all things sick and beautiful

Tonight, I think I want to mourn for the thing that never was

Im happy to be with you

Not to find myself

But to be hopelessly lost

In the peaks and valleys of your moods

In the tide of your temper

In the corners of your smiles

In the seams of your favorite shirt

In the cracks on our walls

In between soft dog fur and the curve of your back

In that space where the remote control always sinks in

In the eggshells we will sometimes step on

In the shouts I will let out

In the pains you will cry into

And into a life with forever as our plan

To love you is to be lost

In discovery of our eternal young Desires

Forever in surprise

The thought of replacing you, and the loss of your last hope, somehow… hurts me.

I thought you’d be mine by now, instead of me being yours.

They smile, the angels of the winter solstice,

as melodies float above metal and wooden roofs

and try to reach beyond your earphones;

they are glad we will keep the

tradition of carols, night lights and 

warm blankets tonight.

The angels of spring, however, cry.

But their wails get drowned  in the silent night.

I kiss the December air and comfort

their sorrows, knowing there is nothing

for them but leftover turkey and stuffing,

the last song of your playlist and

a certain kind of pain; 

the kind that comes from being both alone

on the coldest night.

Today, I finally admitted to myself that the reason why I seem to be so fixated with you is that, simply because; you reminded me of smoked salmon.

Among other things. You also reminded me of dark nights comforted by laptop light. And of victories won by my junctioned party against a feisty Marlboro. And of wood. Dark, unwielding wood that absorbed every stain in the world.

I tried writing poetry about it. I tried singing songs. I tried personifying you in bits and pieces of fiction as fragmented as the pieces of myself I hoped to gather, glue together and present to you in some half-decent manner.

But the pieces kept falling apart. They didn’t fit together much, just like the things you reminded me of. Just irrational, random pieces of things I liked, which happened to be things that you were.

———-

I was doing an excellent job of being a normal guest.

It was a gathering with some friends and strangers, the kind of gathering that never really gets you any closer to anyone but you come to anyway, in hopes to.

I was doing a good job of laughing at all the right moments, at telling just the right jokes, and of pouring glasses of wine to people who needed to celebrate the gluing of this particular set of souls.

Until I heard my name being mentioned, and an instinctive, innocent turn of my head leads my eyes across the room, to meet yours.

It was a second, but it was something I would remember, I guess until we meet that way again.

I dropped the eye contact but when I looked back, you were still there.

I wanted to hold it. To walk across the room, sit beside you and lean my head against your shoulders, lost in that magical bottle of smokes you must be keeping in that suit. But somebody noticed, and blocked the way.

Anyway, as I said, I was doing a good job of being a normal guest until then.

Everything just fell apart after.

‘Fell apart’ included an attempt at conversation, a hug that saddened the world, and a realization that both of us didn’t know of anything other than planned, orchestrated failure.

———-

Our paths will always cross. Being reminded of you in some form or another is inevitable. No matter how hard I try to convince myself that you don’t exist, I would always, always want a piece of smoked salmon, and the craving will uncontrollably force your name into my breath as I exhale.

But that’s the biggest problem, isn’t it? It’s just too real. Too true, too raw; I don’t know what to do with it except to keep it bottled until I could write something better than this and until that moment arrives, I would be content, I guess, to live with the hunger.

I’ve been walking around and around, trying to send you a simple message. The bleeping of the failed attempts spurred me until my battery gave up and flashed one last time, and just like that it was gone.

I wanted to go home, recharge and try again.

I needed to.

It was in my hurried, determined walk that I chuckled to myself and blinked a certain piece of trivia away.

Shit. Wala naman kasing signal.

Oh, but there will be. Once Globe decides to get their act together.

In the meantime I’ll keep on trying.

I wake up yellow, and smile along

the eggs burning,

the guard’s sniping,

the bells calling,

and the burnt taste of

without you.

By 6, I end the day wishing

you were smiling along

with me.

It was perfect, the way you orchestrated the surprise between the most unrelated of things; a crowd, a waiting heart,  and a love unmasked from the monsters and dragons in a world I’ve chosen to leave.

I turn from the left side of the bed to face you; I romance your back, entangle my legs with yours, and sigh into the strength of your weight on the mattress.

It was just a matter of time before the sun came up.

Like the Big Bang rewinding, I could only watch as the stars, the promises, and the rushed gift of a soft kiss, got sucked back into an unyielding black bottle, waiting to be grabbed and thrown purposely into the ground in the sanitary, real world.