07.26.2020

I couldn’t recollect how it began nor how it ended. But, it’s still vivid in my mind how our outstretching arms were always reaching out for each other’s; how we’re good at pulling them back when they’re a touch away. Always close, but never close enough to taste each other’s skin. I remembered how intoxicated you were by heartbreak, that I became a perfect illusion of someone you could adore. An object of infatuation. It was delighting, the way you romanticized superficiality that I featured. In your eyes I could saw a veneered version of myself that I, too, would desire. If only you cared a little to peel off a bit of it, would you let reality crush you or feigned blind and deaf instead?

grieving

It was raining the day she passed away. My parents sat by her side, constantly reciting Qur’an verses that she tried to follow with all her remaining energy. I watched her letting out a long breath, then everything went quiet. The next thing I heard was my mother crying out loud, and the sound of my father stepping out of the room. One of our relatives entered the room to pull me up to her embrace and took me out to the living room. Rubbing my back to console me she said, “take a deep breath, dear. It’s okay. It’s okay.” I didn’t realize I was crying. I was still trying to grasp the name of the throbbing pain that felt alien to me. Everything hurt so much to the point where I started to feel the air slowly being sucked out of me too. Until the sound of a table being punched hauled me back to reality. It then followed by screaming and whimpering. For the first time I witnessed my father in such state of devastation, I knew things wouldn’t be the same after that.

I was only ten years old when she left. I didn’t understand much about that kind of grief from losing someone and not being able to see her again forever. So I just moved on. Little did I know that later in my adulthood I would continue thinking about her. Images of her searching for me in the neighborhood every lunch time, preparing a warm bath for me every morning, or taking me to the market were playing on my mind like old movie reels. It was unfair that she was in my life for such short period of time, when she’s the one who exhibited the kind of love that’s reassuring; the kind that established a safe space for me to run to. The love that I could feel in the warmth that radiated off of her on that cold December morning when I was swallowed up in her arms as she attempted to keep me off from hearing my parents fight. The warmth that I'd been struggling to discover ever since, in every person that I met and places that I went – only to no avail.

I often wondered if things would have been different if she were still here. Or even when the destruction was inevitable, I would at least feel less lonely. She would have saved me like she always did. She could be the rope that tied all of us together. Now each one of us is slowly slipping away, and we can't figure out how to hold on to each other. And I might have been running away for too long I just can't find my way home.

farewell

as i was driving home, every fragments of what i had left behind recurred to me like a cancer striking back after certain period of remission. once in a while i'd glance at the passing trees and the sun rays that filtered through them. they made my mind wander to those days when my grandfather used to pick me up from extracurricular activity at school and i'd hop on the back of his motorcycle.

we used to pass this particular road that used to be my favorite simply because it looked like one of those beautiful roads i watched in movies. also, somehow, this road gave me certain feeling that i couldn't decipher. it's silly. but then i thought i had figured out what it was.

because ten years later as i traveled home for my grandfather's funeral and happened to pass that road again, i could still feel it.

it was a sense of longing.
a deep ache for something beyond my grasp, because either its lost forever or it lived in the obscurity of the future.

i got a call from my father the previous day that my grandfather passed away. he finally gave up. stroke had sabotaged his life for nine years. yet i felt not a slight of emotions. i didn't even bother shedding a tear. probably because he had been sick for such long period of time, i had learnt to let go long ago. but when i passed this nameless road, i kept pondering about the last conversation with my grandfather that seemed to have been permanently erased from my memory. about all those years i spent alienating myself from my own family. how from someone whom being away from her family had her cried every night, i grew to be someone who didn't feel comfortable being surrounded by them. how loneliness used to bombard me without any mercy, until i dived too deep in it and it became all that i wanted.

i was too engrossed within my own thoughts i became unaware that i had driven past the road to a more bumpy one. the roadside trees were replaced by vast paddy fields. and i could see the sun slowly dip below the horizon as the night fell, casting a warm red light that bathed the earth.

this road.
it seemed unending.

a perpetual darkness

maybe i would never recover from what i saw when i was twelve. maybe when i found the answer i had been seeking in your inability to look me right in the eyes, those images would flash and before i knew i was hauled back to an abyss where all dreams rotted and happiness was a mere fairy tale.

back to where i used to belong.

here, i tell you the truth.

sitting there on a bench where we used to have our little conversations every morning, i could feel a feeling of relief wash over me that i was finally able to let go of our every almost.

what i hardly realized was i romanticized those things we had in the past more than they deserved. i grew accustomed to the idea of you that i had planted inside my head. and the idea itself became my muse.

while you never were.

if only time machine did exist

it came in waves every so often

and, every scenes was too vivid to call it a mere nostalgia

like when its five in the morning and i was sitting on the roof, gazing at the peach painted east sky as the sun gradually rose above the horizon

or when i was unable to sleep, i drew back the curtain and stared beyond the window at the starry sky up there

its as if every beautiful things i saw would only drift my mind away, back to those long gone days

back then, i hadn't had any idea that what made me whole in that very moment would one day leave me empty

this empty

adieu.

it was june again, and i was there, sitting by the window at the corner of a small coffee shop that used to be our favorite spot for everytime she threw tantrums you could no longer handle. 

the night breeze kept sneaking in through the opened window pane to sweep off my freshly cut short hair, made it messier than it already was. i didn't expect you to ask me why i did it; cutting my long wavy hair you once told me that you liked it very much and that you couldn't suppose it being chopped as short as that. i didn't even expect you to come. 

its been years. i had stopped counting. i had no energies left to water even the slightest hope that someday the bell would ring as the door creaked open and it would be you. the reason i was there, on the day our eyes first locked each others, was nothing but to tell you that you were out of my life. 

because i listened to our song and i shuddered no more. and when i found a polaroid film with us looking genuinely happy in it, my heart did not thump. i drowned myself in routines and i no longer thought about you every single day. i didn't see your faces everywhere. i didn't seek for you in the crowd of strangers. i didn't drive aimlessly in the middle of the night just to reminisce those gone days. 

you were out of my life. because everytime i fell into his arms, i felt right where i belonged.