September

I remember the time when we said our goodbyes. I had to let you go because you had to leave. We were both young and ignorant. You knew you had your direction that I was not to be part of. What you did not know was that you had been lost. You were still lost. You knew all that you wanted to know. But you failed to know what was needed of you. Me. I thought I had lost myself in pursuit of the unreachable. You. I was afraid of losing myself further into spirals of the unknown world of yours I had plunged into. What I did not know was that I had just found myself and I will always find myself out of all the troubles and fears this life throws me into.

On many occasions, I thought I had died. Only later to find out, that I had fallen asleep, a long, deep sleep. In my sleep, you were part of me and I was part of you. Our worlds matched perfectly. If you were the sun then I was its shine. And if I was the moon then you were my light. Back and forth, I have played hide and seek with myself. I lose myself, only to find all the strengths my weak soul can endure. Am I that weak? Do I doubt myself so much that I feel the need to test my intentions? I wear a tattered soul, scavenged by many others like you. Yet, it calls for you and only you. And somewhere, in the cosmic world of made-belief we find each other and pray for what is yet to come.

What is it that is yet to come? And how far from each other we have traveled? I see the dotted line on the map of our lives where we met and crossed each other’s paths. For you it was a mere few days. For me it was all eternity. Sometimes, I reach back to it and pick up its remnants. I try hopelessly to assemble the broken pieces and make a perfect sculpture out of it. Of us. Yet I only break it further. The pieces are so fragile that they vaporise in my hands like burnt paper and vanish in the air right before my eyes. When they did not last and stand firm in their present then what good would they be in their past?

Was it our past? Or does it only belong to me? Am I the only one who visits it every so often and see the dead people in it, you and I. Do you still exist somewhere in the deepest cores of your soul or does the present holds only the new you and the old me? Was it just a few steps journey for you or do you feel you have walked a thousand miles, how I have? Will you not call it strange that I have come so far, have taken so many steps forward to new beginnings, yet every step takes me to a place where the old you awaits me. It is a joy to be home but there is no one to welcome me except the ghost of you. Perhaps, it is best to be welcomed by ghosts who cannot hurt one’s emotions, than the people who make a game out of slaughtering other’s souls.

I do believe that I had a soul once. It was white and pure. It represented me and my perfect world of innocence. Among my mundane chores I am made aware of the emptiness and the hollowness I feel inside my body. Could it be possible that my soul does not exist any more? Could it be you who tore it apart and left it dying somewhere far where I could not reach and save it? No, I do not believe that it was you. It certainly wasn’t my God. It was me who snatched me from myself and took my soul away.

I have a habit of hiding that soul of mine, every so often, in the closets where even I cannot reach. It is only while all the fun lasts. And when they have taken their pieces I gather myself in search of a closet where that soul is hidden. I do find it at the end and patch it back. I cover myself with its black and white drapery. Once, it was white in its all entirety. I think I have to quit shutting it away from me. Because when I do retrieve it, it cries out for you. It asks for your shelter. It asks to be with you and none other. Only you.

Only you. You are the word that I could associate to so many of them. But it is you who shall always be you to me. None other. Does it not suffice your reasoning? I may be a thing of a past for you but I still exist. It is just that you choose to shut your eyes on me and make me disappear. Will I ever re-appear in front of your eyes and shine in them how I have once? Or will your eyes remain always shut, perhaps until the day I am truly gone? Do I still live a fantasy of a 22 year old girl who you had spotted among the crowed of innocent and had pulled her away from it for a little while? I kid myself sometimes by asking myself these meaningless questions. You always said that I asked you too many questions. And I still do. The difference now is that you can see me but cannot hear me. Before you heard me but failed to see me. I was only another voice that echoed behind the curtains of your indifference. Nothing else.

You chose to let me wash away how rain is washed from slippery edges of a verdant leaf. But do you know that it is the rain that its stomata absorb that gives it its vivacious colour? You only saw me in the outer layers of your existence, someone who could touch the surface of you and vanish without a trance. But did you ever find the traces of my love in hidden cores of what covered you? Perhaps you did not. And perhaps, it is best left it be.

I confess that I have come to a simple realisation. A realisation you had been aware of from the moment we met. We could never be, we. We were always You and I. We will always be You and I. I have learnt to live with it. I am living with it. I always will. What I want you to know is that, when night becomes very dark and when a day becomes a tiresome journey; when light is taken away from my sight and when I relinquish the brightness in my life; when happiness ceases to exist in those minute passage of my life and when I draw myself to anguish; when the autumn of April rejoices of our first kiss and when the Spring of September brings upon me the shadows of our parting, I remember you.

I always will.

(Ha, the paradox of one’s life – never fails to amuse me)

03-Sept-2006


This turned out to sound really pathetic. Apologies.