sometime after this sunset we will no longer be passing this way, and slowly the grass will reclaim the footpaths we have left on the ground.

at sunrise, we will try to train our feet again, to step on and get used to new earth. perhaps that place would be very different from what we have here now. then again, perhaps not.

with dew underneath them, the crisp leaves of grass will resist, but they will eventually give way as the morning passes. with constant visits of our feet, we will tame the soil with our tracks and marks. we will call the place our own at mid-day, and it will be more than just a place we pass by. each patch of grass will cradle a memory. each boulder will hide secrets.

and then we have to leave again, and slowly this place will give itself up to no longer be ours...

i do not want time to stop anymore. rather, i want it to pass by in a blink of an eye. i want the transition to be abrupt. i want the day, this day to end quickly without the entire drama of a sunset. to move on in a click of a switch, light extinguished from a room.

because its hard to stand by and watch the enemy twilight tarry. i see demons in people's faces as they meld with the background.

i will concede one small fact; no one, nothing makes words flow out from me like this. they flow out not in bundles but in ferociously incoherent streams its hard to single out and capture the essence of this ramble. it takes not a few tries...

because it is like this. there should be more important things that this head should be preoccupied about; new things happening, new feelings blossoming. but once this kicks in, everything takes a back seat. everywhere it is empty, except this.

in this incessant and compulsive drive to flesh out reason and rationality, these unmended cracks become the reason why holding on and keeping everything of the new inside has become an insurmountable challenge so far. something always comes out. something traces back. something looks for something else...

and it doesn't stop. it does not know when or how. until one point in time when the torturous silence will finally end of the battle for endurance between forces that do not even know each other exists...

and it goes back on itself again and again, feeding on itself, a vicious cycle of failing to cross boundaries and sitting on fences instead

between then and now.

each night stretches to days, a week, a month. i do not know why or how it lingers. bittersweet and somber, it smothers, it rains on my sunshine. gentle piercings of words, of conversations that have me as the only witness. each night a different subject, some unremembered, some so vivid. each night

i am a prisoner that comes back to his cell. under those watchful, soulful eyes, sight work as chains that bound, and releases me just before light. each night

long winded words lead to nowhere. coming from nowhere. going anywhere but to the place they were intended to. confessions and lamentations. questions. sometimes in strings of words forming sentences. sometimes said as a silent stare. each night

i cannot take my eyesight and parting always is difficult. sometimes we are up a hill, sometimes on the shore, dead branches and seaweed. sea shells and sand, love foregoing safety. each night

the stars rise and the sky is traced by fingers trying to connect the twinkling dots. trying to form letters, pictures, form, meaning. and it never seems to end because after every sunrise is a sunset. life pretends to be easy. no love, no glory. time flows ever faster, then slower, slower, louder, slower. and each night

stretches to days, a week, a month. i do not know why or how it lingers...

think of it this way.

i wait. for those few precious letters to touch my ears, to mend my heart. only then can a quarter of a century's worth of existence can be deemed

Complete.

haberdeys to me. =)

( Read more... )

it always feels strange at a distance. seeing your reflection in a mirror from a few paces away, the image distorted by the uneven bending of light...

but it is even stranger as you come closer, realizing that the person looking back at you is no longer you but someone else familiar; the depths of his eyes are the same depths of someone who you once held so close...

it is a sign that the line that dutifully demarcates one worlds' color from another has finally given way. it is a sign of an unforeseen consequence as i progress in my escaping the fatal pull of celestial objects overwhelming memories...

there is a streak of madness in those eyes. impropriety. malfeasance. recklessness and frightened abandon. underneath a thin sheet of composure it throbs, tense and unsure...

it may be just the light playing tricks on my failing eyesight.

or it could be the impetus of uniformity; acrid eyes and apathy slowly spreading, deadening, one person at a time.

"tell me something you'd only tell a stranger."

just before a sunset, that time when the earth exhales the the putrid heat of the day to give way to the cold night breeze, you gave me a visit.

your shape-shifting form lingering in faces that have meant so much, too much, too me. everything in me wants to reach out and hold you tight. but i know that always, always you are a breath away out of reach. my legs are too human to run after your fleeing form. my voice too lifeless to touch your hearing.

i walked away, my turn to flee. i need the night's cold wind to free me from this suffocating city full of heady memories. but you followed me, a persistent presence that refuses to leave, showing me things that could have been, telling me the stories of those moments when i went wrong. telling me how this heart is cursed because when it loves, it does not know when, or how to stop.

and then you came close, close enough for a whisper,

"i will tell you something i'll only tell a friend."

