religion and lack thereof. My fuse seemed to be, not short, but absent altogether.

It was all a mess.

My beliefs, ideals, and the way I made the bed.

In the end, you’ll have to swallow them all. In the end, you’d just have to love me for making this life more complex than it should be.

We’d make love as, in the background, Paul repeatedly would sing, “Let it be, let it be, let it be.”

The boy had been watching the sunset.

“I hope not to see anything more beautiful than you,” said the boy, his legs swinging back and forth as he lovingly killed time on the swing.

He listened as the wind peddled its secrets around, enticing everyone who would dare look away from the sun to get up and seek things far beyond what was ever needed. The boy inhaled deeply. His skin felt tingly and his ears listened for those sounds that always seemed to bring forth trouble. His eyes, however, remained fixed to the sun as it continued its glorious descent.

“I hope,” he started again, “that I shall never have to witness anything grander.”

He sat there swinging, not knowing that his dreams would not be fulfilled, for tomorrow would bring tomorrow’s sunset at day’s end.

The boy, however, would never give up dreaming.

You clung to happiness as you walked along the empty streets. You would wonder aloud for in emptiness, the difference between silence and noise almost amounted to nothing. You spoke to yourself as though you were scared for your spit to spoil and for your breath to stink.

You made bubbles the shapes of hearts and flowers using the imagination you had picked up along the way. If blood were a bubbling agent, it would have been what you’d used for you slipped a thousand of times on black, bloody puddles not far back, both in place and time. You were amazed that also in emptiness, red and black looked the same.

You touched the ground to try and shake the world into existence. You slapped every corpse you saw, pleading for it to bear witness while beckoning everything to stand still.

Article by article, you started to undress yourself.

Atom by atom, you started to lose your sanity.

You were the immortal spectator.

You found out, quite without even thinking, that in emptiness, love and hate felt the same.

It would be marked as the third best day of your life. First was when you were birthed into this side of reality. Second would be the day you had died and polluted the soil and the air with your rotten flesh and ash.

As you looked in the mirror, a mundane plugin to your daily routine filled with irregularities and vanity, you would see your eyes and wonder why they didn’t glisten anymore. You would formulate wise questions with even wiser answers, something you would pose to everyone. You would muse as the leaves fell down from old trees for you couldn’t wait to be stepping on their crunchiness. You would inhale oxygen and exhale in long, dry sighs all the carbon dioxide of the universe.

You would smile for you felt you had signed a social contract that compelled you to subscribe to the notions of niceties and pleasantries to make everyone feel a bit better after burning their toasts or cutting their fingers on the chopping board or getting fired. You wondered constantly whether smiles were reserved for you, too.

You always walked humming to yourself for you felt that in silence was where the devil spawned from. It didn’t even matter what song you hummed along to. You would hum, smile and traverse the quaint twists and turns of your side of reality.

You would bump in to souls, never knowing, never wanting to. You smiled at them, anyway, at the right places and at the right times. You would walk along for you felt that the world constantly moved, in a very non cosmic way, and to stop was to be left behind. You would continue this until you realize that after bumping into a particular soul, as you smiled in apology, you were receiving the same apologetic smile. You would feel the carbon dioxide exit your body in quick gushes and you would be wondering why you felt hot in your white cotton shirt on such a windy day.

It was that day that your eyes started glistening again: the third best day of your rather insignificant life.

Just my luck,
that I didn’t have anything
remotely close to what I
used to have.
That in between looking for
a pair of scissors
and some paper to cut,
I found a knife and a plastic sheet
and thought it could do the job.
Beautiful, sarcastic luck
which made puzzles
more enjoyable
the harder they got.
This could be something else.
But if it wasn’t,
then it’d be something else.
Just my good, good luck
that I was not looking,
and yet I found.

It was the day before halloween.

Rosa woke up early to prepare breakfast. To prepare meant she had to use her mouth to either shout commands to the house’s servants or whisper poisonous snides. Either way, she got the job done for her. Whatever she normally asked for, she asked to be increased by a hundred percent.

She would watch by the counter, much like an umpire. Only umpires normally didn’t resort to the threat of physical pain to make the players play good. Through the window, a generous helping of the sun’s rays would get in, seemingly acting as a spotlight to bask Rosa and her natural elegance in golden splendor.

When all was cooked well and she was satisfied with the consistency of the orange juice, she would exit the kitchen and head up to her daughter’s room, Maria, who in turn would have already been pretending to be asleep for almost thirty minutes. From an outside perspective, the scenario would have been the cause for several brows to to be raised and for a few cackles to be shared. As daft as it was, the daughter was waiting, pretending to be asleep, for her mother to wake her up.

Rosa would not knock. The one winged emblem she wore gave her the privilege or excuse not to do so. She would sit on the bed by her daughter and gently stroke her hair to wake her up. If she had been paying attention for even just a week, she would have noticed that Maria always woke up after the seventh stroke.

Rosa would gently say, “Maria, breakfast is ready.”

Maria would always respond by uttering in a long steady wail, “Oooooh.”

Rosa would then smile, amused by her daughter’s unique idiosyncracies. Together, holding hands, they would go down and eat. They always sat on opposite sides. Rosa, facing the window and therefore the sun, and Maria, a small sillhouette against it. While eating breakfast, while Maria was scribbling on her notebook she would never let anyone see, Rosa asked, “It’s Halloween tomorrow, my love. What do you intend to dress up as?”

Maria didn’t immediately answer. She just continued scribbling as though it was a matter comparable to closing a billion dollar deal. When she finally stopped, she raised her face just an inch so that her face was still bathed in darkness.

Maria sniggered.

Just outside the windows, a swarm of golden butterflies converged to give birth to Maria and Rosa’s second names.

She taught her daughter never to accept anything from strangers. The concept of strangers, she said, was the offspring of the broad concept strange. Sparkling, glistening and strange.

She guarded the heritage that flowed as blood through her veins as though she would lose whatever was in store with one miscalculated step. She hated everything that remotely deviated from what was socially accepted as proper. She wore a one-winged emblem quite like a weapon, always on the offensive, hand always raised.

Her daughter had two names: one of the immaculate, the other of the wicked. The love she had for her daughter, no matter how misconstrued, was love still. In her eyes, after all, her daughter never glistened. Truth be told, with every slap she threw, she got hurt double.

She walked quite like how someone with a purpose walked. She never looked back but she never forgot. During times when a storm with its fraternity of lights and sounds would visit their town, she would urgently run out to the garden to look for her daughter. She would look at her with love in her eyes and utter words of penance before saying, “I love you. My Maria, my reality.”

A few feet away, golden butterflies glistened as they made their way to change what was real and what was not forever.

Her mother taught her that everything that glistened did so because they needed aesthetics to hide their intentions. She did not fully understand what that meant, she never would. Her love for her mother, even though founded on pain and fear, was love still.

She walked quite like how people who never wanted to get anywhere walked. She wandered but she never became lost. During times when the storm’s lightnings and its thunder friends visited their town, she would cling to her mother. Her mother, unknowingly, would cling to her.

Her mother had two names. One of the flowers, the other of the wtiches. She had grown to love and fear both. Her mother, after all, never glistened.

She would walk around the garden during those times when the sun’s rays were most gentle. Carrying a bag where she kept her treasures, she felt wholly safe that the beasts and the demons were overwhelmed by her mixed confidence and innocence.

She would not stop wandering until she found a rose, a ribbon tied around it’s thorned stem, marked for its sickness. She would say to the rose, “I hope someone can make you better and more beautiful.”

A few feet away, golden butterflies glistened as they made their way to fulfill her wishes.

With words like these, you’ve outdone yourself.
I asked you for three,
you give out an essay and patronize everyone.
You feel short changed.
Don’t worry, I feel the same.
If that’s what it takes for you
to finally count your worth.
The world will work itself out.
You will be amazed with the vastness of
the damage you are capable of absorbing
and inflicting.
You will make us proud.
You will look back to the things you are capable of doing
and pride yourself in the fact that you didn’t.
You will make us proud
by changing everything in you.
Simple enough.
Initiate.

I feel the space I occupy.
That which classifies me as matter,
tags me as useless.
I measure my worth through
the words I don’t say.
The single most obvious ripple
I give out to this world
is my temporary non existence
and importance
and productivity.
For the meantime
and for good.
No calibration needed.
No progress imminent.
I implore you
to love me for this.
For when the world starts revolving again,
everyone moves on,
I get left behind.

There were three stones, a knife, a red button and a glass of formaldehyde.

I had woken up bounded, dirty, having bathed in my own blood that had congealed marking me red, proclaiming me human. I was in a well lit room that could have been stark white when it was new. My body hurt in parts where my bones surely had broken. There were too many of them to count and care. I believed I was alive due to the excess adrenaline that was pumped through my bloodstream. I could be wrong.

I stood staggeringly up, hands tied in front of me, and walked towards the railings of the cell that imprisoned me. As I made my way, my right foot made contact with a solid object on the ground. It was a knife on the ground mocking me. It was then that I realized that in every situation, no matter how despondent, there was a way out.

I would have pondered as to what I was doing there. I would have flattered myself with a long, intelligent soliloquy had I some time to spare. I didn’t.

I picked the knife up using my bounded hands and placed it on my mouth, sharp edge out. I then raised my arms to rub the adhesive tape used on me on the blade of the knife. It might have taken me ten minutes to finally free myself. Usually, bodily freedom was accompanied by some extent of ecstasy but the scenario didn’t allow any of that. I rubbed my eyes with my hands, encouraging them to see better.

What was better, it turned out, was the table at one of the corners of the room. I limped towards it to examine for I knew a table was a table only when something was on it. I was right but nothing I saw immediately made me any happier.

What exactly was on it were three almost perfectly spherical gray stones and a glass filled with colorless liquid. I was thirsty and if I had been a few IQ points dumber, I would have taken a swig, thinking it was water. But the direness of my predicament was pretty potent and I knew that whatever was in that glass, it was not potable. I picked the glass up, took a waft and memories of my college days rushed in instantaneously. Biology, to be most precise.

“Formaldehyde,” I whispered as I thought back to that news article I once read when I was younger about a man who accidentally drank a glass of formaldehyde, mistaking it for water. That person didn’t even arrive at the hospital alive.

I put back the glass and picked one of the round stones. It’s hardness was sort of comforting. It told me of stories of resilience, painful as it is literal. I had the sudden urge to drop the stone into the glass of formaldehyde, expecting almost with certainty that something quite extraordinary would happen. The logical side of my brain, however, rallied and informed me about the inertness of rocks with chemicals. I tossed the stone back to the table where it made a rather pleasant sound.

I then walked towards the railings to examine what was outside. The same grayish walls greeted me. But that was not all for I also believed that walls only became walls when something was on it, hanging or installed. What exactly was installed was a red button. It reminded me of the same buttons in carnivals which when hit would make a poor fellow drop from a platform into a pool, something that seemingly was very appealing to the audience.

I was enchanted by the red button. I was thinking, if that button was any other color, I would have cared less. It was, however, mercilessly red and portentous. I, to make matters worse, was obsessive compulsive and dangerously always curious. After all, buttons were always made to be pushed.

I didn’t even have to think. Everything was provided for if someone looked or examined enough. It was an unstated law of being locked in nondescript rooms. I took one of the stones and returned enthusiastically to the railings where I aimed for the red button.

I stared, aimed, threw and missed.

I felt like I was in a shootout. I returned to the table and got a reload.

I stared more intently, aimed better, threw harder and missed, still.

One stone left.

I knew I wouldn’t fail. There was no chance that I should. I was certain I couldn’t. It would go against laws, theorems and standards of stories, both bad and good. With that knowledge firmly implanted in my mind, I geared into attempting again.

There was no need to stare. No use aiming. I just threw and hit.

The moment I did, I knew I was wrong. Nothing earth shattering happened. The silence, already prevalent, seemed to have intensified. I listened for anything and I managed to hear a scuffling sound from above the red button. I prepared my heart for what was about to happen. I would fail for nothing could have prepared me, my heart, or my eyes.

From above, outside the railings, directly across where I was standing, a trapdoor opened followed by a falling body hanged by the neck, still writhing and foaming in the mouth.

My pupils dilated as I took it all in.

The body, still harrowingly writhing, wore the same clothes and was bruised in the same parts as me. I tried to scream as I saw my own bloody face, tongue lolling, facing me.

I stepped backwards, fighting the urge to throw up. I looked around and my sight fell on the same table where I took the stones from. The glass of formaldehyde was still there, imposing.

Everything was provided for, I thought.

I knew what the glass of poison was for.

This slumber was too appealing. I felt suspended by my own fears, wishful thoughts and contradicting principles. I would never get out of this. I would never want to.

These vices never were this inviting.

The number of strangers I had conversed with in the past months was convulsive. The number of strangers I had tasted even more so. I had no need for acquaintances.

Yet, they came.

I was in an eternal struggle to discriminate emotions and disentangle them from residues of events past and current delusions. At the center of this complicated web was my obsession to manually put a rein on this thing we called time and forcefully drag it backwards.

I loved the fact that lines were being blurred and walls were being demolished. I was just looking for the chance to instill some more clarity and build things back up.

But so many words written when all I really wanted to say was,

I was wrong.

“I like waiting,” I heard you say.

I wanted to tell you that it was about the same thing I was trying to do but I didn’t want to steal your thunder. You were very big on that and I knew that as I imagined years ahead, you were helplessly stuck to the now and the significant. Maybe I should take a leaf off your book and learn that sometimes, love would get you nowhere.

It was as it should be.

The perpetual ramblings I always managed to come up with would soon run empty and I would hail that day as my greatest.

You might find this amusing the way everyone always found a premise within the words I aimed randomly around. I hid a million stories at the back of my heart. I couldn’t wait to have them shared.

I am a lover.

I am both deaf and blind.

But never mute.

I am a writer.

And I am looking for the one to make me put the pen down.

It was as it should be.

There were a million things I should be doing and me enumerating them one by one made it one million and one. I was in love with my resilience. I was on my way to becoming this world’s biggest douchebag. The ease of me being loved was only matched by the ease of me being forgotten.

I was tired of my self-diagnosed bipolar tendencies. I was obsessed with having the taste of your skin serve as my lithium. I might be causing a distortion in your universe and that made me smile like that day I realized that there were things much more pleasurable than eating sweets. Then I realized that there were things more painful than death and that juvenile smile was wiped off.

I was aware I was losing.

I was aware of the pain that could be lined up for me.

I was aware that the more I squeezed, the quicker it’d be over and gone.

I was aware that loving you in this lifetime must meet an end and that I was refusing to submit to the altogether more sensible concept and laws of motion.

I would not be redeemed. I wouldn’t really want that, anyway. I was too busy sewing up memories that I forgot that seams, strong as they seemed, could sever without warning and mercy.

The audience’s laughter sounded like music to my ears. This world’s mockery was my sustenance. The irony of it all implored me to make black holes out of hearts.

Watch me as I deconstruct.

“I can’t feel my legs,” I whispered, grinning stupidly, to the girl dancing next to me.

“Do a headstand,” she replied, nodding encouragingly as though she was sure what she was talking about.

I did what she told me and as I watched a sea of legs move in random fashion, I felt my blood starting to rush to my head. The thump-thump of the speakers seemed muffled from down here, I thought. Out of the oblivion my head was in, I heard a voice shouting, “Do you feel them now?”

I answered, “I do, thanks!”

A very danceable song was playing.

I felt lonely.

Everything looked and sounded stupid from down here.

Mum mum mum mah.

She was trembling as she unfolded the piece of paper she found underneath her husband’s death bed. She wanted to succumb to the severe hysteria that wanted to take over which invited her to buy some gasoline and a box of matches so that she could burn the house down while she sat a few meters from it, listening to burning, static sounds.

But she was trembling too much and she knew that she wasn’t capable of such laborious tasks, arson loving or not.

Her eyes, however, wouldn’t stop squeezing out tears. If she had visited the hospital then, it would have made headlines across town and the doctor would have been quoted as saying, “This poor lady is suffering from an extreme case of dehydration due to crying too much. (cue laughter from cruel crowd, pause, resume laughter, a note higher)”

She wouldn’t notice the slow loss of electrolytes as she read what was written:

“My love,

I have nothing much to give. I have not learned how to save and keep. You and I were all I knew and in the same manner will my brain rot. I have lived my life loving you. Now, let me die for it, too.

For dying, forgive me.”

She was counting the coins and bills in her pockets as she folded the letter, wondering how many pints and sticks she could afford to buy.

Why would you need to ask what PCMCIA meant?
You know that I’d answer Personal Computer Memory Card International Association.
You should be concerned as to how I knew.
I would laugh derisively and say,
“Everyone knows about the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, dear.”
You would mockingly try to laugh derisively as well, a fact so filled with redundancy and uncalled for need for defense mechanisms to be turning and turning, ruining gears and drying up the lube.
You would say,
“Well, I don’t.”
And then the smile on my face would only get wider.
You were PCMCIA’s biggest shareholder.

I stripped the pen to its core.
Peeled the skin off to reveal.
Burned down the keyboard clicks
as though sounds could burn.
Squeezed the sponge dry.

