A Memory

It was a friend's birthday party, and they were just about to call it a night. The birthday girl took out mattresses and pillows and set them on the tiled living room floor. Those who were still awake found and took their spots on the floor.

She was near the television. They were to watch A Walk to Remember, at the request of one of her friends. She watched movies with such concentration and as she forgot her glasses, she needed to be near the screen. She took a long pillow and hugged it as she felt someone settling in beside her.

He lay on his side, facing her. He was the one who suggested the movie as that was his favorite. He was awfully close - she could feel his warm breath on her neck. Still, she paid him no mind as the movie started.

He didn't change his position all throughout the film. At one point, she could feel his arm settling comfortably against her back. She could even feel his fingers playfully tapping her back. Put she paid him no mind.

At one of the sweetest points of the movie, she heard him mumble. She wasn't quite sure of what he said, but she had a hunch. She thinks she heard the word love. Or maybe it was from the movie.

Nevertheless, she turned to him and gave him a confused look.

"What did you say?"

He sighed. "Nothing."

Though still confused, she shrugged and muttered a soft Okay. She turned her back on him and continued to watch. She could hear him let out a heavy sigh.

The movie eventually ended, and it was time to get some sleep. She agreed and turned, her body facing upward. Her left arm was at her side, while her right hugged a pillow that was covering her face.

She could feel him moving about next to her. She wasn't a heavy sleeper when in another house. But she didn't mind him. She too tends to be restless even in slumber.

A few minutes after, she felt a warm touch on her hand. She opened her eyes, but didn't move. Suddenly, she felt fingers entwining with hers.

He was holding her hand, holding it tight, as if letting it go would be a sin.

Thoughts suddenly rushed through her head. She thinks she's dreaming, and slightly pinched herself. She felt a little sting.

It was real.

Liquor couldn't be blamed - they didn't drink any at the party. Did he confuse her hand with someone else's?

Why was he holding her hand?

She then started to shift the position of her left arm, causing their hands to untangle. A few seconds after, she could feel his hand travelling the space between their bodies, seemingly looking for hers.

He found his way to her hand and held it again, gripping it tighter than before. She tried to pay him no mind and drifted to sleep.


She didn't know how long they stayed that way, but when she woke up, his hand was still there. She turned to him and whispered, "I think it's time to get up."

He groaned and mumbled something about still being sleepy.

"I think we have to go."

He seemed to agree as he squeezed her hand. Then he let go.



Four years after and she still doesn't know why he did what he did that night. They never spoke about and she never really asked. She's not sure she wants to know, and judging by how he is, she might never find out.

Superimposed

The girl—not a girl anymore, really—closed the door as the boy left the room (I’ll be back in a sec, babe.), and walked dazedly to the bed—wondering if it was all real, if she was really here, staring at a spaceship poster on the opposite wall, if she really sprayed that musky perfume—the scent he breathed in while he caressed the length of her arm as he took her jacket off and hung it on a peg behind his door. He had been pressing her for months. She had been doing her best to refuse—they say it was the proper thing, after all, she being a nice girl, well brought up and all that. But then she thought about that other boy and that other girl, as she often did, and she didn’t feel like being such a nice girl anymore—was sick of it, really.

That other boy, he used to be hers. They used to be always close—closer than brother and sister. He used to be always there for her, used to make her feel like she was never alone. Like that December night, when she was shivering in the cold—better be outside and cold than inside and miss the fireworks. He approached her, leaning against the railings of the veranda, with a smile on his face and a gift in his hand and her silly nicknames on his lips. He laid an arm on her shoulders.

Hey, you’re shivering.

I feel chilly.

So he wrapped his arms around her, wrapped her in his warmth, and they swayed gently in the stillness, to a melody only they heard, only they understood.

Then that other girl came into his life, came between them. At first, she lent him books. Then she lent him her Sunday afternoons and her laughter and gab and homemade goodies and warm brown eyes, and he repaid her in full, and more. He often murmured how beautiful that other girl’s eyes were, how fit for a poem or a song. He’d sit at his desk, sometimes for hours at a time, scribbling pretty lines for that girl’s pretty eyes. Soon he was far away from her, lost in a world where that other girl’s name was the melody he swayed to. Soon she found he was not hers, not anymore.