... and proceeded to tell me of the reality, and what happens; the story of the one that i hold dear.

the wind was still warm, i was staring into nothingness as you finished your story.

and then it rained the entire night.

it's just a small vial of blood. but it throbs in my memory like a painful, festering wound. it hangs there neatly and quietly. but its image screamed inside my head, it made my fist want to bleed on the walls.

it's just a small vial of blood, but seeing it hang by his neck made me weak. every single drop of it came from your veins, and now it is tucked safely close to his heart. my eyes might have been two large anxious question marks because he looked at me, smiled, and nodded; enough to tell me you are his.

"you create your own phantoms, you cast your own shadows..."

lethargy was the word for the day starting from the moment i woke up until to that time at night when i again enter that realm that has become your new-found home where your voice is too real, your smile too clear. and that little vial of blood sparkles with joy proudly on his chest.

"you create the most elaborate representations of your deepest and darkest fears that spill out into your waking hours, depriving you of your new-found sunshine, a sunshine that may not last long if you cannot begin to notice and treasure it..."

and then suddenly out of a moment's nowhere, a set of disconsolate words. tell me again if my dreams have extended a few tendrils into this world.

i have terrible eyesight at twilight. everything curiously appears two dimensional; moving images in a picture without any depth. it becomes quite scary when you can no longer tell when your skin is still safe from objects it should not touch; you end up with nasty raw flesh every single time.

the sun setting does not scare me. it is what happens when the sun sets that gives my heart a sudden shudder it would rather not want to feel. letters blur. fine print appear as dots and dashes. objects bleed outside their outlines. faces blurring into scary shapes worthy of horror movies...

but most of all it is the uncertainty, like groping in a room of full of distorted images, trying to gauge the dimensions of the room you are moving in. it is the sudden insecurity of one moment knowing what, where, and how things are, and the next when the light fades, a gossamer shroud alters how everything appears...

perhaps i trust my eyes too much, and my sense of foresight even more; the latter always being closely entwined with continuity, with hope. now that too seems to slip away as the light slowly fades. each step pulled back by hesitancy and fear, but is constantly egged on by the impetus of necessity.

thing is, something seems to be flowering at sunset. but the failing light hides, twists, distorts its beauty. it is really a quarrel with time. and everybody knows that if you quarrel with time, you must prepare to lose.

two storms passed with me barely noticing either one. mud-splashed sneakers, hair in wild disarray, the biting cold seems to have lost its teeth. that or i have simply lost the feeling, the sensation of being able to recognize pain.

in one of those stormy early mornings, i woke up without a feeling on the tip of my left pinkie. the numbness started to go up until the entire finger could no longer feel anything. it lasted for two days as the two storms edged this island; enough to make its presence felt by the rest of the population. but not by me apparently.

by the second day, as i was sitting there contemplating the cold, a string of irregular heartbeats erupted from my chest. enough for me to stop what i was intending to do for that day. enough that it led me to sign torrents of paper to document a few days of this faulty heart's existence. enough that i had my chest prodded by different cold, metallic instruments i have never seen before.

the lady doctor said i should be experiencing pain a numb pain on my chest. i said i didn't. i just felt tired, like i've been climbing up a side of a hill, hopelessly reaching the top. she said my entire heart is not pumping as much blood as it should. i told her maybe it's just tired, like me.

she made me take a pill for a broken heart. and i figured, if i could get this somehow fixed, i might regain the feeling not just with my little pinkie, but to be able to smile on those rainy nights. not because of anything present, but because thunderclouds and rain reminds me of time, somewhere, sometime in the the past.

i'm sorry. i am new at this.

this is your turf. i know that. you have been doing this since i do not even want to think when. you have been at this too long that for me who is new at this, this is a harrowing experience, but for you, this is just chicken feed. and somehow it is something that you come back to again and again for all the so many reasons that you and the circumstances can come up with. i am not even sure what, or how, or why, but i have not resorted to this path. i know that it would change me and the way that i look at things.

until now.

you see, because of the relatively sheltered environment that i got from the curious collusion of choice and circumstances, i have been led to believe that i was strong enough to take huge strides up and down those ladders that people set up for others to climb and reach them. i thought i was strong and can do anything if only i desired it with all my heart.

i was wrong. hearts break after too much strain. one wrong move by the forces that be and whole worlds shatter. it was too late that i discovered that i was only as strong and as stable as the ground that i stood and moved on. and how can my strength and resolve not waver when there was nowhere to stand on, nothing to grasp, nothing to hold tight, to hold close...

i go down this path not to follow you, but to find myself in the things that you have been through. i chose to know how you can think the way you do, not because i yearn for the heat that used to sustain my everyday existence, but because i want to understand how it could slowly die out the way it did...