No pretensions, now.
I love you.
I love you more.
I love you most.

I hate you for a day.

I strip the pen to its core.

Like every story written, published, played, released, filmed, re-released and earned from and acclaimed posthumously, mine would unfurl in the same mechanics and drama. Like every mercury lamp we had utilized to serve as an alternative to God’s suns, stars and satellites, my heart would burn out bright. Like every crack in these concrete streets we walk on until we couldn’t anymore, love would flow in me from all directions, seemingly going nowhere.

I would only ask for you to bear witness.

You never would have to utter anything. We could share what I had made known and like sleep, water and bread, it should suffice.

But who would need sleep, water and bread when we could never run out of love?

You would be my greatest work.

And like all magnum opuses, you would end up owning me and remembered, long after my life had been a recurring memory, mentioned over alcohol and cigarette smoke.

I hope you had set your watch and warranted on it.

I was staring at hell’s gate,
admiring the intricate work
the Devil himself had put
Love on.
The demons
and their offspring,
undeniably cute
sans the pink fur,
oggled at the axe I held
as they were blocked
from infecting the mainstream
and its loyal sell-outs.
I admired the way
my own work
turned the chessboard
and owned me.
It took Love’s greatest
hell spawn
to make me raise the axe,
swing it down,
and anticipate
the hugs and kisses
I was certain to receive
from the furless,
freedom-filled
hell babies.

For one second,
I hope you didn’t think
I would stop.
Tire not of my antics.
Tire not of my delusional ramblings.

Blog closed.

Burn.
Baby.
Burn.

From now on, my thoughts are mine alone.

It was as believed.

I stared, unblinking of course, unusually silent, muscles rigid all in the wrong ways and parts. My eyes gleamed both intrinsically and from the outside, indicating excitement beyond what physics and morals had defined.

It was only about a minute ago when the cloth covers were lifted to reveal what was beneath. In the ten seconds that followed, my reality was distorted in such a way that if fairies were to fly before me, I would have reached out to pet them with my pinkie finger.

“So she really exists?” asking a question with such an obvious answer I was sure I deserved a slap. No answer was given to me and instead, involuntarily, I felt my hand reach out and as my hand touched the ostentatious gold bar, I felt a quaint warmth coming from it.

“Beatrice,” I whispered, disbelief an alien concept.

I turned around, my face still exuding the same nihilistic glee and before I could have said what I wanted to, death interfered and took me by the hand. It even left a stake pierced through my forehead as souvenir.

Everything was dark as I bathed myself with blood to cleanse myself ready for the Golden Land.

It was as cold as he imagined it to be. Kyle was amused with how his mouth could simulate smoke when he breathed. It was like he was smoking an invisible cigarette.

It was impossible that he could still walk. He clutched his left side and felt the warmth only an open wound could give. The pavement he was treading was incredibly soft, he thought. He wondered, very much far back in his head whether there were microscopic grass cushioning his path, providing some relief to his battered body.

He had to hurry although he knew that he had managed to outwit his pursuers. It felt like he was in an all-gone-wrong race where the finish line tape wouldn’t guarantee any prizes. All he knew was that he needed to hurry.

He took his shirt and pants off, stooped down and scooped a handful of mud and smothered it on his chest and entire lower body. He then lay down on the ground and maintained an impassive expression on his face, unblinking and unyielding. From a distance he could hear gunshots and random screaming. But no one would find him there. The sea of corpses would ensure that.

His last thought would be, as the blood loss finally had to overcome him, of hilarity. For as brilliant as his plan was, he would die whilst he pretended to be dead.

“Redundant,” the final word escaped his mouth, and he mused as he watched the frosted breath come out of his mouth - the final ripple his existence would introduce to life in general.

The ride was hell. The riders were hell spawn. The driver was demonic. The rain looked like half-molten rocks falling. The puddle was the sea of fire, itself.

In between trying to stretch my legs and trying to stretch my arms, I had to yawn to ward off sleep. I was hungry and the chances of me being a cannibal started to rise as every second passed by. I was looking at Arvie’s arms and thought it would make a sumptuous meal. On the other hand, Shileena seemed to be the lazier of the two and so had more tender meat. I looked down at my tummy and realized that auto-cannibalism might be the way to go for me.

I had some pastillas spoiling in a paper bag; It was the kind that was in a tub, not individually wrapped for convenience. I would have eaten it but I hadn’t a spoon anywhere. That was when I looked to our front and saw the four persons seated at the middle.

Option One: Girl in Pink

I could cut this girl’s hand and use it to shovel the pastillas in to my mouth.

Option Two: The Smiling Lola

I could decapitate her and then scoop out her brain and use her skull as a dipper-like device.

Option Three: Miss Oblivious

She looked like the type of girl who can survive with one foot.

Option Four: Pimply Guy

He kept on staring at me the whole trip so I think I’d spare him.

Seven hours. Seven goddamned hours from Bulacan to Manila. Since when did that even become possible? Seven hours to unsuccessfullly think of a way to not dirty my own hands with some dairy product.

You were in my mind the entire seven hours, though.

So seven hours well spent it was, then.

A rumble from the very place
where rumbles were invented.
A flash from
the headlights of an
out of control train.
A grotesque figure on my lap
smiling lifelessly at me.
But let’s move on forward
and skip the harrowing details.
The camera pans across the room.
A coffin.
Then my heart shattered.
Then you helped me piece it back together.

I counted the miles of wire
abandoned,
entangled on the floor,
hungry
with the concept of trying
to trip me.
Tip toe through,
I must.
Submit.
You’ve always been a tad
too dangerous.
It’s just that
I’ve always been
too smart
for my own good.
And too lustful
to look away.
I am willing
to go to
Hell
for this.

‘”You’ll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking,” said Tom.

I turned my iPod on and browsed through the songs, placed the player on shuffle and hit play. The intro was melodious. The humming was perfect. The chorus, grand. Tom disintegrated as Ryan’s voice filled my room singing, “It just won’t stop.”

I pranced around and sang around the room naked, knowing no one was listening or seeing.

I felt free.

It used to be that there was no need for paint.

That genuine smiles were genuinely free.

“Send me the entertainers,” the clown said, his hair golden, his heart less so.

It was a room made of colors, dreams, decayed butterflies and desiccated heads. Under the carpet which covered the floor were seven trapdoors.

It was very unnerving to have heard his voice for the first time.

And I’m sorry I wouldn’t be able to finish this.

Unnerving.

Embers falling down from
the heavens, it seems like
you are an umbrella
filled with too many holes.
I look up, mouth wide open
wanting to swallow,
the way I did
my pride.
Dawdling,
rinsing your hands
with the excuses you give
to escape my wrenching
grip on your heart.
You look down, eyes wide open,
disbelieving the evidence
I have obsessively gathered.
Gun raised up,
you burn
one,
two,
three
more holes,
until I have no other recourse
than to seek shelter
in someone else’s
arms.

Existentialism.

I was making point number five and you had your retort ready. You had invoked puny things like Murphy’s Law which I countered as being  the pinnacle of cynicism and negativity. You laughed hard at that before saying, “That’s why you’re always covered in blood.”

I laughed, an octave higher, and replied, “Is that why you are always on the offense?”

We then fell silent and both took turns in inhaling cigarette smoke. It had been hours since the first words were presented, yet the progress could be measured in centimeters still. It was a lazy night for two loquacious souls.

I put my hand in to a fish bowl in front of me to pick out one of the many small rolls of paper. I unfurled it to reveal what was written - our next topic.

Love.

I smiled devilishly and you smiled wearily. You knew you would lose. I wouldn’t be as presumptuous and claim that I knew more. You wouldn’t be so proud as to claim you’ve received more. In the end, no arguments were presented.

We just stared at each other and watched as the miles passed by.

You walk with silver encrusted skulls,
dangling from your right hand.
Songs of dancing,
and card games,
and flashes of lights,
follow.
I walk along,
heart encrusted with blisters.
Words of love,
of hate,
of hope,
follow.
We exist.
We part.
We exist.
We part.
It’s a cycle.
Something I won’t be
the one to break.

It was like a paper bag.

I put my hand in and pulled out what made first contact. It was the bottom of the bag so I turned the bag inside out. I saw frowns and one smile. I saw hearts and livers and kidneys and lungs.

But mostly hearts.

I counted the number of leaves and chose to walk only where they covered the pavement. I had very limited options. I was contented. I was naive.

I wasn’t always this naive.

I was nowhere and had nothing.

Except for a paper bag.

There has got to be something about drinking coffee on your own. It’s like you’re being decisively depressed but you can hardly care. As you count the strangers passing by and you try to zoom in to their eyes so you could see through them instead of your own, it amazes you when they turn and look at you for you feel like you’re looking at yourself. You smile and you get more amazed that they don’t smile back.

Listening to music on shuffle, you realize that every song playing was meant to play for a reason. Smoking cigarettes, pulling them out of the box one by one, you never notice how ten becomes nine till nil.

You then give out a grunt as there is nothing left to smoke, none to
sip, no songs to play. You stand up, pick up your bag and walk away, decisively leaving things behind where they should stay.

You hum along as you walk to the last song you’ve listened to. Only
you can’t remember although you’re quite sure that everything was in a perpetual loop.

You look back to the debris on the table you occupied and you sigh
hard for someone is cleaning it up and someone else is waiting to take over.

You submit yourself to the wind and where it enjoys taking you to.

It was around the same time when the microwave beeped to announce that tonight’s dinner was ready, that the doorbell sounded to announce that tonight’s villain was waiting outside the door.

I shouted, “Who is it?” A question which I believed was in the top ten of the most unanswered non-rhetorical questions in the history of mankind. I bunny hopped towards the door, not because I was a lunatic, but only because I was wearing bunny slippers and it amused me to see them as they hop-hopped along lifelessly. I touched the doorknob and tried to turn it open but tonight’s dinner was a bit greasy.

“Who is it?” I asked again as I smiled wryly. The question just moved up the top ten list. I was happy.

I wiped my hands with the apron around my waist, multi-colored and polka-dotted, bought a week ago from a store I couldn’t remember the name of. Hands semi-squeaky and clean, I gave the door knob another go. And go, it did.

As I slowly opened the door, the familliar smell of gasoline greeted my rhinoplasted nose. It didn’t even surprise me that the person on the other side was wearing a hood. What surprised me was the gun he held pointed straight at me.

Blessed with instincts, smartness and endurance honed by my schizophrenia friends who loved badminton and chess, I was able to immediately hop to my left (the bunnies hop-hopped emotionlessly with me) as a gunshot fired. I grabbed the flower vase (sans the flowers) on the hallway table and lifted it by its top and put it down hard on the intruders head. As the ceramic smashed, I heard the hooded man grunt a weird grunt which almost made me laugh. It sounded like how girraffes would have sounded, only that girraffes didn’t make any sound. Later on, when policemen were investigating the incident (to call it a crime was a bit unfair to the throbbing hematoma on the man’s head), I would spell the onomatopeia as “Uguhughch.”

As the man crumpled slowly towards the floor, I made my way back to the kitchen to call the police. As I spoke, I wiped my hands with the apron again, imagining that there was blood on it. The operator on the other line was inquiring about what happened. I said, “I don’t know,” which was the truth. I added, “I was just making myself some dinner and there he goes barging in.”

A few minutes later, policemen and investigators were swarming all over the house, collected the crumpled, hooded, hematoma’d man, and gathered some evidence. During questioning about the simple altercation, I was able to transform the entire scenario to one which consisted of attempted robbery, rape and even unjust vexation. The policemen would of course believe me.

When it was all over, I stood by the doorway and together with bunny left and bunny right, waved goodbye to the policemen with a vindicated smile.

“What an interesting night this has been. Now let’s play some chess. Oh Markus,” I hollered.

This story was inspired by a song which was taken from the story the songwriter watched once in a film down one old boulevard. It was September then, the wind was a bit furious and a boy of about fifteen was handing out flyers.

The songwriter looked down to the boy and said, “What’s that you have?”

The boy, beaming brightly, answered, “Here, have the last one.”

The paper was cheap and the songwriter didn’t like that. Intending not to even read what was printed, she took one step forward and stepped on a bubble gum. Grunting, the songwriter stooped to wipe it off with the flyer and that was when she saw what was written on it. It was for a movie to be shown later that day at the local cinema house. Five PM, it said.

“Perfect,” whispered the songwriter.

The movie which the songwriter later that day would watch was made by a filmmaker who was inspired by a poem he had once read as a child. He was playing with a cousin, trying hard not to skin their knees at their backyard. He was laughing quite hard because his playmate fell face first to the dirt which at that age was unblamingly hilarious.

On his way to help his friend up, he tripped on a protruding rock and did more than skin his knees. He ended up, as fate would jokingly play with its players, with six stitches on his forehead. Later that night, as the painkillers died down, the pain of course fired up and to appease the crying child filmmaker, his mother read a poem to him. Like the scar forever etched to his forehead, his mother’s words burned to his heart until the age he learned more than to just pick up the camera and flick away.

The poem read to the filmmaker by his mother was written by a young man, age of twenty one, during one lonely night in an island getaway. He had spent his life in poverty, taking odd jobs and messing them up. He would write thousands of words in one sitting and submit them to local newspaper outfits in hope that one day, he would see his name printed. He wouldn’t even have cared if his name was typed in error.

During one desperately depressive night, he sat down, his breath reeking of alcohol, to write. He wrote for he was in love. He wrote about love. He wrote because it was what he loved. He wrote about how that love had smashed his face and ego in. As he set pen on paper, he let all his emotions flow out. When he was done, he grabbed a box of matches, intent on burning the piece of paper so that the smoke could send his message to the clouds where it could then come down uniformly as rain.

When the first match was lit, a gust of wind blew it out. He pulled out a second one and had it lit. This time, a tear from his face fell and landed amazingly exactly where the fire was, extinguishing it. He didn’t even know that he had been crying. He pulled out another match and in the act of lighting it, a part of the match where his index finger was, splintered and cut his skin, making him drop the match.

The poet was then silent. He looked down at the piece of paper where his words were. He was baffled. Laughing, he then went to his drawer to get a clean white envelope where he slipped in the poem. He then addressed it to the same local newspaper that rejected his articles a hundred times it seemed.

The next week, he saw his name and his poem published, perfectly spelled, perfectly ostentatious.

The poem was about a songwriter he would one day meet on a lovely month of September many years forward. It would be a perfect day for love. They would meet at exactly 5 PM at the local cinema, and when they left the place, never would again they part.

Let’s get fucked up and die.

I’m about to explode.
I’m a mess, I’m a wreck.
I am perfect and I have learned to accept:
All my problems and short comings,
Cause I am so visceral yet deeply inept.

I want to thank you for being a part of my Forget-Me-Nots and Marigolds,
And all the things that don’t get old.
Is it legal to do this?
I surely don’t know.
It’s the only way I have learned to express myself.
Through other peoples’ descriptions of life.
I’m afraid I’m alone and entirely useless.

(Oh. And I’m bald again. LOL)

(Ever get amused how some songs tend to seem to be written for you? That we are all weirdly connected, experiencing the same shit. This is it for me today. Jack Johnson, sing to me, again and again.)

Adrift

Your voice is adrift
I can’t expect it to sing to me
As if I was the only one

I’ll follow you
The leaf that’s following the sun
When will my weight be too much for you?
When will these ideas really be my own?
Cause this moment keeps on moving
We were never meant to hold on

This was a scene worth waking up for
When I woke up
You planted me in my own body
Don’t know why
But somehow it just feels so wrong
When you’re sad I will be lonely
But when you rise again I’ll become the sun
I will shine down upon you
As if you were the only one

Your voice is your own, I can’t protect it
You’ll have to sing
A verse no one has ever known

Don’t be afraid
Cause no one ever sings alone
Your way will never be too much for me
Your ideas have always been your own
And this moment keeps on moving
We were never meant to hold on

Outside, I could hear random sounds which were of no significance. It amazed me that I didn’t know anything and yet I felt enlightened.

I was drifting. Floating.

I wanted to scream, or sing loudly, or dance like a maniac, but to do so would be tiring. It was silent. Except for the constant sounds coming from somewhere which for several reasons, I would not explain.

I wanted to smoke.

I wanted to go outside just so I could run back in.

I felt good.

I wanted to do a million things but I hadn’t a million years. And so, I just lay down and listened to insignificance.

Simultaneously, my heart screamed, chain smoked, sang loudly, and did dances of craziness.

I was somewhere remotely close to where happiness was. Alas, I might never get there. But I squeezed comfort from the possibility that things could really be happening for a reason.

I might be a fan of destiny again.

The hearts were moving in exactly how the Brownian motion model depicted it. Bumping and bruising everything that got in the way of their paths. It was amazing how cruel we could be.

It was amazing that beating was still possible.

In the center was a blackhole. It made sure that the hearts formed an intricate spiral so that from very far away, no one would be able to deny the beauty. They moved, almost purposelessly.

But look closer now, a path really did exist.

Which explained the bumps.

The bruises.

With eyes closed, the lights would be substituted by the sounds. Both were infinitely equal in magnitude. There was something else. There was beauty in seeming purposelessness.