You two look perfect together, she had said with a perfectly bright smile. And then she too walked away, put some distance, tried to dull the pain that was always there, tried to let go of what could never be—and find something else to hold on to.

And this was where her steps had taken her. Another December night with another boy—not a boy anymore, really—and again she was shivering—but not from the cold. Suddenly, she felt rough hands on her waist and jumped with a start. She hadn’t noticed him enter the room—for the past few minutes, she hadn’t noticed anything at all in her midst. He had sprung on her, with a glint in his eye and his shirt in his hand and her name—and other words besides, words like I want you—on his lips. He stroked her shoulders.

Hey, you’re shivering.

I feel chilly.

So he wrapped his arms around her, wrapped her in his heat, and their bodies agitated to a wild rhythm his coaxing and touches induced. As his lips trailed down her ivory neck, she thought of that other boy again, and tears rolled down her ivory cheeks. She thought of his face, not this boy’s, and murmured a name, murmured it so softly only she heard, only she understood:

Kuya

Wedding Song

On the day of their wedding, she came, with flowers adorning her hair and ribbons circling her arms. She was arrayed in the simple white gown he had sent her, and on a delicate chain around her neck she wore the silver heart-shaped locket he had given her on the day he became her beau. He had put their pictures together inside it, murmuring words of endearment and happiness and forever, dear, dear heart. You know how these declamations of love go, when lovers are giddy and new.

He approached her before the ceremony started, smiling with no hint of nervousness, only of excitement.

“You look lovely,” he told her, beaming. “That dress suits you very well.”

“You look dashing too,” she replied, eyeing the white suit he wore and remembering the way he had played Prince Charming, onscreen and in her life. He was her fairy tale—although of course she was too smart to really believe in that. Yet as he left her to take his place in front of the altar her eyes that never strayed from him saw not his receding back but daydreams the hue of strawberry cotton candy—rosy, sweet, sometimes too sweet.

The piano started playing, and she walked the length of the carpet, her feet dragging. She kept her eyes down, on the floor or on the bouquet she was carrying, afraid that if she looked ahead she would see him smiling at her and imagine that he was waiting to reach out for her hand. A few steps before she reached the altar and him, she turned right, stepped on a podium, took the microphone, and turned it on.

She sang. On the first note she let out, the church doors opened and in walked his bride, resplendent and beautiful, and very, very happy. His eyes grew wide as he saw the woman he was about to marry, then crinkled with a smile and never left his bride’s face. Still the other woman sang, sang of love and bliss and promises of eternity, and with her singing sounded a chorus of sighs and smiles and tears of gladness. You know how these weddings go, when people believe they’ve attained happily-ever-after.

She sang of vows they had given to each other, sang of castles in the air they had built together, sang words she had wanted to say to him. She knew that aches were what one got for dreaming too much and too sweetly, but she dreamed on anyway, allowing herself to pretend for a moment that it was her hand he took, that it was she he pulled towards the altar and knelt down with. But even a moment of dreaming can prove too much, and she finished her song with a broken voice and the beginnings of tears. She stepped down from the podium and returned to her seat, hoping they would think she was too touched and too happy for the couple that her mascara threatened to run. Actually she was never one to cry at weddings.

As they recited their vows, she silently promised herself something too—to someday love after love, with a lighter heart. As they exchanged rings, she took the locket he had given her from its chain and removed the pictures within. As they kissed, she joined in the chorus of cheers and applause.

When the ceremony ended, she rose to take her leave, her fist tight around the silver heart. Again, she congratulated him, and reached out to shake his hand. Then she let go and walked away with a smile and tripping steps, carrying the locket and its weight no more.

He is a bad habit

He is a cigarette sandwiched between her lips, the lighted end burning in the dark like a lone firefly. His smoke circles in the air, gathering around her, only to be swept away by a late October breeze. She takes one last drag before chucking him. He lands on a puddle and immediately dies out.

His light is no more.

She sniffs her hand and frowns. Awful, she thinks. Goddamn awful, the smell he leaves on her fingers every fucking time. On her clothes. On her hair. And, oh, on her pretty little mouth too, of course. She shrugs off the thought. After all, one shower, one wash, and one brush are all it takes to doff his lingering stench.