The blackhole was greedy.

And the hearts were naive and generous.

But look closer again, the hearts were learning. Even theories could be shattered. There was no need for constant random vibrations. Entropy could be made to implode. Blackholes could get constipated.

Some more patience.

The hearts could win.

I was typing. Typing. Typing.

Singing, singing, singing.

The lights flashing brightly as I absorbed it all. Insatiably. Selfishly. It was more than I could handle. More than I could comprehend.

I loved it.

So loved it.

It was all there was to it.

No, you shouldn’t understand.

And you shouldn’t move a muscle.

In the end, we’d all go down with it.

Now, where was I again?

There has got to be a good explanation why this is slowly turning into my favorite song. Oh, come on. Stop romanticizing everything. You are like everyone else. Infinitely insignificant. Just like the grain of sand next to the billions of other grains of sand. All insignificant. All unnoticed. All beautiful.

There has got to be a reason for everything. Please don’t prove me wrong.

Black Burning Heart by Keane

I wish that I could be
In the cellars of the sea
And disappear in them
Never to be seen again

Leave this life
It’s unrelenting appetite
For feeding off the weak
Who never had their turn to speak

The sky will be my shroud
A monument of cloud

If we could turn back
You can’t paper over the crack
But it will return now
And your heart will burn black

Give me your hand
Cut the skin, let me in
The molecules of us
Bleeding into one again

The sky will be my shroud
A cenotaph of cloud

If we could turn back
You can’t paper over the crack
But it will return now
And your heart will burn black
Forgotten my way home
Forgotten everything that I know
Every day a false start
And it burns my heart

I know everything you said was right and I suppose
Everything is here forever till it goes
You gave it all away, kept nothing for yourself
Just a picture on the shelf

Burning up
Now I’m racing down a road I don’t recognise
I realise I’ve forgotten my way home
Forgotten everything that I know
Every day a false start
And it burns my heart

Turn back.

It was too cold.

Outside I knew that should I look up, I would see what I had been looking for. But I would never go outside. Not yet. I would be a hghly reclusive fellow for the time being.

I looked around, tired of having myself being too static. I wanted to cry. But it was too cold.

I was thinking: this shouldn’t be the way things should turn out. If I had just answered my phone when it rang an eternity ago, or if I were just more in touch with what I really needed, or if I had shown and given more, I would never have to want to cry just for the sake of it.

The funny thing is, as I watched you that one night, I was quite sure that this life has something good in store for me.

I’d wait for it.

By the thousands of cenotaphs, I’d wait.

The daftness of it all was suffocating. Wafting would cause several IQ points to dissipate like they were never even there. Touching would cause instantaneous mental retardation. Ingestion was death.

The sun made everything look better and smoother. It curtained everyone from the darkness created by everyone raising their arms, beckoning the stars to come down even if they could not see them in broad daylight. They just knew they were there and so they hailed.

They sang songs of enticement and did dances of seduction, knowing that blindness and deafness were prevalent. So were ignorance and stupidity, and the clamor to be different.

In the climax of how this and that became something else, right at the cusp, was a laborious try to defy destiny and prove themselves mighty. Without any preconceived wisdom; without the aesthetics that usually came with dullness.

They fought knowing they could win. They fought knowing they should lose.

When they were tired, pawns they again all became.

There was no stopping.

He held the gun because if he let go of it, someone, he was so sure of it, would pick it up and shoot him dead. He was absolutely sure of it. What was worse was the fact that he didn’t know who that person’d be.

He was not being paranoid, he was also certain.

He took every step felinely. Took every breath with careful estimation and only when needed. He was one with the shadows. He was ill-equipped but he didn’t care.

He lurked.

Inside his head, he was humming the song Eye in The Sky. He had a nihilistic smile on his mouth. If he had spoken, his breath would have reeked of death.

No deaths, though; he was silent.

But not for long. The chorus was near and he just had to sing that one out loud.

Starless.

I felt alone. Probably cause I was.

Starless.

I wanted to cry. Too overwhelmed.

Silent.

And starless.

Beautifully starless.

It was more than an epiphany.

But definitely less than anything life-changing.

As I walked and allowed the sand get wherever it wanted to go, and the salty air making sure that my hair would be as saline, I was quite sure that life was larger than me. To claim otherwise was folly.

To claim otherwise was death.

I wanted to look back but the sun was to my front, inviting me to share and partake with some of its spots. I was getting it now.

The ambivalence of it all.

I looked down to check the spoon I was holding, looking directly to the grand ocean before me, mocking me with its vastness. The waves and the water it brought was beginning to caress my feet. It was more than what I imagined.

I was drifting.

I was laughing.

I was in the middle of responding to an email sent to me by a colleague, almost at the end of polishing the report I needed to send, just finished replying to a message I received, when my life, newly reconstructed, started crashing before my eyes once more. I didn’t know how to react so I just laughed.

See the characters in the parade. Watch them strut down the street. Appreciate the colors. Mind the weapons held tightly in everyone’s hands. Listen to every note of the sounds blasting through and through. See the lights flash brightly. Feel the compassion and the lack thereof. Run after happiness. Stand still if it runs after you. Cover your eyes. Open your heart.

Love.

Then die.

It sizzled then fizzled.

You were right, it’s not the orgasm, it’s the time getting to it.

We never even made it close.

You surprised me always.

Now, I have proof.

Everything indeed is ephemeral.

From sizzle to fizzle.

The definition was spelled out to me quite like how the rain added up to the river’s depth. I blinked deliberately wanting to look stupid so I could be stupidity incarnated.

I nodded at all the right places and instances. I was even smiling brightly.

I listened as the words that were aimed at me, much like thunder, paraded before my eyes in perfect splendor and hostility. I was loving it.

Page after page, the prose enchanted me with promises of climax beyond human comprehension and need. I was paradoxically dreary eyed and naive.

I was singing something cosmic.

I was transcendental.

And people who dared look at me had their eyes burned.

Transcendental, I said.

It happens again that all everyone sees are the spots.

All twenty three years of them.

While you procrastinate with what you think would be the best way to finish me off with your social guns, I find myself semi absorbed, staring at the ceiling, asking anyone who would dare listen how anything could not go wrong.

You were there, recipient.

You were there, as the giver.

And yet the spots are all there, too.

Gram per gram we add up agents to our bomb.

Inch by inch the gunpowder runs thin.

I want to destroy this.

So I could hasten the process of me having to go through the process again.

I sink deeper and deeper.

I see your hand but I am not sure whether to reach for it is a good idea.

You want to kill me.

I’m too busy getting myself dead.

I don’t know who you are.

All I know is that  I have these spots.

And that no one could love me for it.

Maybe yes, it was all that the sponge could soak up.
It was all that the oxygen could offer for the wind to blaze with.
That the proximity of your heart and mine was too infinitesimal.
But useless.
You walk on, dawdling like you shouldn’t really be doing so,
with all the people around serving as obedient witnesses.
You soak up.
You burn.
You walk on.

You’re gone.

Peace will come to me
Peace will come to me

I’m leaving bitterness behind
This time I’m cleaning up my mind
There is no space for the regrets
I will remember to forget

Just look at me
I am walking love incarnate
Look at the frequencies of which I vibrate
I’m going to light up the world

Peace will come to me
Peace will come to me

I’m leaving anger in the past
With all the shadows that it cast
There is a radar in my heart
I should have trusted from the start

Just look at me
I am a living act of holiness
Giving all the positive virtues that I possess
I’m going to light up the world

Peace will come to me
Just wait and see
Peace will come to me
It’s meant to be
Peace will come to me
Just wait and see
Peace will come to me
It’s inevitability

Promise Land
now comes for the boy who once waited.
He threw one lazy eye around and his heart
promptly turned into a ball of salt
for my open wounds.
But no matter no matter.
See now he moves across the desert
to flee from your whip and slander.
A pillar of shadows am i
that hovers above him,
ghostly sentinel and true.
With a quiver of black thunders
for you you heathen fool
and your singing wheels,
plastic guns, and mannish charriots.
He saunters home, steadily.
Staff at the ready.
A sea of reeds slowly impends.

My justice is swift and omnipotent.
Ride quickly.

And so, finally, with finality and a threat of nothing coming out of the next step, a warning that whatever comes next would be something so out of control, out of context, and out of sense, with everything said and done, and the spontaneity of them being said again and redone, I forgive you.

With the black scar I’ll be forced to wear proudly on my heart for everyone to see and criticize, or to love me for, I look at you now and realize that everything was walking the same path, weaving the same entangled fate, and altogether looking for the same thing, and so I must walk along.

With the depth of the situation, I have somehow created my own ladder to get out of the pit I imprisoned myself in, waiting for something to be made out of nothing, just like how this whole universe started, me, this, has to find a way to incinerate itself for the ashes to be blown away by your indecisive gust of wind.

With all the games of victim meets victimizer, where no one wins, and no one loses, where no one hurts deliberately but everyone walks away scathed from, I violently shake free to find my new shackles and find my new nails I could use to scratch my eyes out.

In the grand scheme of how things are drawn, full of regretful erasures,  juvenile misgivings and fickle-mindedness, I wait my turn and a chance to be given pen and paper to add up to the beauty and scrap out the parts I have no intention of participating in.

I will cause I can.

It smelled like a mixture of piss, cigarette smoke and iron from congealing blood.

It was all that and less but as Jimmy had his arms wrapped around a shadow, tears proudly flowing, only one thought crossed his mind: “I am home.”

There were sandcastles, grand and imposing, telling everyone that security could come in the weirdest of places. There were waves from the center of the ocean, flowing in both directions, negating whatever security derived from whatever.

There were lights, particle by particle coming down from sewn up clouds, bathing everyone with warmth they in no universe deserved. There were umbrellas, black as death, shielding everyone from things they hated that hated them back blindly.

There were sounds, a magnitude never heard of even though how paradoxic that was, blasting warnings no one would heed. There were stars with starlights being shared to celebrate their deaths and legacies.

There were words spilling out of mouths full of lies and hatred, saccharine at times, toxicity at its highest level. There were hearts, hunger defined, soaking up everything that can be soaked up.

To witness it all, there was you and me.

It wouldn’t even matter that sturdy sandcastles were sandcastles still.

I was bewildered as I looked at the blank page in front of me. I watched enthralled as the pen on my hand made it’s slow descent towards the surface of the paper.

I was right handed and my left’s fingers were tapping on the desk to the tune of a song I was sure I knew but was too subconscious to realize. My left foot was also tapping on the floor to the tune of an entirely different song. That in itself was an ominous sign that as the pen made its contact to paper, it would just point and not scribble.

I watched as the blot of ink on the paper got bigger and bigger and darker so that I was not able to tell black from blue, and point from pointless.

My left foot and my left hand exchanged songs.

My brain was bleeding.

I was in limbo, like those many unbaptised infants who were shaken to death by their derelict mothers.

My brain kept on bleeding as I laughed raucously, purposefully staring at the erstwhile blank piece of paper.

“You don’t know me,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror as she put a clip on her hair as she thought it rather made her look prettier.

“I wouldn’t even imagine wanting to claim that I do, I assure you,” said Adam, seated on his chair, hands on his lap, hair slick with whatever hair slickening product he had used. He was getting annoyed with the endless routines and ramblings the girl was coming up with. In his head, not very much back, he wanted to take the clip off the girl’s hair and feed it to her.

It was about seven in the evening. A time when every house smelled like big pots of beef casserole, sauted vegetables and fried fish, chicken, or pork. It was also the time that the room Adam was currently in suddenly smelled like a whore, much thanks to the choice of perfume of the whore he had picked up on his way home. He imagined the perfume’s name and had to stifle a laugh as the word redundancy presented itself in a virtual text bubble. The laugh almost got out but he realized that political correctness, as unobserved as it was, should remain in place.

“But I want you to imagine, Adam,” said the whore, her voice suddenly purposefully hoarse, her idea of sexiness wrapped in a pink box with ludicrous lace. She stood up and turned around, walking determinedly towards Adam who was still seated much like how diplomats did.

“What’s your name?” asked Adam as the girl took off her top to reveal her full breasts, hanging, inviting and certainly tempting him to partake.

“Call me anything you want,” purred the girl.

As the girl leaned forward to give him a kiss, Adam only had one word escaping his lips. He said, “Eve.”

I stopped to feel my heart out.

Just about where I knew you’d be standing was where I exactly found what I was not looking for. You were there, wearing a black leather jacket you would later casually disclose as your raincoat. If you had met me three weeks prior to when you did, you would have probably looked at me and it would be a chance for you to help me pick the pieces up. But I met you that day, not a day or two before, not even a minute or sixty after. 

I met you when I needed to meet you. So I had to stop to feel my heart out.

Beautiful trail tracks were created behind you and as obsessive compulsive as I was, I wanted to get my hands dirty to feel whether the trail was still warm or whether my hands were just cold. You held my hand and I knew that the tracks would end where it should end. I could not be someone else when I was with you. You carelessly owned my inhibitions and stripped me down to my basics and I had no choice but to be who I had fought all my life to be.

If only I could justify, I would never have to stop again.

Looking at you, I sometimes wonder whether I got so destroyed or I became so smart that everything, this, tonight, last night, tomorrow, our interlaced fingers, your lips, my smiling eyes, our love, everything between and beyond, were not just my imagination’s creation, a byproduct of a dysfunctional heart to salvage whatever life and love still left lingering in me. Yours in your own.

But as I felt my heart out, I was silenced to assent with evidence even God and his antithesis could not refute.

I would not even try to, anymore.

Whatever it meant for someone to be whole, or to be broken, would never again bother me. We met exactly when we needed to meet.

Not a heartbeat before or after.

I looked around the room. I tried to get up but I knew that if I did, I might trip on one of the cables I was too lazy to tidy up. So instead, I stayed lying on the bed, immersing myself in the chaos of it all.

I was happy that the room was messy; that I was too lazy; that you were as lazy; that we managed, anyway.

I stared up to the ceiling and I imagined being alone and it surprised me that I was no longer capable of doing that. For even as blank as the ceiling was, I could always count on you staring up to your own ceiling, in your own universe, also hopelessly lost in the way things worked out and in trying to deduce as to who were the movers and who were the moved.

I was looking around and it was not my eyes that saw, it was not my nose that smelled, and it was not my skin that felt.

I closed my senses and in the miracle of a new found happiness, I basked in.

I am inviting you to bask with me.

There is no other way to end this, I should learn how to keep my words few. With my heart a mess and your heart probably even messier, I want to let you hear what I can’t express with upper case letters or exclamation points.

I love you.

It is a gift such that everything else will be measured against - to pale in comparison or to dim in significance. It is the climax from which nothing else can surmount and surpass.

It is a curse.

Garth walks towards the treehouse his father built when he was just twelve. It has so far survived eight typhoons, two earthquakes, a fire, and four pairs of envious eyes wanting the lot where the tree was planted where the house was perched. Even from several meters far, Garth feels the unusual invitation the simple abode offers as exhibited by the soft shivering of the reddish curtain that hangs at the entrance, the sweet smell of the leaves, and the ostentatious strength the wood exuded.

Seven more steps and he will find himself by the rickety ladder he himself made two summers ago.

That specific two summers ago, he was with Mishka, a girl who he loved, a girl who had loved him back. They were seated under the shade the tree created, showered with crisp dried leaves, none of which either noticed.

“I will remember this day,” said Garth,” as the day you made me realize that I could live with only so much.”

Mishka was looking at him with an expression concocted from a mixture of innocence and a burning passion before saying, “Remember this day for something more, my love,” and he gave Garth a gentle kiss full on the lips before continuing, “this is the day that I promise you my devotion. That I give you myself, and a vow that I shall never break my promises.”

It was the first time that they were to make love.

Two more steps and he is by the ladder. He grasps the sturdy wood and it is never even a question whether it can still support his weight. He climbs up with a purpose and as he reaches the entrance, he does not bother to use his hands to part the curtains. Instead, he lets the soft cloth kiss his face and guide him inside.

A day after Mishka had promised Garth her love and his due, they agreed to meet by the treehouse to run away - to elope. By the time the clock’s hands indicated nine in the evening was the agreement they had vowed to keep.

But by the time the clock’s mischievous, fleeting hands indicated a half hour past eight, Garth was to be found staring at the ceiling of his own room, counting the dark spots on it. By the time he had reached the number one hundred twenty eight three times, it was already a half hour past nine.

As for Mishka, she vowed and she kept it true and sacred. It was five minutes after nine and she waited by the treehouse, looking at the horizon from where she was sure Garth’ sillhouette would break through. It was only when it started to rain that she realized that the horizon would be untouched by so much as Garth’s shadow. She looked up to the sky, demanding that the heavens drown her and take her away.

She was wearing a red dress, its color getting darker and darker as the rain soaked her and her infallible promises.

Garth is inside the treehouse. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, summoning all the memories that linger around, sentient and strong. He remembers her face. He remembers the day for what it was and for what was lost in it.

And when everything is clear in his mind’s eye, he lies down on the cold floor, wood creaking as if to welcome him back, he makes love with her memory, his regrets, and her vow.