But he is more than just white paper rolled into a stick, filled with nicotine and tar. Sometimes he is methamphetamine, sometimes he is cannabis. Sometimes he is ethanol going by some fancy names such as Kajmir, Midori, and Fior d'Alpi. Sometimes he is libido.

He is a vice.

And she is ready to quit.

And it should be fucking easy. Twenty one days is all it takes to break a habit, wise and not-so-wise womenandmen say, and twenty one days is not even a month. So, yes, quitting him should be painless. She will, for twenty one days and beyond, pretend he never existed until her body, too, is convinced. And then she will not need him. And then she will stop craving his feel, his taste.

And then, perhaps, she would be free.

If only the wreck he had made inside her could as well be so easily eradicated as the wisps of smoke coming from his lighted end, she would be free.

Things I Never Told You

There are things I never told you, things I never will. They aren’t lies, merely an avoidance of the truth.

You could call me a coward, but then you’d have to call yourself one too. I am not the only one with shadowed eyes. I am not the only one tired of our games, our lives, our past, our future.

And yet, it never changes. We are stuck in a limbo because it’s safe and it’s comforting even if it aches. You still call when you are in town, still show up at my tiny little apartment and make yourself at home. Sometimes we sit on the floor, backs pressed against the paint chipped walls, the only sounds our breathing and the rustle of clothes as we shift at random intervals. Words never seemed all that necessary between us.

I don’t know what I am to you. I don’t know what you are to me; a shoulder to lean on perhaps, someone who I’ve never had to spill words to, ungainly sentences to fill empty space, simply because you always understood the unspoken.

Then there are the times where sitting isn’t what you need, and stillness seems to suffocate me. I can hear those moments in your clipped words over a short phone call, see it in your eyes the moment you shut the battered door behind you. Those are the moments I rise from my chair or uncurl from the bed in the corner, book left open, tea left cooling.

You’ve been rough and you’ve been gentle. Sometimes you leave, kissing my bruises in a silent apology as you go. Other times I am the one pressing chapped lips to your bloody scratches.

Why don’t we speak? Is it because you don’t want to know about the mundane moments of my insignificant life? Would the ins and outs of the average person, working in an office cubicle, staring at a screen that shows your face more often than not, depress you? Or is it me that doesn’t want to know? Would you tell me about your life, the one that looks shiny and sparkly from the outside, and make me see how dark it really is underneath?

I see enough in the smudges beneath your eyes, the darkness that seeps into your veins after a long absence and the weariness that weakens your bones and makes you slouch in pain. Those are your secrets, the ones I try to heal without my tongue trying to twist the emotion I’d like to convey.

You see enough in the faded colors on the wall, the chipped floor and worn tablecloth that supports cheap beer. You don’t need to ask and you never will and I don’t want you to. I have my pride just as you have yours. And you still come to me and offer me your warmth.

There are things I’ll never say to you. I’ll never pull at your hand and beg you to stay, I won’t tell you I love you, I won’t ask your reasons for picking me… a simple nobody to all your somebody. I won’t give you a reason to feel guilty or hold you back because you are meant to be free.

There are things you’ll never say to me. You’ll never ask me home, you’ve only ever come to me. You’ll never introduce me to your friends or parents, or offer to give me more than just you. I don’t want it because however convoluted and twisted this is, whatever we are, you let me be me, and I let you be you.

In here you aren’t who the world sees. In here I’m not just another ordinary. In here we are together, hidden hearts in a room of flaking drywall. Promises hidden down so deep they will never find the courage to climb free.

We are cowards.

But when we lie on the floor, smoke curling from forgotten cigarettes and dancing in the light from cracked curtains, we are brave because we don’t need words to see the truth. Naked and bare our souls know each other through all the traps and defenses we’ve put around us to shut out the world. In those moments, I am strong because you are and you are strong because I am.

This is why I’ll never tell you the things my head doesn’t want to admit, and why you’ll never ask. Why complicate something so simple with words that are so meaningless to others?

I don’t want your promises.

I don’t want your lies.

I don’t want your secrets.

I just want the silent moments frozen in time, locked in memories to keep my veins warm on cold evenings. That’s all you have to give. And it aches. And it comforts.

[Source]