Somewhere exactly three hundred twety six miles away, Mishka begins tending to her begonias, carrying a water can by the right hand, wearing a new red dress.

Mishka thought it was funny that as she watered the begonias in the garden, it started to rain. While wondering whether she should proceed or just head back in to dry herself, she realized that it could be fun to bathe in the rain.

She spun in circles looking up to the sky, still holding the watering can, something that a day later she would misplace and lose, by her right hand. She was wearing a red dress she had bought a few days ago from the flea market and the color got darker and darker as it drank more and more rainwater. This fascinated Mishka and on the following downpours, she would regularly go out just to notice if the rain could show to her what hid between what the eyes could see and what dancing in the rain could change.

She was contented and as she danced around, she realized that colors could change so easily, so transiently, that indeed everything could change with no warning, not that that was ever needed in the first place.

She would dance and dance, spin and spin, until red had become maroon, blue became black, yellow transformed to brown, and tears became rainwater.

Mishka would never find out where the watering can was.

It was happiness such as he never knew would lay siege on his heart ever again. As clouds formed up above, the dark ones that obscured Dorian’s perspective started to dissipate in a fashion that no one would ever be able to even point a finger at him and claim knowledge of how things worked out. No one ever so foolish; no one ever to believe folly.

Dorian faced himself, something he never got himself to do since looking at himself became such a humiliating routine. Yet, flaw after flaw got revealed day after day and the enormity of him not caring increased as though the earth spun backwards, the trees grew downwards, and fires burned cold.

He had his life before him, being shown as a slideshow of memories that made the saliva in his mouth simultaneously turn bitter, sweet and sour. He blinked as one memory ended and another one played. He let out a breath every time one started and began to end. 

Dorian was smiling.

His mother; A bicycle; A piece of paper; Tin boxes; Roller skates; A crowd; A movie; Cassette tapes; Ice skates; A play; His first love; Second love; His greatest love; His heart broken;

His heart glued back together. 

The show ended and the glazed expression as manifested in Dorian’s eyes were indication enough that his comprehension of the situation was bordering between happiness and the hunger for it. He paced around, reevaluating.

In the end, he realized that he didn’t have to.

He was happy and that was all there should ever be to it.

If it were up to me, with roses and balloons,
bare feet barely making contact,
floating,
while discussing concepts
about propulsion and mechanics,
I would impress and profess.
But this time,
I wouldn’t be alone.
I need you
to profess, too.
Not my love, love.
Our love.

They glistened.

The air smelled like a thousand corpses were scattered and this was what I thought as I watched each member of the crowd desperately try to subscribe to the notion of individuality.

“In vain, in vain,” I said to myself.

And yet they all glistened.

I was walking as I always did. I tried to find familiar faces so that I could measure myself in terms of acquaintances and indifference. I looked left and right just so that I could avoid looking back or beyond. I talked to myself, friendly sometimes hostile, and polished the grand plan which included lemons being crushed and hearts being burned. I was teetering between the homogenous division of sanity and a killing spree.

The air was making me nauseous.

I counted the number: there were six.

I did a recount and realized: there were seven.

I slapped my forehead violently with my left hand and said, “Accuracy, precision, lack thereof. Lack thereof.”

Fifteen days prior, I would have been seen seated on an alfresco seat and table, sipping coffee, reading a generally perceived nice book, snapping my fingers, writing equations. But it has been fifteen days since, and the air was smelling like it needed something to shake things up.

I looked at the crowd once more as I walked. I was waiting for the cue - something that would be able to induce equilibrium and make me not teeter anymore. I saw a lady in pink with a paper bag full of lemons walking, smiling. This would not consciously happen and I unconsciously mistook that as divine wisdom infused to my brain cells which controlled my fists and made them open up.

On my right hand’s palm were seven golden bullets.

With the sun above shining mightily, all seven of them glistened.

I had my forehead against the mattress in the hospital room. I was fussing over my phone while singing Somebody by Depeche Mode over and over again.

Like so many things in my life that was at that time sixteen years young, I didn’t know why.

I looked at her and I immediately looked away. I then rested my forehead against the mattress to continue with my mundane activities. I would now and then go to the washroom to try and cry for I felt that I should be crying or else the universe would condemn me. But I knew as soon as I entered that I would leave still with dry eyes.

I justified to myself, “This is the time to be strong,” although I hadn’t a clue on where strength really came from.

A nurse came in and mumbled something about having to replace something with the respirator. My dad said something and I also said something. This went on for a while until everything bored me and I resumed with the perpetual loop of Somebody inside my head.

In the end and while it happened, it all boiled down to me not caring too much. I had been arrogant and as was necessary, arrogance would have the better of me.

In a matter of hours, I would be crushed quite like I had never been crushed before.

The nurse proceeded with what he was about to do. He turned the respirator off and subsequently, the sounds, my songs, the light in the room, my sanity, also died. I was looking at her as she lay on her bed, turning more and more purplish gray.

I wanted to scream, “Stop.”

I wanted to lift the nurse by the collar and slap him till a day less than eternity just so that he could witness the world as it ended.

I wanted to pass out.

Instead, I watched mortified as the thin line between life and death was cruelly drawn in front of me.

Suddenly, the nurse was done and she regained her colour. I was sixteen but after what I had seen, I felt much older. It was that day that I finally understood that to agree to live was to agree to die.

And yet, she lived.

And as if to test my mettle, it was the same week that the new NBA Live game got released and assuring - convincing - myself that she was okay, I went home with my brother.

I fell asleep only to be awoken a couple of hours later. An aunt called to ask us to immediately head back to the hospital as there was something wrong.

I was seated on the sofa and I was trembling.

And in the moment when I didn’t enamour the tears to come, they pompously arrived and when they did, they wouldn’t want to stop.

Later that night, I grew older some more.

And as I looked at her, I again didn’t know what to say.

But it all would boil down to me saying: I miss you, Mom.

I wish you know that I’m okay.
That I’m rediscovering happiness in a new light.
That I forever am in debt for the love you had shown me.

And to borrow the words of Neil Gaiman: My love for you would live forever.

You, however, did not.

I had nothing to say.
Whether I spoke or not wouldn’t even create 
a single ripple across this pond I’ve waddled in for too long now.
No, I was not who you were expecting.
And I was not even capable of coercing my imagination 
to prepare me with your arrival.
I was ill equipped.
And you loved me for it.
And I loved you for existing.

I am yours to discover.
To love.

I am yours.

It was while I was there looking up to the ceiling and you were hovering from somewhere above looking down at me. You were smiling and it was a wonderful revelation that I knew exactly what you were smiling about.

It was not about the horrible movie we just had watched. Not about the way we would have made presidents of countries stricken by famine faint with exactly how much we had eaten. Certainly not about the number of sticks we’d burned that night.

It was something much simpler and from there was where it derived its beauty.

(For someone who was the greatest surprise of my life personified, you were impressively debonair.)

I was talking non-stop and you were replying non-stop. You would then talk non-stop and I would reply non-stop. And in between the small spaces of silence and deep and light breaths were we able to find time to kiss.

Most of the time, I couldn’t even wait for the silences to come.

I was starting to think of you as many things. Lord of repartees; God of small and big things alike; Classic lover with imprimatur and all.

The amazing thing was that you probably thought of me in the same ways.

It was there, as I listened to you enumerate theories about space and time, lesbians who thought they were gay boys, houses built atop mountains, and life in its many specifics that it virtually ended up as one overwhelming thing, that I started seeing circles obscuring my vision.

As I slowly heard you falling asleep as I discussed about flu pandemics and the dynamics of my heart, I had to close my eyes to verify if what I was thinking was an indeed or a not.

In the darkness, I saw concentric circles.

And just right at the middle, nearest to the absolute center where time actually stopped, were you and me.

You and me from now on.

“It’s unfair,” I said.

You looked at me and asked, “What is?”

“That starting now, with every song that you sing to me, I’d fall in love more and more with you,” I replied.

You chuckled and I had to fight an impulse to kiss you so that you would stop. You said, “Then I’d have to sing more.”

“Sing all night,” I answered.

“Say your lessons, gunslinger,” said Roland.

It was easier said than done, as I was there, and he was there, too, with the wind proclaiming himself as foe and the sun coronating itself as king, to even say one word. I tried parting my lips but I couldn’t.

My body was trembling.

“Say your lessons,” he repeated.

I didn’t for I couldn’t. 

Instead, I held the revolver tightly, my hand wax white, right over my left forearm, my right knee kissing the ground, left forearm resting on left thigh. I had my left eye shut while my right eye was squinted so hard that it could filter out white light into its many colours.

Three small targets, stone chips, atop a granite boulder, mysteriously kept standing by nothing at all. The distance ridiculed me while Roland mused at the fact that I still haven’t said nor have proven learned my lessons.

Inside my head, I was singing a hymn.

“Your lessons, say it,” said Roland, never impatient, always imploring.

The wind stopped howling, obediently allowing the ceremony to start.

“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye,” I said.

“First chip is your father who abandoned you,” said Roland, fierce.

“I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind,” I bellowed.

“Second chip is your friend who is not a friend when you need him the most,” said Roland, fiercer.

“I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father,” I screamed.

“Third chip was your lover who has moved on with the world and left you to rot in your place,” said Roland, fiercest.

“I kill with my heart,” I whispered.

Three trails of smoke atop a boulder made of granite.

(For those who recognize this, sorry. LOL)

One day, my arrogance would kill me.

But until that day comes, you better watch it. Lest you become another dark mark on my road, revived by love, incinerated with hate.

I will always be this way.

Because I want to be loved without having to pay royalties to pretentions and hypocrisy. I want to be kissed by you and seriously, I want to kiss you back without having to consider if that’d kill me.

It’s funny, really.

This shouldn’t be as fun as it is.

With my fists clenched, I adore you.

And with my armor all laid down, I am ready.

You just let me know.

I wasn’t looking properly.

The sun was shining at its fiercest trying to make me see the obvious; The stars later that night were sending tremendous amounts of starlight down hoping that I would look up to notice and maybe on my way back to looking down, I would see; The rocks that were scattered around were trying to trip me, so that maybe if I fell, as I got back up I would take notice.

But none did succeed; I was blinded by hope beyond any hope. Beauty was a dissipated concept to me.

And yet, certainly not for the first time, I was mistaken.

My heart was not beyond repair. It was just that I didn’t give myself any chance to even have it diagnosed and remedied. I glorified its destroyed state by allowing my mind win over my heart.

But not anymore.

This time, you’d be confined to the four walls of my mind and there you should stay, in between stacks of brain cells about our world’s history which was very ironic.

Because finally, we are history - as you’ve countlessly said and as it really is. 

And I believe I’ve written all the documentation I should ever write to back up any argument and patch up whatever loophole there is. 

I loved you the greatest and I’m sure it’s probably going to stay that way until my last breath comes out. But I am proud that I can finally use the verb form of love in the past tense when pertaining to you. 

Love really is overrated.

Yet, we always want to prove ourselves wrong.

It’ll always be love we run back to in the end.

I don’t need the sun, stars, rocks, or whatever inanimate object to remind me that life indeed is beautiful.

All I need is perspective.

It’s funny once serendipity plays its role and once you’ve received one lie too many, you’d get it all back.

And it’s really just the way it will always be.

I am back.

It was in a place and time that  seemed separated from today  and here by more than days,  miles, tears, hopes, expletives  and bending lights.

Fifteen years have passed.

Jimmy was frying bacon and  eggs as he listened for the  pouring of rain to get stronger.  If it did, he would immediately rush to his bed and wrap himself in cool blankets and bask in the fact and glory of self-sustenance which was his brilliantly constructed euphemism for loneliness and having no one to wrap his arms around on. He was good at justifying.

As he would discover only at the very last second of that day, he was waiting in vain.

“The wait is so worth it,” justified Jimmy, “there are three hundred and sixty five days in a year, one more if it’s a leap year. I have as much chances yearly.”

As he was having coffee later that night, writing notes so that he would have something to remind him of things he should be doing, and so that he would have something to be remembered by, he heard someone whisper just close to his right ear. Jimmy felt scared but only for a few milliseconds. The whispering distracted him from making the pen’s ink channel out half baked truths and professions of equal proportions of love and hate.

He looked around his rented room which looked as if it  were the womb from which a million blackholes had come out from. When he was satisfied with what he saw and didn’t, he resumed his writing.

He took a sip of the stale coffee and gave a satisfied grunt. He wrote down as a conclusion to whatever he was writing: “You and I, we’re gonna live forever.”

He examined the piece of paper and smiled. 

Jimmy was in love with the concept of love.

He examined the piece of paper and smiled again.

He stood up with the note held by his right hand. He grabbed a roll of tape from the table he was writing on and approached either of the four walls of the room and plastered the note on whatever space was still left.

Jimmy then sat down on the floor, right in the middle of the room. A strong gust of wind breezed through the window and sent all the pieces of paper pasted on the walls shuddering in place.

A flash of lightning and the roar of thunder and Jimmy waited for the rain inside his heart to stop.

The night was normal.

Yet something was amiss. As I walked the corporate district, examining faces and nodding to those familiar to me, I was quite sure that nothing was quite the way it should be.

“Hey there,” I said to a stranger who would meet me now but would never again do so after he saw the back of me. He was smoking a cigarette in front of an office building, one of many.

“Uhh hello,” he replied.

I smiled before saying, “Guard your heart.”

I turned and left.

The night was very normal.

I didn’t know manufactured anger could be so delicious. As I let my heart devour fabricated truths, I was deluded in the fact that I knew soon enough, it would still boil down to me accepting that I was wrong about everything.

I was wrong about the whole situation.

I overestimated my resilience and underestimated my fragility which in the end led to me crumbling from the inside out.

I am now starting to learn how to look at you, then just look the other way. I am now finding ways to just consider you as a small footnote on my daily itinerary: a blotch, never mandatory but just almost always there. Your perfume doesn’t entice me as much, I believe they are just part of the universal fragrances of the world: typical and not worth the time to be insane about.

Don’t get me wrong as I’m singing, “I must confess, I am in love with my own sins,” I am still madly in love with you.

It’s just that,

You are starting to be absorbed by the crowd.

You are beginning to be just like everyone else.

Like me.

“So what’s up with you?” my omniscient imaginary friend asked.

I stopped what I was typing to look him straight in the eyes for a well calculated time of two point five seconds before saying, “Nothing much.”

“Oh,” he said as he stood up to fly around the room, a sarcastic grin on his face.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

He laughed before grazing on the carpet and saying, “Because you are here.”

I resumed my typing and put on my headphones. Just before I could start playing the music, I heard him say, “You can’t escape who you are, you only have one heart.”

The voice of Chris Martin serenaded me.

I can remember you and me used to spend the whole goddamn day in bed. I remember that the things I have believed to be real, were in fact real.

To be honest, the process has started.

The wheels are turning and whether I liked it or not, whatever vessel it was connected to, it’s taking me farther from you. Every single day is another mile that I have to compensate against. Every single mile is another knot tightening on my heart. The process needs to stop.

Whoever said that love was supposed to be a verb needs to be interrogated for an explanation. Isn’t love kept sacred anymore?

I don’t want to be lingering for too long anymore. It is flabbergasting how a seemingly good defense I’ve been fortifying for months could be shattered with a single word from you.

I command fate to stop the process.

I invoke all that I’ve learned just to make sure that whatever I hold dear of you would not be disintegrated. I vowed to remember your face and it’s that way it should stay. But just almost on the surface, it really was scathing.

Day after day, I start unconsciously forgetting all that I’ve loved about you. 

The way you said good night with a smile.
The way you kissed me just before you knew I was about to fall asleep.
The way you made me feel like I wasn’t just a random combination of atoms, accidentally being in a perfectly designed arrangement, destined to walk around to find out why he was walking in the first place.
The way you made me feel alive.

I’m starting to forget all of them.

So I’m writing them down so I’d have something to remind me of who I was and really am.

I don’t want to be like everyone else; Let this be my legacy; Let me be the one to stand up for something which I should have abandoned when I found out it wasnt’ real, after all.

I refuse to believe that this is all that there is to it. Do not expect me to stop any time soon. I want to touch you so I could help you bring down the walls I’ve made myself. I want nothing in between us. Allow me some more days of insanity before I discover the bitterness of normalcy again. It has begun.

The process scares me.

I am concerned why you aren’t scared, too.

Two days has passed.

In those two days, I’ve spent a couple thousand pesos for things I didn’t really need.

Listened to a hundred songs.

Sang dozens.

Watched a single movie.

Drank a bottle of beer which didn’t really taste good.

Saw a gazillion Koreans.

Saw miles of ubiquitous terrain.

Counted churches.

Laughed a lot.

And cried not even a single tear.

Nothing changes. Don’t mind me while I obsess about you.

I wanted an excuse to send bullets shooting up, then raining down. I looked out and saw that the world cradled violence in its arms like a newly born child and I had to laugh when I realized that excuses were not needed, after all.

I counted my fingers knowing that the final count would be ten. I knew that one day you’d surprise me. When I was in my most vulnerable, my most venomous.

I was amazed with my resilience.

I was in love with love’s longevity.

I could see you from where I was seated. I knew that the lights could bend in ways that no logic could explain why you couldn’t see me back.

I have always been the accurate definition of stupidity incarnated and given soul.

Cause after it all, I still loved you.

“Now I know there’s much more dignity in defeat than in the brightest victory,” I was singing.

The optical mouse’s light was flickering.

In between thinking of how many epileptics get seizures for staring at flickering lights and the amount of emails I had to respond to, a little piece of information caught my eye.

The king has fallen, it said.

I had to laugh hard so that I could disguise the tears that suddenly made an apparition in my eyes as tears of joy. In the back of my head, I was conversing with my domesticated demons to determine the best way to proceed.

“Indifference,” one said.

“Screw indifference, sarcasm is the way to do it!” said the other.

“Chickens. Violence is the only way to go,” said the third menacingly.

I chuckled and thought of only one word: subtlety.

I opened a chat client to see if any of my counselors were online. I saw one named Ephie and I double clicked her name using my epilepsy-inducing mouse.

I felt dazed as I typed with fervor, “The king has fallen.”

It only took a few moments before I saw the familiar prompt that a message was being typed in as a response.

“That fast?” asked Ephie.

“ROFL,” I replied although I was far from rolling and a thousand years from laughing.

“I’m so sorry, man,” Ephie said as I knew she felt my pain being trasmitted through for apparently, chat clients were very high tech these days.

It was a weird feeling. I felt like a meteor was about to fall on me and I had my arms raised in defense, knowing that in a few seconds, I would be pulp for everyone to examine.

“I want to be happy,” I typed in.

“You would be,” Ephie replied and then added, “for now, think of Vie’s boobs and how big they are. That ought to take your mind off things.”

I literally L-O-Led before replying, “Vie is my cousin!”

“See! It’s already working!” said Ephie.

I had it all wrong.

Everyone around here: All insignificant. Everyone would die, rot, and repeat the process untill they’ve had enough.

I had it all wrong from the begining.

In the end, what would matter would be what you had stood for.

And I want it known what it was for me: Love.

Ten years from now, when your life is all destroyed and you’re ugly with broken teeth and you have no one around, when no one loves you, when you’d become insigniificant,

(Start counting the years, for I’ve been given foresight.

Ten years.)

you’d be all alone and you’d wish that you saw me when you should have had.

So before I lose you to a stranger again, I really want it known and heard.

Everyone here: All insignificant.

I think l’ve lost you to a stranger again, but remember this, your broken principles would haunt you soon enough. 

You’ve been getting it all wrong.

The amount of words flowing out of my mind terrorized the part of my brain which desperately tried to be reserved and safe. To hold on to words; To use them as a weapon; To have nothing but them.

You were the catalyst to an imminent destruction, one which I conceptualized. I had wanted to defuse the bomb I had created but not for the first time, I found myself an inutile in doing so.

I could smell you from where I was seated and inside my deluded mind, I was already on top of you, kissing you like crazy, rediscovering for myself the home I had known so well, for so long. I looked in to your eyes and I knew it was safe for you saw through me, not superheroish but with plain human insensitivity, and it almost literally killed me that I saw your eyes glistening.

The glisten spelled to me a name not of my own.

I could smell you from where I was seated and it drove me mad.

There was nothing else I could do. 

There was nothing else to write about.

I was bored and for the longest time now, you have been my favorite pastime.

Believe me, I meant that in a very positive, flattering way.

I felt lost.

I saw faces around but the fact that half of them were smiling irritated me. I wanted to grab the nearest grindstone and rub their faces on it until all the smiling skin cells were gone. I was floating.

I walked out of the office.

And then I walked back in.

People were talking about an earthquake just having happened. It amazed me that people still had time to notice such mundane, insignificant things like earthquakes. God.

I was envious.

I approached a friend to ask her if she wanted to join me in my conquest to destroy the whole universe with all its infuriating particles. We had agreed to do it non-chalantly. 

I was somewhere dark, I couldn’t remember.

I was talking to myself. I said things like, “I don’t deserve this; I wanted to move north; I wanted revenge; I hated that I partake more selfishly of pain than others do; I felt numb; I am scared.”

You were suddenly there. I wasn’t looking. But I felt you there.

In the end, I knew I stood no chance.

I lose; You win.

Again.

I wanted to say goodbye but I didn’t know how to.

One day, I’d be happy again.

But without you there, love, what would it matter?

I was scanning the apartment, picking up ripped cigarette boxes hoping that one remained. On the way to my room, I stubbed my toe on the door frame and the lack of anyone else to blame made me frustrated.

I turned the computer on to have myself check whether it was any good for me to have radiation continuously barrage my brain. Your face was swimming in and out of my mind’s vision and I wondered whether the permanence of how things were going could be hindered.

I would give everything to have just one second of peace and clarity.

But I would give more not to be out of this limbo I had chained myself to.

I laughed out loud when in the process of responding to pretentious emails, I came across a message you sent me an eternity ago. You were pertaining to my blog entries which you had seemed to enjoy before.

You said, ” Now I have something else to do than read Futurama scripts off the net.”

Does it flatter you that I, the master of everything you can fathom, the invincible human being who didn’t even cry in his mother’s funeral, the heart breaker who knew not to flinch, the inventor of the right way to execute mindfucks, can’t seem to let go of you? Does it mean anything to you that I’m so scared right now of finally stopping loving you for I know that this would not happen again?

I love you.

But yes, it is time to let go. Or at least to try to.

And I thank you for being very brutally honest, the way I had always wanted it.

My challenge to the world is now out: Make me fall in love again.

The odds are close to infinity, but I am hopeful.

And purposefully naive.

But just behind my mind and heart, I’d always be loving you.

These were the thoughts in my head when just by my feet I saw a fresh pack of cigarettes, ready to burn, ready to kill me slowly.

“One day, these things’ll taste better again,” I said as I was chuckling.

As I sat on the floor, entranced by what I was seeing and hearing, much able to segregate promising fantasy from cruel reality, it was then that I realized I was not alone. As I held the remote and pressed its buttons frantically, rewinding, playing, then rewinding and playing again, I heard words of tragedy and beauty in equal proportions, soothing my heart and calming me down.

I felt the saline solution wanting to break through and free from behind my eyes and I offered no resistance. I had come to a point where points A and B connected wouldn’t necessarily create a line. It was your heart against mine. 

I listened intently, closing my eyes in ecstasy as I savored the words I heard. 

All I saw was blue as I listened to the words: “Out of that contradiction; Against unfathomable odds, it’s you. Only you.”

I felt relieved.

By gods, I was not the only one.

There are so many things I want to tell you. So much I want to get across your universe of figures and line and pie graphs.

But I don’t want to disappoint you.

I don’t want to let you down.

Cause I’m scared that I’d accomplish both with anything remotely close to letting my emotions show.

After all, I don’t think you have time for things as measly as love.

Or vague statements like, “I love you. Was. Is. Will.”

I didn’t know how to admit it, pride had always been a bitter pill to swallow, but you were right. As I took refuge inside my own delusional ramblings, I had realized that more than half of the emotions I had made myself cling to were either non-existent or were just states of mind.

I didn’t know how to say it.

We were having coffee, then. It was a very lovely night, something I knew you had noticed as well. It was around Christmas time, the blackest in a century I’d bet. The ambience, silence, lights, sounds, smoke and embers were cheering for me. I had tried to open my mouth but the arrogance I had in my blood had somehow made my spit glue my lips together.

In the end, I wasn’t able to say it.

We were in front of your house, then. You had your old guitar and you were playing some songs that seemed so ominous to me that I had truly wanted to smash the wooden instrument in to pieces. I had considered that and I reconsidered and then I kept still. In the gaps between your songs, or the moments when you surely needed to breathe, I had wanted to take your hand and tell you, there and then, how I felt. I had started moving my hand to reach for yours but the love flowing through my veins caused my body to pump out too much adrenaline so that I was so excited to even move an inch.

When the time came for me to leave, the words left with me.

Your face was plastered on to a digital space where I was digitally stalking you. I was reading what you had scribbled on the walls to try to get an idea of what you had been up to. The information I saw both unnerved and liberated me. I saw a button, a way for me to get my words heard and my feelings vented out. I clicked on it and started.

I didn’t know how to say, then, how much I needed you.

I hope this would suffice.

One day, things, all at once, will stop messing with my brain and I will see this situation the way I should be seeing it. I will see the truth and that will kill me. The saddest thing is, come that time, it’d still be you I’d want and love.

I really, really, really want to run out of material to write about.

I want to write down all the words in my head just so I could burn them and turn them to soot and smoke, the way they should be, and the way they should stay. I want the soot and smoke to join the clouds so that they could touch your skin and stroke your hair when it comes down as rain.

I want the words, soot and smoke to do all the job for me. 

Because truth be told, I’m running out of ideas.

I want to be able to stop singing songs which in no way relate to me. I didn’t write them. I didn’t play them. I don’t own them.

But in a way, they all are about you and me. All it needs is a little more love. They don’t justify.

Never will.

I want to create a full multimedia presentation about my plans for us of grandeur and how I was able to rewrite the whole concept of happily-ever-after, and how I managed to discover an emotion much greater than something as measly as love. I want to tie you to a chair and gag your mouth so that you wouldn’t be able to react, cause your reactions scare me, your words scare me, your smile scares me, your frown scares me, and I’ll make you see.

I want to make you see the way you should be seeing.

I am not. You are not.

I am, really. You are, really.

But let’s talk about you some more. You and you alone.

I really want to stop loving you now. But I’m as far from achieving that as you are far from doing the exact opposite.

“Want to go down for a smoke?” you asked as you unexpectedly entered the office.

I bit my tongue and hoped that it would bleed. I told my heart to be still while it told me to get moving.

Fuck it, you were smiling.

“Okay,” I said as I stood up from my station.

Square one.

The italicized text was tormenting me.

Truth is typing a message, it said.

I watched wide-eyed as the period became two periods which became a transitory ellipsis. Truth was taking its time writing its capitals, I thought to myself.

In a wonderful river of emotions where my happiness or demise was about to be transmitted through voice over internet protocol clients, I waded. In my head, my braincells were painting a utopian society. In my chest, my heart excitedly waited.

The italicized text kept on tormenting me.

Only when I looked harder, I realized it was actually enticing me, reaching out to me, telling me to calm-down-everything-will-be-fine-i-love-you-we’ll-be-together-again. Truth was going to make me feel all right.

It was dark, of course. Always dark. No suns, stars, moons, bulbs, fireflies, luminous crosses, young faces, or fire.

It was the darkest coming out from the loneliest.

It was the loneliest coming out of the hilarity of everything that shouldn’t have even been mentioned, done, and redone.

It was chaotic, always. Always almost but never was. Chaotic places where people got saved by people who had drilled the holes for other people to drop into; where climbing out was tantamount to delaying the pain that would be orchestrated by symphonies bigger than music itself. Sing, sing, sing.

It was deadly. Breaths of life from mouths and lungs full of hatred and anguish fed by envy and a perpetual nostalgia towards things past and over, lingering in spaces between rationale and stupidity.

It was beautiful, out of beat, forever the deviant, human.

It was the most beautiful.

But then again, would it really matter?

“Till when do you actually intend on doing this?” she asked from the backseat, “See that, we’ve passed by that yield sign five times now.”

I didn’t answer right away. I just grasped the steering wheel harder as we turned to another street. I turned the radio off before I answered, “I don’t know.”

She sighed audibly and pulled out from her handbag a small pocket mirror which she used to check the oiliness level of her face. Satisfied, she placed it back in and focused instead on me once more.

“Well you had better start finding out, Ron,” she said.

It was my turn for audible sighing. I stared intently on the road, noticing everything on, beside, and beyond. It was at that exact moment I had tried to deliberately run over a dog that I said, “Leave me be, please.”

I had clicked a cigarette lit before I adjusted the rear view mirror to see the backseat empty. I stepped on the breaks and turned the radio back on to listen to some more static.

“Darn it I’m lost,” I said.

The sky was blue.

The fluffy streaks of clouds that augmented its beauty served as transient, ineffective filters against the sun’s angry heat. Looking up, with sweat streaming down from his forehead to the many crevices of his aged face, Desmond whispered to himself, “It’s you again, my friend.”

The trees around him shivered as a gust of wind blew ominously, selfishly carrying whatever it could take along. Wiping the dirt off his right hand with his left, Desmond uttered, “Well, hello there.”

He walked a bit to the edge of a lake he had haunted so many times before. Stooping and looking over to the surface of the water, he talked to his own reflection, “Only time will tell.”

He sat down on the ground and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and a small silver lighter.

While chain smoking, he waited for destiny to prove itself.

It kind of hurts when the kind of words you write turn themselves into knives. Don’t mind my nerve.  You can call it fiction but I love being submerged in your contradictions.

Cause here we are.

There’s no shame in being crazy depending on how you take these words I’m paraphrasing, this relationship I’m staging.

Tides they turn; hearts, they disfigure, but that’s no concern when we’re wounded together.

What a beautiful mess this is. It’s like picking up trash in dresses.

But it’s nice to say that we’ve played in the dirt.

What’s with the drastic layout change? I could easily say that it does not symbolize anything but that’d be another lie.

I’m just trying to shake things up.

I like entropy. I think it’s very delicious.

Whatever that means.

There would come a day in anyone’s life when you couldn’t really cover your ears anymore. When you’d have to finally remove the hands covering your eyes. When you’d have to realize the fact that maybe, just maybe, your heart was broken beyond repair.

And that you’d just have to face it.

No matter how many drops of tears you count out of your eyes, or how many times you’ve swallowed your pride, you’d finally realize that maybe, just maybe, you’ve lost even before you had picked up the gun to start the battle.

That you’d been ill-equipped ever since.

This is me saying that I tried my best. This is me saying that I’m sorry. This is me having poured out all my heart’s contents. This is me taking a bow in front of everyone.

This is me saying that I was wrong, and that I’m sorry. Wrong in saying that love could conquer all. Mistaken in believing that I could win you back. This is me losing faith in anything that you could consider as real cause with one wrong move, you could be stepping on their crumbs.

In the end, it all comes down to farewell.

“Forever is just that time between hello and goodbye, after all,” an ex once told me.

What was not informed to me was what’s supposed to come after.

This is me giving up for the final time.

Maybe, just maybe.

I apologize. The heart I have in my chest is the only one I’ll ever have and to ask me to stop using it to love you is like an open heart surgery I’m too broke to afford.

Pardon me. You asked why I love you and I answered to the best of my abilities and whether my answer suffices is out of my knowledge and control.

I sincerely apologize. My time is mine to spend and if I choose to spend it waiting, I guess that’s no one’s business except mine.

Forgive me. I try my best to act normal and borderline cold and strong, but as that question one song posed goes, how does someone do normal when the foundation of normalcy has already been removed? 

I didn’t mean to. You came into my life without any warning and you left in quite the same fashion, and in that premise is exactly the way how I somehow hope you’ll come back.

This will only take a blink of your time, I won’t linger too long, I will wait. It is just so unfortunate that you, being my god, live your life in god years.

Your blink to my years.

Your sleep to my death.

I love you.

At the state Markus was in when the situation was presented to him in a shiny black briefcase, he was in no condition to discriminate choice from obligation. It was more than black and white for him. It was more than life as compared to death, which he already had preconceived as trivial things, both inseparable and complementing.

He was wide-eyed and unblinking. He was ecstatic and in that moment, as blood was being mercilessly pumped around by his naive heart, he realized that indeed, people had way too many things to worry about - more than they could handle, more than they should.

The briefcase smelled like those old books Markus knew from home and from the moment he got a sniff of it, he was transported to times of violence and blind love, and the art of tolerating whatever it meant being caught in between.

“I love you, Markus,” his mother used to tell him, “you are the fruit of whatever your father and I mistook for love.”

Markus, innocent and young had always replied, “I don’t understand.”

His mother, old and tired, had always chuckled before saying, “Neither do I, baby.”

But his mother had long been gone and it used to freak Markus out as piece after piece of the memories he had of his mother was cruelly taken away by the hands of the clock that made their way to a perpetual de javu. He couldn’t even remember her face. 

With trembling hands, Markus grasped the intricate lock mechanism of the brefcase and worked his fingers to have them opened. He pushed the case open and with eyes with pupils dilating, he peeked inside.

The briefcase was empty except fora small used-to-be white envelope that Markus had immediately snatched out. He opened the flap and pulled out whatever was inside. 

It was an old photograph, one which he had never seen before of him, his mother, and his estranged father. The moment Markus saw it, all the memories that he had ever known about his mother came rushing back in. He flipped the photo to see if anything was written on its back and without being surprised at all, he confirmed that a short message was indeed present.

Markus didn’t even stop the tears from coming when they did as he read what his mother had written to him years ago. It said:

Markus,

Dont’ be like your parents. Don’t be like us.

Markus fell on his knees and without really realizing why he did, said, “Only love. Nothing but love.”

I shake through the wreckage for signs of life; Scrolling through the paragraphs; Clicking through the photographs; I wish I could make sense of what we do; Burning down the capitals; The wisest of the animals.

Who are you? What are you living for? Tooth for tooth, maybe we’ll go one more.

This life, is lived in perfect symmetry; What I do, that will be done to me.

Read page after page of analysis; Looking for the final score; We’re no closer than we were before.

Who are you? What are you fighting for? Holy truth? Brother I choose this mortal life.

Lived in perfect symmetry; What I do, that will be done to me; As the needle slips into the run-out groove.

Love - maybe you’ll feel it too.

And maybe you’ll find life is unkind; And over so soon; There is no golden gate; There’s no heaven waiting for you.

Oh boy you ought to leave this town; Get out while you can the meter’s running down; The voices in the streets you love; Everything is better when you hear that sound.

Spineless dreamers hide in churches; Pieces of pieces of rush hour buses; I dream in emails, worn-out phrases; Mile after mile of just empty pages.

Wrap yourself around me; Wrap yourself around me; As the needle slips into the run-out groove; Maybe I’ll feel it too.

Maybe you’ll feel it too.

Looking for the final score; We’re no closer than we were before.

(I can’t believe how much I love this. Like how I’m somehow disturbed with how much I love you.)

I was lying on the kitchen floor staring at the celing fan, thinking of as to why I was there in the first place.

I was flying, sifting the clouds for rain, singing a song, while gently saying your name again and again.

I was falling, sommersaulting in the air, counting the seconds it’d take before the crash, hoping that you would notice the effort.

I was walking, eating cotton candy, iced tea on the other hand, not minding the heat of the sun.

I was naked, carrying a pillow, trying to cover myself, cotton candy and iced tea gone.

I was running, looking back I saw zombies following, I looked at my hand, I had a grenade, kaboom.

I was crawling, I saw a pair of legs, I looked up, I stood up, you were there, serious, you were naked, too.

I was crying, you leaned closer, we were kissing, you whispered something and I cried harder, you said, “Yes.”

I woke up.

“So what now, Mr. Cruz?” an imaginary friend asked.

I dropped the pen I was using to scribble some random notes and said with a solemn voice, “I don’t think I can go any further.”

My friend laughed and I had a strong urge to throw a strong transcendental imaginary punch. He stoppped laughing to say, “I’ve heard that before.”

“I know,” I said, picking up the pen again, “but this time I think I’m strong enough.”

“Or tired enough,” added my friend.

I didn’t believe that it was possible and yet, it was. To find beauty in bloodshed; To receive love while at war; To synthesize wisdom from hatred.

The frontline was not what I expected it to be. The fear I had assumed to come didn’t, and the clarity I never even wished for presented itself like a pompous circus performer. 

I stopped pondering to aim, fire and kill.

I stopped aiming, firing and killing to think about you and the way you made me feel like I wanted to survive and be able to go home.

If I had believed then that to take someone’s life was something I would have to think of twice, I quickly realized that the luxury of second thoughts was not even afforded to me. Not to pawns, anyway.

And yet, what a wonderful pawn I felt that day.

I looked to my left as I ducked behind a boulder to see a friend, or at least what was left of him, and I saw that he was not a subscriber to my beliefs of beauty in war. It was quiet, I thought. Something had to be done about that so I aimed my rifle to the sky and fired a few rounds.

I closed my eyes and counted to three, and what pleasure I had derived from the simple fact that I had my life and its end, perfectly timed by three words.

The first word: One.

The second: Two.

The third: Three.

In the small time between the second and third words, while I had my eyes closed, all I could see was your face.

And how ironic that the world could tolerate bloodshed but not us in each other arms.

“Sorry,” I whispered as I watched your face fade away.

Did you honestly believe that things would stilll go the way you planned them? My, just the other day, I went to this place where they fried bacon to perfection, and so I was like, “I’m gonna order bacon and eggs from this place again cause they have mastered the art of golden brown bacon making.”

Fifteen minutes later, I was staring down at a sloppy, depressing-honestly, badly fried bacon with eggs that tasted like they were cooked the night before. I was kind of imagining all the salmonella bits and pieces squirming their way, happy and perky, all over the scrambled eggs. 

I ate it, anyway.

Did you honestly think that what you envisioned would be the same as what the future had laboriously made sure would be in store for you? Because if you did, I’d unfurl the banner, call on the marching bands, dress like a clown and say, “Welcome to the club!”

I wouldn’t, of course. But it’s tempting to see your reaction.

Did it hurt when you didn’t get what you wanted all because what you wanted, you shouldn’t have wanted at all? We all live in a world of plastic apologies and genuine pain inducers so I suggest that you just inflate your chest and pray that the air would fill the void guts and gumption couldn’t.

We wouldn’t, I know. Because we are weak.

Did I honestly think that this was going to be easy and that love and pain could be segregrated, after all? That you would be the grand prize to a war that would leave too many casualties, where the grand jury was the grand public, and that one wrong move would result to a grand failure? That loving you would forever erase my limits as to how far I’d go, redefine the meaning of enough, and scrap the words stop and move from my vocabulary till everlast?

Don’t worry, I both did and didn’t.

Just now, I was about to give up on you.

And then I saw your face and smile and realized that that’s not an option.

Let me tell you a story about that day I realized I was in love with you.

I can’t go too much in to the details.

All I know is that my story then is my story now.

If you’re wondering why, I’ll let you take a peek in to the deepest trenches of my heart and the surrounding membrane of my mind, and there you’ll see that your guess is as good as mine. Aside from the emotional obstacles that you’ll have to contend with, you’ll also find a deeply rooted obsession which is eponymous to you and bears your face.

If you still have to ask why I am still here instead of somewhere else, I’ll let you in to my imagination and there you’ll see the utopian life I had laboriously built where the population count is two: one, me, two, you.

If you can’t fathom as to why I miss you so much then I guess I’ll never be able to answer that. I just do.

If you can’t bear to look at me cause there’s something inside you, probably as deeply rooted as my obsession, that hinders my line to make a connection with yours, don’t worry, I won’t force you to. The same goes with my lack of appetite to stop myself from giving too much again, when I had already given all, then.

If somehow you don’t believe that I am for real, despite my history of pretentiousness and hypocrisy, I won’t enamour you to. It’s all my fault, after all.

Believe it or not, I’ve learned my lessons well.

If you still can’t get your heart to grasp the simple fact that I love you, maybe because love isn’t enough after all, maybe because you just don’t want to, I can’t possibly blame you. The wrath I’ve ingested is the wrath I’ve cooked for myself.

If you had to ask me why I love you, then you’re being unfair.

You fell out of love and the battle of getting you back in is all I’ve ever known to be my reality now.

This time. This time.

The pillows lay forgotten after the epic pillow fight. Had we scored the bout, we would have realised in the end that no one actually won.

I was at the corner of the room trying hopelessly to mend the photos that we had accidentally torn apart. You were lying on your bed, intently counting the number of spots on the ceiling.

“Twenty three,” I said, my voice solemn.

“What?” you replied, your eyes not leaving the ceiling.

I looked at the photo I had laid on the marble floor, depressed for I couldn’t recognize what it depicted. I placed a palm on it for a couple of seconds, closed my eyes and thought hard what was supposedly on the picture, before saying, “Twenty three spots.”

I stood up to get some iced tea for myself and on my way back to the room, I slipped and fell to the ground, hitting my head hard on the sturdy floor. I got up, my vision blurry and walked on.

As I walked in, I noticed the hearts that were laid forgotten and the memories that were torn apart all around the room.

“Twenty three,” you said.

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“Twenty three spots,” you replied.

“Is it over now,” I asked, beyond exasperation, just beyond belief, then added, “Can I start now?”

The harrowing emotions that kept on inhabiting the crevices of my chest and the hollowness of my soul had now become uninvited guests I had grown to love. That fact scared me. I was at a point in my life where I truly wondered whether anything was worth it. Whether anything was there because they needed to be there or they were just carelessly placed there by powers that be, bigger than them, stronger than their strongest.

I awoke that day with conviction. I said to myself, as I drank my glass of milk, that that day was the start of something good. Of something that wasn’t necessarily borderline pathetic or emotional. I had been branded too many names by people past and present. The list could be too long than I had wanted it to be but just for the sake of honesty and integrity, I believe it was my moral obligation to prove their words wrong.

Or true.

Epehemeral: I didn’t mean to change. It’s just that I did.

Emotional: It hurt really bad when I was left behind. Hurt people cry.

Mean: I was mean to you cause you intimidated me.

And So On and So Forth: This is me. All me.

Yesterday, a very credible online quiz gauged my true age to be forty. No matter how trivial that quiz was, believe me, I was scared.

“I’m not gonna stop saying I love you with all the stories that I make,” I said.

“I’m not gonna stop you saying you love me with every story you fabricate,” you said.

I opened my eyes cause I couldn’t spend the whole day daydreaming about you. I stopped writing cause to be writing a thousand words about you everyday was plain stupid. I stopped looking at you while you weren’t looking cause it just made it more obvious how much you refused to look my way.

I’d stop everything except this.

I write down everything that I wanna say.
I write down everything that I wanna change.
I write down everything that I wanna be.
I write down all the places I wanna go to.
I write down anything that I want.
Is yesterday, tomorrow, today?

I’ll keep writing until you are mine again.

I was digging through my bag as I had to pretend I was doing something in hopes that you would stop bothering me. I did this for about two minutes before looking up to see you still standing there, your arms crossed, your index finger just to the left of your chin, your lips puckered.

I smiled innocently and hypersyllabicated the question, “Yes?” so that it sounded more like, “Hi-ye-hes?”

“Unbelievable,” you said, this time hyposyllabicated so that it sounded more like “Bla-bol.”

You entered my room and settled down on my bed, non-chalantly brushing off all the magazines and random incriminating stuff I had littered around. You then took your shoes off and for a while, I thought you would go all the way until you only had your undergarments left on. Luckily, you didn’t so I stopped fiddling with my bag and pretended that I had found what I had been looking for: a box of tacks.

“You know,” you started, “I would die if I lived in this burrow.”

I groaned in protest and muttered, “So why don’t you?”

“What’s that?” you asked.

“I said why don’t we go out and eat at the diner. I’m quite hungry,” I managed to save myself.

You sat up on the bed and while I was seated on the floor, you put your arms around me so that it was like you were about to slit my throat from behind like those ninjas in Tenchu. I shivered slightly but I knew that however infinitesimal that reaction was, you would notice it. Sure enough, you did as evident with the chuckle that I had just heard.

“Kiss me,” you said.

I didn’t move.

“Kiss me,” you said again.

I got up and took my shirt off and locked the door.

Amazing.

Did you know that when I closed my eyes, I could see little specks of blue that floated around like molecules in a tightly sealed container. I researched about it and I found out that I had to perform some steps to figure out what those blue things were.

Step One - Cleansing

I had to wash my eyes with ginger ale, boiled exactly from 10:17 PM until 10:23 PM. After washing, two drops of the ale should be administered to both eyes and then ten blinks should be done alternately. After this, I had to say, “I see with my heart and not with my eyes.”

Step Two - Sacrifice

I went to the market to buy a live pot belly pig to be sacrificed so that its soul could guide me to enlightenment of the identity of the blue specks. A cross incision should be done using a bread knife on the pig’s belly, with the longer part of the cross pointing to the east. Its blood should then be drained into a wooden goblet from which an amount would be taken to inscribe the infinity symbol on my forehead. After that, I had to say, “I kill with my heart and not with my hands.”

Step Three - Intercession

This was simple enough, all I had to do was utter the phrase “Jai Guru Deva Om” eleven times and then say, “I pray with my heart and not with my mouth.”

Step Four - Truth

I was instructed to close my eyes and focus only on happy moments that has happened in the past. So I did just that. After a while the blue dots appeared and their quantity was such that I had never seen before. Although I had my eyes closed, I watched them as they floated indulgently around, almost purposeless in their existence. Just when I thought that everything was a hoax and that I should have stopped when the pig was crying so loudly, that I should have just cooked it, the blue specks suddenly stopped and without warning had coalesced to form a figure.

And guess what, it was your face I saw.

Martin felt like he was at the core of a blackhole. It was kind of funny to him that it was in that exact moment, one made of uncertainties and realizations, that he remembered this song he always used to sing.

Everything is in order in a blackhole, the song went.

He looked at her, feeling and being lost because that’s how she always made him feel. He wondered whether he was as tough as what he envisioned himself to be.

“Then say it,” Martin had said.

She was always the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Even with all the weirdness and all the drama that engulfed her, she was beautiful and precious.

Several moments later, Martin looked down and with anger he never thought he could summon, he whispered quite violently to the ground and the force that kept him to it, “You will not win.”

He closed his eyes and waited for a response and when he received it, he had no other resort but to fall on his knees. Tears started welling from his eyes and he whispered, with desperation in his voice, “Entropy.”

“I wish I could say that I’ve got no regrets,” I said, seriousness belying the incredulity that I felt inside.

“Then say it,” a friend replied, sincere with his words yet fake with his smiles.

“But saying that would be one more to pile on my desk,” I retorted as I continued to gaze up at the stars, wishing that the heavens had space for one more. It was a beautiful evening both to be dying and living on, I thought to myself, and I had to snort out a laughter cause if I did not, I might puke as a result of my incessant want to contradict myself.

“I don’t understand you,” said my friend.

“It’s just a song, Martin,” I said, smiling the same smile I had been taught to learn since age five, then added, “Stop being oh so serious.”

I stood up and raised my arms to the sky and yelled so loud I surprised even my own ears, “You can’t defeat me!”

Martin also got up and stood before me, a curious expression on his face. He was saying something which could have been anything at all. I closed my eyes cause the stars beckoned me to do so. The strain my muscles felt was almost painful to bear as I tried hard to hear the stars’ response. Without warning, for Martin and myself, tears filled my eyes involuntarily and I fell on my knees.

Martin knelt down in front of me, trying to peel my hands off my face which I’ve been covering, crying like an abandoned child. 

“What happened?” he asked.

I managed to stop the sobs long enough for me to utter, “I lost. Defeated.”

“Lost what? I don’t understand,” Martin said, his voice laced with panic boiling underneath a well calculated timbre.

I replied with one word: “Gravity.”

“Can you hear me?” I said as I adjusted the microphone and the webcam so that you could get a better view.

“Yes, I can now,” you replied.

I took my shirt off cause that night was like any other night that week - sweltering and windless. I tried my best attempt at a smile and I thought I rather succeeded. You smiled back, anyway.

“Nice to finally see you,” you remarked, as you fixed your hair out of your face. You looked grungy, just like in your photos.

I readjusted the camera cause I thought it showed my bad angle and as I did that, I noticed you remove the sheets off your bed, placing it on one side of your bed crumpled, and could hear you murmuring, “I don’t want to stain these. I promise Mum I wouldn’t dirty my sheets again.”

I laughed quite raucously and only stopped when tears were already obscuring my vision. When I had managed to still myself, I sat directly in front of the camera and extended my hand towards it, offering a virtual handshake, then said, “I’m Kelso, but you already know that.”

You accepted my digital gesture and reciprocated, “I’m Kyle, and you know that already, too.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds. Had we been counting, we would have realised that exactly twenty-three seconds had passed, and in that moment, the unacquaintedness of our quaint friendship had dissipated.

I cleared my throat loud enough to be transmitted. You responded by rubbing your nose with an index finger. Unconsciously, I was already drawing relativity from you and it astonished me that I felt you doing the very same thing. 

“This is amazing, huh?” I said.

You didn’t reply.

“Shall we proceed?” you asked.

I smiled and this time, there was no need to try hard at all. I answered, “Yes.”

I stooped down and out from under my bed, I pulled an old wooden box and laid it on my lap. When I glanced at the screen, I saw you having the very same position as mine. I opened the box and took out a chrome revolver which I cocked as soon as the cold metal had touched my colder hands. I watched you intently as you did the same with your silver one.

I looked at you and was not surprised to see you crying.

“For the wounds that will never heal,” I said.

You nodded then said, “On the count of three?”

It was my turn to nod.

“One,” you said.

“Two,” I said.

“Three,” we said.

Kyle’s promise of clean sheets was broken.

I know we’ve never met except on the internet
I’ve got the camera by the bed so is yours up yet?
Oh I know this is a fast and crazy connection
But you keep monopolizing all my attention
Even though we’ve never met I think I’m losin it.

Oh I never planned to fall this way.

-Fallbrooke

“So is this something new or am I just getting old?” I quipped.

“Neither,” you quickly replied.

I chuckled in spite and proceeded with the conversation which was turning out to be quite life changing. I hated the fact that there were no warnings whatsoever but I quite loved the way you made every word tumble out of your mouth with careless honesty.

“I missed you, you know that?” I said, not looking at anything in particular.

You didn’t reply.

“I love you so much, you know that?” I said, looking only at your eyes in particular.

“Do you like anime?” you said.

This is fun, I thought.

“I really can’t,” you said.

After that, I went to the office bathroom and locked myself inside a cubicle to cry for a predetermined length of twenty seconds. I savored the fact that my chest felt so heavy that it might actually burst. That to me was proof that I was still human in a time when being numb felt so inviting.

I stared at my wristwatch, a gift from my brother, intently watching the second hand making its way to its familiar destination.

“Twenty,” I whispered to myself.

I then opened the cubicle and went out, feeling a lot better. I was kind of tired of faking smiles around and the reality that the genuine ones were being deprived stung right in the chest where it counted the most. Fake smiles were better than none at all, I thought to myself.

Imagine us five years from now, who knows we might be together. We might not be. The difference between those two is spelled by my actions and your reactions. I wish there is no more need to turn away after we shake hands.

I still look up to the imaginary stars of my schizophrenic induced universe, wondering whether you also see them. If you don’t, I wish I’ll have the chance to name each one of them to you. You, after all, are their creator. Their sparkle came from your eyes. Their light came from your smile. And their beauty was derived from your words.

I want to be aware of what you feel about me.

I hope you are aware of how I feel for you.

You fell out of love and it was the hardest thing to accept but I figured, could it really be too hard to bring you back in? I want to stop closing my eyes just to make love with your memories everyday.

I think I’m done licking my wounds. Doing it more could just scrape the scabs. 

I think I know now what had happened.

“I miss you,” I said to a picture of you and I had to fight back tears cause suddenly, looking hard enough I realized, what I truly missed aside from your kiss, embrace, your entirety, was me writing the definition of happiness across all walls for all to read.

“I love you,” I whispered.

I closed my eyes to listen for any response.

Space And Time Continuum Part I

I will say it now cause I might suddenly run on empty. The colours in my life are a bit brighter these days but sometimes they tend to blind me and I act stupidly, even more than normal. 

I admit, I might even be genuinely happy right now.

The stars still refuse granting my wishes and maybe because I kind of despise them, all because they’re up there and I didn’t like being looked down upon.

But enough about condescending bright spheres and let’s talk about me. Cause these past few months, it’s been all about you, you, and some more of you.

I am insatiable and you, you are hard to find. Thats why I’m going to give it all I’ve got now.

Don’t tell me to stop cause that would only motivate me more. I love you and I’m determined to get you back. I’ll do whatever it takes.

But one thing I know, I must be careful, cause the harder I squeeze, the quicker you can be gone.

“It is I,” I said.

“I’m sorry?” you asked.

I was quite insulted but I tried not to let the disappointment show. I answered, with the most serious voice I could come up with, “Love.”

“What do you mean?” you retorted.

“You,” I replied casually.

You scratched your head and waved a hand as if to dismiss a rather annoying flying notion. You then said, “You’re not making sense, you know.”

I smiled and answered, “Exactly.”

He walks into my office with a stack of folders in his arms. He is rather buoyant as usual. He will grin when he sees me. I will grin when I see him.

He lays down the folders on my table and says, “Here are the folders that you asked for.”

I happily examine the folders and answer, “Thank you for the folders.”

He smiles before he turns around and leaves the room. I smile at him before I look down and examine the folders some more.

We live in a world of keyboard clicks and distant voices, I realize.

She walks into my office with a stack of manila envelopes in her arms.

Click-click-click.

All notes are fictional.
And the sun is square.
And the moon is bigger than that square sun.
And I have moved on.
And one and one makes three.
And I’m strong.

Go figure.

“Let’s make it clear,” I said, wiping the coalesced sweat on my forehead and flicking it to the ground, creating a simulated rained on concrete.

It was somehow foreboding of how my day would turn out that when I looked up, I saw dark clouds hovering above quite like how vultures stalked their dying food preys. I looked back down and saw you still standing there, patiently waiting on what it was I wanted to make clear.

“Let’s make it clear,” I repeated, “you want to come home with me cause you have nowhere else to go. Is that right?”

You shyly said, “Yes.”

I brusquely placed both my hands on both your shoulders and looked you straight in the eyes. I had a rather charming grin on my face in which I allowed you to bask in for a well calculated amount of time before leaning closer to kiss you full on the lips.

I slipped in a bit of my tongue to get maximized results before saying, “And you do know who I am, yeah?”

Even more shyly, you said, “Yes.”

I chuckled heartily then said, “Very well, let’s go. Don’t tell me later on I didn’t tell you my name.”

Up and about, the clouds only got darker.

It started with the fifth letter of the alphabet. A vowel. I hated vowels. You had to buy them in this game where you spun a ridiculously large wheel to solve puzzles when in reality, vowels were overused and underappreciated.

E.

I was the biggest paranoid. Mix that with my incessant want to always win and make things rhyme. I half always wished that the dementia would subside in due time.

Rhyme. Time. I just had to laugh cause I was tired of crying. I liked seeing people in torment cause that’s the only time I’d be able to judge them as human.

J.

It was the tenth letter of the alphabet that completed the scaring of the chicken feces out of me. I would never ever win. Never and ever. Ironic.

“I am the best,” I whispered to myself.

The sky opened up and sent down a single raindrop that fell on my cheek.

“Why are you crying?” people would ask, mistaking the raindrop for a tear.

“I’m not. The best don’t cry,” I would answer.

The sky would open up to let down a torrent.

Ever and never.

They say an end can be a start/Feels like I’ve been buried yet I’m still alive/It’s like a bad day that never ends/I feel the chaos around me/A thing I don’t try to deny/I’d better learn to accept that/There are things in my life that I can’t control/They say love ain’t nothing but a sore/I don’t even know what love is/Too many tears have had to fall/Don’t you know I’m so tired of it all/I have known terror dizzy spells/Finding out the secrets words won’t tell/Whatever it is it can’t be named/There’s a part of my world that’ s fading away/You know I don’t want to be clever/To be brilliant or superior/True like ice, true like fire/Now I know that a breeze can blow me away/Now I know there’s much more dignity/In defeat than in the brightest victory/I’m losing my balance on the tight rope/Tell me please, tell me please, tell me/please…/If I ever feel better/Remind me to spend some good time with you/You can give me your number/When it’s all over I’ll let you know/Hang on to the good days/I can lean on my friends/They help me going through hard times/But I’m feeding the enemy/I’m in league with the foe/Blame me for what’s happening/I can’t try, I can’t try, I can’t try…/No one knows the hard times I went through/If happiness came I miss the call/The stormy days ain’t over/I’ve tried and lost know I think that I pay the cost/Now I’ve watched all my castles fall/They were made of dust, after all/Someday all this mess will make me laugh/I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I can’t wait…/If I ever feel better/Remind me to spend some good time with you/You can give me your number/When it’s all over I’ll let you know/If I ever feel better/Remind me to spend some good time with you/You can give me your number/When it’s all over I’ll let you know/It’s like somebody took my place/I ain’t even playing my own game/The rules have changed well I didn’t know/There are things in my life I can’t control/I feel the chaos around me/A thing I don’t try to deny/I’d better learn to accept that/There’s a part of my life that will go away/Dark is the night, cold is the ground/In the circular solitude of my heart/As one who strives a hill to climb/I am sure I’ll come through I don’t know how/They say an end can be a start/Feels like I’ve been buried yet I’m still alive/I’m losing my balance on the tight rope/Tell me please, tell me please, tell me please…/If I ever feel better/Remind me to spend some good time with you/You can give me your number/When it’s all over I’ll let you know/If I ever feel better/Remind me to spend some good time with you/You can give me your number/When it’s all over I’ll let you know/If I ever feel better/Remind me to spend some good time with you/You can give me your number/When it’s all over I’ll let you know.

They say an end can be a start.

It was an inexplicable night for hating. It seemed as if every element in my life were conspiring to make sure that I totally almost lost my mind.

I imagined myself looking at you, the small proximity that we inhabited filled by my hungry breaths and your cold aura. I imagined touching your face and leaning closer cause I felt it was a shame and a crime that there was even a gap between us. I imagined being naked and you being fully dressed for I wanted to do your unravelling myself. I imagined my skin against your skin. I imagined being cold and you being so warm. I imagined kissing you and I had to stop imagining for imagining kissing you was too much.

You had always been too much for me.

I had always wanted too much.

I remembered myself looking at you, the spaces that separated us were infinitesimal in magnitude and existence. I remembered touching your face and leaning closer cause I felt like I would die if I didn’t. I remembered being naked, skin on skin with you, after I’ve taken piece after piece of your clothing off. I remembered your body being so warm that it was almost surreal. I remembered us kissing passionately and I had to stop remembering for remembering us kissing hurt too much.

I had always been not enough for you.

You had always wanted so much.

“I got myself tattooed!” said an unacquainted friend.

“What kind of tattoo?” I asked, curious.

He said for me to wait one second and I actually had to wait for thirty seven. He then sent a photo of the tattoo with an intricate lettering that said “Hate.”

“Why hate?” I asked.

He sent out a digital laugh and said, “Look closer.”

I did and after a few moments, I whispered to myself, “Love.”

I sent out a digital smile.

I’ve been racking my brain for a couple of hours now, trying to find something to write about.

I keep on failing.

That is a good sign in so many ways.

It’s either I’m having a writer’s block.

Or even simpler, I’m getting happy.

Tomorrow, I’ll try again.

I cocked the gun, fear and determination mixed on my more than usually expressionless face. If I had spoken then, I was quite sure it’d be trembling. Fortunately, actions indeed spoke louder than words.

I slowly raised my arm and pointed the gun straight at his face. He stepped back and opened his mouth to speak.

He said, “Go. Shoot.”

I started squeezing on the gun’s handle to pull the trigger. For the first time that night, words were needed.

I said, “All is fair in love and war.”

I put the gun into my mouth and pulled the trigger.

I didn’t even hear you scream.

First Law of Debate:

“Never argue with a fool - people might forget who’s who.”

Seay’s Law:

“Nothing ever comes out as planned.”

The Law of Reality:

“Never get into fights with ugly people, they have nothing to lose.”

Boob’s Law:

“You always find something in the last place you look.”

Conway’s Law:

“In any organization, there is one person who knows what is going on. That person must be fired.”

Love’s Law:

“If you can hold on, hold on.”

So it started like how all things that you anticipate too much starts: blissful and plain satisfying. It ended the same way all things that you dread too much ends: traumatizingly painful.

I’m not talking about love.

I asked myself, this couldn’t be possibly real. Life was not supposed to be a movie and I hardly believed that I agreed to any contracts whatsoever. I was no Hugh Grant and you were no Julia Roberts. We spent most of our time devising ways to hurt each other in the most efficient way. If we were soldiers, we’d be dead one minute into the war cause our tactics were so cheap.

This can’t be love I’m writing about.

I was happy when I was with you but you wanted to go out with your friends cause you watched that movie about birds and you thought you realized you wanted to be just like that. I encouragingly said, “Spread your wings and fly,” but come on, I didn’t mean for you to fly away.

One big loud, “Come on!”

What the hell is love anyway?

We were firm believers of abstract things. You mixed music and I wrote vague words. I sprinkled my prose with passion and you infused your tracks with love. We tried to share each other, more literal than it could ever, ever get. But in the end, everything ended anyway.

This isn’t about love. This is about whatever we had that we had mistaken for love.

Whatever that was, I think it was better than any stupid state of mind.

I was thinking about what best to do to have my mind stop thinking. I had been problematic about the economy, the fact that I didn’t like pulpy orange juice which surprised me, how I didn’t know what to do with the surplus of emotional baggage I dragged along everywhere, and of course, how important it was that I made my heart continue its repair. It was mind-boggling.

See, I was having a dream. It was one of those dreams that you kind of knew that you were dreaming, and you want to one up your mind by controlling the course of the rather vivid visual imagery that brought rather scarring virtual wounds. It was always fun to know that at the end of the dream, which happens even before you open your eyes, you always lose. I have to stop thinking about dreams.

But see again, I’m floating on air and I am quite sure that if I continued doing that, I’d be afraid of planting my feet to the ground and be like one of those people you hate even if you never have a reason to. Misplaced anger, if you must. I have to come down now.

“What are you thankful for?” you asked.

I smiled and took a swig of another bottle of pulpy orange juice before replying, “I want to thank you for giving me so much material to write about.”

Listen, the things I’ve been saying, you shouldn’t pay attention to them. They are all lies. Like this one. I just figured it all out, this is nothing like the last time. The last time was grand but this one’s an epic.

See one last time, I’ve been daydreaming about you and it made me feel useless that even that one, I couldn’t control. You had been nothing but an absolute wonder. An absolute uproar. And to tell you frankly, I think I miss you.

But then again, I could be lying.

I entered my room and took my clothes off so that I could make love with my imagination again. As I looked at your picture, the one formed in my mind and the one I had in my wallet, I asked a stupid question open for anyone to answer.

I asked, “Are you real to me, or are you non-dairy creamer?”

Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Don’t let me go.

But you did.

It was a Friday. I was sure of it. I couldn’t remember what happened last Thursday or Saturday and to tell you frankly, I hardly cared about any other day of that week.

Friday.

You had been sending bullets at my station and I lazily dodged everyone of them. During times of inspiration, I would snatch one in the air and place them on a tumbler, the same one where I kept the staple wires.

It would make a lovely center piece, I thought.

I counted the number of ammunition you had fired and I realized that you had never achieved this quantity before.

I smiled wryly then whispered, “This calls for a retaliation.”

I picked up my phone and keyed in a message, short and simple in its cruelty. I sent it to you and waited a few moments, knowing that it wouldn’t take long until I get a response. True enough, the phone beeped and I read what was sent. It was from you, of course.

Your message displayed an ellipsis and nothing else. Looking at those three little dots made my smile flourish.

“Target down. War won,” I whispered.

The vanilla milkshake tasted a little too sweet but I didn’t mind. The vanilla milkshake I’ll drink tomorrow might be a bit bitter, but that’s alright.

After all, I love vanilla milkshake.

The waitress approached with a smile and said, “Anything else you’d like to have, sir?”

I matched her smile with my world famous grin and replied, “Nah, everything’s not perfect but that’s how I like things.”

I lit a cigarette, right after extinguishing the last one.

The boy got up and looked up. He could still see the silhouette of the girl who pushed him against the moon.

He checked for any indication of broken bones. When he found none, he placed his hands over his heart and checked its beat. He smiled and said, “Still a bit broken, I see. But I’ll get there.”

He looked up again and when he saw that the girl was no longer there, he whispered, “Thanks.”

“Will it hurt?” asked the little boy, uncertainty painted on his face which already was a dirty canvass to begin with.

The girl said, “Doesn’t it already?”

The boy didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice sounded like a metal pipe being squeezed by two more metal pipes. He said,”I’m scared.”

“It’s okay to be a little scared,” replied the girl and with a mischievous expression on her face, she added, “but I promise you’ll feel better. It’ll be great.”

The boy turned his head to face the girl. The mischievous look on the girl’s face immediately turned to genuine, instantaneously produced concern. The boy nodded to ask a question he couldn’t put into words.

“Need help?” asked the girl, taking from the boy’s gestures.

The boy nodded again.

The girl smiled and then stepped forward and closer to the boy and in one swift motion, placed her hands to the boy’s back and pushed hard.

The boy fell over the cliff.

As the girl watched the falling image of the boy, she chuckled then whispered, “You’ve taken the first real step. Very good.”

It depressed Johnny that what he considered as the happiest day of his life had lasted only one day and that as he watched the sunset, he couldn’t help but feel that the heavenly bodies were conspiring against him. In fact, when the moon made it’s appearance that night, he raised his right arm with the middle finger of his hand directly pointed to the bright sphere.

Three years prior to that night, Johnny was to be found in a weirdly crowded library, a stack of books in front of him, or in the cafeteria, a stack of books in front of him still. It was in the same cafeteria, on that same year three years ago, that the gap between the books that secluded him from the outside world had allowed a ray of light to pass through. That ray of light had brought with it a vision - a mixture of long brown hair, dark eyes, and fair skin - and before Johnny knew what he was doing, he had already stood up to get a better vantage point.

There she was sitting alone. There she was waiting. There was where his life would start. What he couldn’t possibly know then was it was also there, in that girl with the long brown hair, that his life would end.

He made his approach quite like how a prey would approach his predator for reasons unknown. He didn’t know if he was wearing a smile; All he thought about was what to say. As he was about three feet away, he quickly scanned the books that the girl had on her table. His eyes landed on a book titled “The God Of Small Things” and it was based on that that his first ever words to her were patterned from.

“What would he do?” he asked, his voice rather croaky due to the simple fact that he didn’t really speak that much.

“I’m sorry?” answered the girl, her voice innocent and sweet.

“The God of small things,” replied Johnny and after a deep breath, “when He finds out that there are things much bigger than what he imagined.”

The girl laughed heartily and Johnny was suddenly scared that he was making a fool of himself. Instead, the girl gamely said, “All big things are made from small ones.”

After a week of routine meet ups in the school cafeteria, Johnny and the girl were inseparable.

Almost exactly three years after that fateful conversation about the God of big and small things alike, Johnny had proposed marriage to the girl at the beach. She didn’t actually say yes to him. Instead, she gave him a kiss and for Johnny, that was more than what he could have asked for. And as he walked alone on that same beach, he felt that all the demons could make their appearance, or that the angels could suddenly descend from the heavens, and he wouldn’t have noticed nor cared. All he could think of was that kiss he had assumed as assent to his proposal.

The next day, the girl was gone with another man and Johnny was shattered.

Johnny moved out of town and even the best detectives, should they search, would not have been able to find out what he did with his life. Even if they had managed to track him down, they would discover that Johnny, depression incarnated himself, did absolutely nothing at all.

A week excess of eighteen years later, Johnny awoke on his bed covered in cold sweat. He just had a nightmare and he screwed up his face trying to remember what had happened in that ephemeral dream of his. He did this for about thirty minutes until he finally gave up. He got up and walked towards the shelf where he kept his eyeglasses. As he picked it up, he caught sight of the text boldly written on the book where his glasses were atop of. It said, “The God Of Small Things.”

Even the heavenly bodies wouldn’t have been able to stop the transformation of Johnny’s depression to anger. Thinking without thinking about it at all, Johnny got dressed and on his way out of his house, he passed by the kitchen to pick up and bring along a knife, the only one he owned.

Inside his head, he was counting to five.

It was ecstatic. That was the only word that could fit.

It was funny how so many things could be defined once you’ve picked yourself apart. And Johnny, as he carefully tread the road generously abundant in gravel, was relishing the fact that enlightenment came at the darkest moment of his life.

He was wearing a smile on his face, the first one to have blossomed since he has learned the cruel reality that nothing would go as planned. His heart was beating at a relatively normal pace, and for the first time in what seemed like a day less than eternity, he could see not only the grays and the blacks, but those colours that hid surreptitiously in between.

For example, the glorious red of blood that was congealing slowly on his hands.

The night before, Johnny woke up after a horrible nightmare that he could not summon from the land of memories where it got buried the moment he opened his eyes. Should he had remembered, he probably would have shed tears, another first in a long time for him. But be it as it was, he forgot all the details of the dream, but like any other dream, the shadows of it clung to the back of his mind quite like how a rose stem with thorns would hungrily cling to a cotton shirt.

Johnny was a man who believed that obsession was the most beautiful of emotions. In fact, he was so engrossed with the misery that he felt that he did not want to get any better. He was obsessed with the drama and addicted to the pain it brought.

So he continued walking, the blood now completely congealed, not minding that he was aware that a few meters behind him, a boy of seventeen was following him, clutching the very same knife that Johnny had used to slit the throat of the boy’s mother. Inside Johnny’s head, he was counting to five, the sudden burst of clarity still pulsating within his chest.

“Five,” Johnny said aloud and with a sharp pain on his back, he fell to the ground.

The boy looked at him from above, anger distorting his face.

Before the last breath would have any chance of preempting his moment, Johnny added, “Thank you.”

The boy struck again.

It was a normal dream wherein I was in college waiting to flunk an exam. I was seated looking around the room trying to see if anything could try to make sense.

When i looked out the window, there you were with the stupidest camera I’ve seen in my life and you were aiming it at me. I smiled the stupidest smile I could come up with.

The professor then saw you and you immediately said, “I just want to take his picture.”

I smiled again but that time, I smiled a hurt smile.

When I regained my eyesight after being momentarily blinded with the camera flash, you were already walking away with an estranged friend.

I suddenly got up and jumped out the window to follow you. When I managed to catch up, I hugged you from behind and then you turned around to kiss me. I was crying full time by then.

But then he came and you released me.

The estranged tiger friend said, “You just have to fill one half of your soul with good memories. Then you’ll be fine.”

I sobbed and answered, “Memories are nice but that’s all they are.”

Please, you, you’ve ruled my waking hours. Now stay away from my dreams.

The doctor came in in quite the same way every doctor comes in any room: indifferent and nasty. I was on the white bed with white matress, white pillows and white sheets. The latter I had up to my chest, using it as a shield in case the doctor moved in any way that I didn’t like.

“Mr. Cruz, right?” he said, looking at his clipboard, his eyeglasses at the tip of his nose.

“Uh-huh,” I answered weakly, not wanting to make any eye contact.

The doctor walked to either side of the bed, still intently reading the notes he had on the clipboard. Occassionaly, he would look at me. It was a good thing that I had mastered the art of peripheral vision use.

“So what’s wrong with you, Mr. Cruz?” he asked.

For the first time since he walked in, I looked him in the eye and answered, “That’s what I’m here to find out.”

He sighed and checked his notes one more time. After what seemed like ten seconds or eleven, he said, “There’s nothing wrong with you, Mr. Cruz.”

I just had to laugh.

“Do more tests, Doc,” I said, almost imperiously.

“End of the line here, Mr. Cruz,” the doctor said, more imperiously.

“If nothing’s wrong then why does it still hurt?” I almost screamed.

The doctor pulled out a sheet of paper from his clipboard and handed it to me. When I checked what was on it, I opened my mouth to speak only to close it not even a second after. On the piece of paper was a child’s drawing of a heart. Examining closely, one would see that the heart was stitched up in places here and there. I looked at the doctor because there was nothing else meaningful to do.

“You see? There’s nothing wrong with you. You just have to be careful with the seams,” the doctor said.

Tears filled my eyes cause they just had to. I sat up so suddenly that the doctor stepped back. The tears fell to the sheets cause like me, they could not fight gravity. My chest felt heavy cause that’s how it has been for the past two months or so.

“I just want to be okay, Doc,” I said weakly.

“You and everyone else,” he said.

The night was cold; It was very quiet; The only light that I could see was the creation of the stars being reflected in your eyes; I could feel and hear your heartbeat cause I had my ears to your chest; I looked up to your face to see if you were awake cause if you were not, I would wake you with my kiss; You opened your eyes and you smiled at me; You told me to just be there, hugging you; Cause it made you feel home; Cause you felt secured; I told you that I felt the same. I felt home.

And I’m telling you now, even though I haven’t a clue on what you’re doing every single day, or what places you haunt now, or what words you speak, or what feelings you feel, even though I couldn’t feel your embrace now cause you have someone new, someone better, someone else, I want you to hear this although I know you wouldn’t, here it goes: I still feel the same.

You’ve deprived me of my home.

You’ve deprived me of my first step.

You’ve taken away my reality.

You’ve drilled a hole through my skull that my sanity drips out, slowly but I’m assuring you that it’s surely.

You’ve made life hell.

While you… you’re happy.

And yes, everyone, I’m bitter.

Fuckin-a, I am bitter.

So as not to create confusion, a status you had claimed the day you pledged goodbye, I am making it clear. This is not about you.

It took you one day to write all your promises, but you broke them all even before you had them made. I can still taste the sweet words you whispered; only now, they have turned bitter. That passionate look in your eyes simply took my breath away, but don’t worry, it still does, only now, literally. Of course this is not about you. Trust me.

Unfortunately, what we shared in the short time we spent has now crumbled into small pieces. I know you told me to put back all the pieces, which I did, and you know that. But it didn’t last long. Soon enough it crumbled again long before I was able to put them back together. And if you are thinking again that everything here is about you, it is not.

Remember when you told me you that you loved me, the sun was about to bid the earth goodbye, and when it came back to greet the world again, you chose not to love me anymore? It bears a strong resemblance to what we had shared, but I apologize, none of these is about you.

As you can see,

Everything here is about you..

and me.

(Stolen from arkhanghel, a good example of how everything is weirdly and sarcastically interraleted and why no one should ever think that they’re the only one.)

I figured it out now: Breaking is what our hearts are for.

It was kind of weird that the first thing that I said was how your shorts looked weird. That you looked like a kid from the 80’s. That you looked taller than before.

It was funny that again, after everything, you still took my breath away that I couldn’t say what I truly wanted to say.

How I missed you and how good you looked that night.

The chance ended and I ended up with another regret embellished to my name.

If only they could see; If only they had known you the way I did, they would understand how someone could have chosen to go the lengths I’ve gone to have just one more day with you.

I’m holding on to you; I never thought it would be this clear.

Epilogue

The owl was smoking a cigarette, his fifth straight, alone on the terrace of the house he currently stayed in. He looked up to the stars and the starlight that shone on him directly sent a message.

The owl nodded then said, “Yes. This is indeed a time, more than any other time, for reminiscing.”

He pulled out a small piece of old parchment from under his wing, plucked one of his feathers and pecked on his chest until it bled. He then dipped the quill and filled it with his own blood and wrote on the piece of parchment words that he sincerely hoped were not just the ramblings of a broken heart.

He wrote: “I promise we would walk on again. There’ll be a time to justify destiny - Owl.”

He then let the parchment be carried away by a gust of wind, hoping that the message will be received and heard, and with his eyes closed, he lit his sixth cigarette for the night.

Prologue

No need for horrible transformations. No time for laborious metamorphoses. Even the usual introductions were skipped, trampled on, then kicked aside. In a world where most everything was short-lived and transient, they were never exceptions. The only difference was, they didn’t clamor for everlast; They didn’t fight for perfection; They didn’t envision a utopia. They took the world as it was and their reactions were unanimous: it wasn’t half-bad.

The tiger was there.
The owl was there.
The wolf was there.

The tiger loved potatoes.
The owl loved milk.
The wolf loved green mangoes.

The tiger played the drums.
The owl played nothing.
The wolf played the guitar.

The list could go on on how different one was to the other, but the important thing was that they didn’t care. They found joy in the facts that the tiger could do flying kicks; That the owl talked too much, and that the wolf slept all the time. Where everyone was busy, including them, they found time. They created time. Even though the wolf lived his life in wolf years, the owl in owl years, the tiger in tiger years, time converged to accommodate them all, and each basked in each other’s company.

“Is it hot,” the owl began asking one night they were sitting in front of the wolf’s office, “or is it just me?”

The tiger growled a laugh and did a cartwheel. the wolf was busy listening to a happy song from hell so he didn’t reply.

“I’m hungry,” said the tiger. this wasn’t a surprise for the petite feline with a giant heart (and appetite) needed his french fries once every couple of hours or so. With the stars trying to shine them with their light, the two furry creatures and the feathery one, made their way to the nearest food lagoon.

On the way, the wolf suddenly spoke, irritation in his voice, “My phone’s on empty again.”

The tiger and the owl who were used to this occurrence (oh, especially the owl), just smiled at each other.

The food for that night : a double cheeseburger, chicken fillet with rice, fried chicken, two large french fries, large cola, and chocolate sundae. That was just for the tiger. The owl and the tiger shared their food : two burgers, two fries, two cokes. This was a world where wolves didn’t eat owls who didn’t eat rats.

Everyday was a different day. Last night was probably, arguably, the same as the night before that, and the night that night, and tomorrow night, too, but today seemed a bit more fun than the today of yesterday, and hopefully the day after today which, in other words, was tomorrow.

The tiger might have ran away a few times and the owl might have fumed over the wolf’s sleeping habits, but those were just bits and pieces, spices galore, that made everything more colorful. After all, three predatory animals needed their fun to stop each one from eating the other.

Over dinner, while the three munched away, the tiger suddenly stood up and said in a voice that defined seriousness and joy combined, “Guess what?”

The wolf and owl both looked up from their plates. “Got an S in Concertino in Blue?” the owl asked with a bored hopefulness in his face.

The wolf, his shoulder shaking left and right in excitement, said, “Silent Hill XXV has been released?” then he added, with an almost crazed look on his face, “Holy shit…”

The tiger roared. “Nope. You’re both wrong. My flight’s been canceled.”

The owl hooted and the wolf awoo-ed. The tiger did more cartwheels and a rather awkward butt-on-the-floor-up move that the owl tried to emulate. The owl failed, of course.

There were really not much words said after that. The meal was over and each one, once again basked in each other’s company (”and cuteness!” the owl would hoot). As they were making their way to a place they had been in before, but somehow they didn’t really know, people might spare them a glance or a hundred.

They were not like any other group and they prided themselves in that. They were not mediocre and they glorified themselves in that. They were not perfect, but at least they were not ugly. And as they made their way to a path in which each one had paved and erased, erased and paved, one more time, did it again, paved and erased, erased, then finally paved, each one held the other’s hand so that no hand (or paw, or feet) was idle.

The stars and suns and moons gazed down on them, unselfishly bathing them in weird light, a mystical light, and without them knowing, the feathers had been incinerated, the fur melted as though fur really melted. Distortion and changes followed, and what was left was unity - in form and structure.

And they walked on.

I was seated, my butt aching as much as my heart did. He asked me to wait so me, trying to be a good boy and all, waited.

My expression was somber. My eyes were puffy. If someone were to look at me, they would have dismissed me either for a drug addict or a guy who had recently discovered that daydreams were better than nightdreams.

I replayed in my head the things that were said and my heart clamored as my mind weighed the substantial significance of each and every one of them. I realized that I was being redundant - with my words and actions.

I saw you from a distance walking towards me with a plastic bag carried by one hand that I knew so much. The other hand was holding a vanilla sundae that I equally knew so much. When we were face to face, you handed me the cone and pulled out one thing at a time from the bag.

A red bottled iced tea and a pack of crunchy nuts.

You didn’t say anything and I couldn’t say anything more.

You hailed a cab and asked me to go in. I was about to ask where we were going but I somehow knew that I shouldn’t state my questions. When you spoke to the cab driver, my heart did a backflip and I wanted to kiss you there and then.

“To Eastwood, please,” you said.

That night, we visited the place where we spent our first night in.

I was not able to thank you during that time when we were still together. I was not able to say how sweet I thought that gesture had been. How you made me internally cry all because I was overwhelmed.

Better late than never: Thank you, RB.

“Why don’t you talk to him?” Gino asked, pertaining to my ex who I had a sudden urge to speak with.

I laughed and said, “He has a boyfriend now.”

“So what?” asked Gino.

“Well you know about the dynamics of relationships, Gino.”

Gino, whose heart I’ve broken twice in the past, chuckled then said quite sarcastically, “Wow, Ron.”

I laughed with him.

“Find me a date, Ron,” he said.

I kiddingly raised my arms as if to say “Me! Me!”

“Shut up, Ron,” said Gino.

We laughed and both realize how the dynamics of relationships had given birth to our aftermath friendship.

Give me two more years and maybe I’ll be through, over you.

Just kidding.

The concept of love is already dead to me.

I’m the only one laughing.

I dreamed I was drowning in the river Thames. I dreamed I had nothing at all; Nothing but my own skin. I dreamed I was drifting on the howling wind. Slipped away from your open hands into the river. Saw your face looking back at me - I saw my past, and I saw my future.

I dreamed I was watching the young lovers dance. I reached out to touch your hair but I was watching from a distance…

I cling to love like a skidding car; Clings to a corner. I tried to hold onto what we are. The more I squeeze, the quicker we’re over.

You take the pieces of the dreams that you have. Cause you don’t like the way they seem to be going. You cut them up and spread them out on the floor. You’re full of hope as you begin rearranging. Put it all back together. But any way you look at this, looks like the lovers are losing.

I dreamed I had nothing at all; Nothing but my own skin.

Now is the time of our comfort and plenty. These are the days we’ve been working for. Nothing can touch us and nothing can harm us. Nothing goes wrong anymore.

Love is.

I was mistaken.

I had thought that the jump was something that I could overcome. I could remember quite clearly the buoyant confidence I had felt before taking the leap.

I was arrogant.

As I lay sprawled on the grass, feeling the warmth of my own blood around the cheek that was pressed to the ground, I had to restrain a laugh from coming out.

“Wings,” I whispered, a hint of sudden realization on my face, “I forgot I needed wings.”

Darkness and life became one.

They say that moving on has several stages.
Shock.
Denial.
Anger.
Worthlessness.
Acceptance.
Reconstruction.
Understanding & compassion.
What I didn’t know and what I can’t understand is this:
I’m back at the start.
Love really had me good.
Everything ruined. My mindframe. My walls. My defenses. My perspective.

All because of a single dream filled with your dream-filled face.

And it’s with this that I start singing again.

I join the queue on your answer phone
And all I am is holding breath
Just pick up I know you’re there
Can’t you hear?
I’m not myself

Well, go ahead and lie to me
You could say anything
Small talk will be just fine
Your voice is everything
We owe it to love
And it all depends on you

So listen up
The sun hasn’t set
I refuse to believe that it’s only me feeling
Just hear me out
I’m not over you yet
It’s love on the line, can you handle it?

So how do I do normal?
A smile I fake
The permanent wave of cue-cards and fix-it kits
Can’t you tell?
I’m not myself

I’m a slow motion accident
Lost in coffee rings and fingerprints
I don’t wanna feel anything but I do
And it all comes back to you

So listen up
“This” sun hasn’t set
I refuse to believe that it’s only me feeling
Just hear me out
I’m not over you yet
It’s love on the line, can you handle it?

So listen up
Look at me straight
Just hear me out
Don’t make me wait
I’m not myself
I can’t take this
Love’s on the line
Is that your final answer?

I join the queue on your answer phone
And all I am is holding breath
Just pick up, I know you’re there…

So listen up
“This” sun hasn’t set
I refuse to believe that it’s only me feeling
Just hear me out
I’m not over you yet

Analyze my silence, young man.
I long for the day that I’ll hear the music of a guitar being strummed.
As for now, I’m a burning cigarette.
You have to admit it, I’m the best.
I dream of days filled with boxers and kittens.
Cartoons and men being risen from the dead.
As for now, I’ll be the world’s biggest ash tray.
All this, while eating my favorite flavor of ice cream.
Read between the lines, lighter.