the writer writes a rightful bite

Strange infatuations keep me awake each night: the peanut butter stuffed doughnut that I never really wanted but couldn’t stop eating, the noisy but annoyingly adorable dog that yaps a few floors above my already troubled mind, the reckoning that beckons deep in the pit of my heart, the door that remains closed because I wanted it too badly open.

Static Waves by Andrew Belle plays on this messy night. I say messy not because of the state of my mind nor the coiff of my fur. I say messy because I lack the ability to overcompensate for my living room with romantic words that exaggerate an otherwise blah night of nights. It is messy, but not enough to form a conversation. So I’ll just leave it as messy. I hope it all makes sense.

I thought I heard you calling my name… that was a few weeks ago. I’m not sure why I’m even bringing it up, but I honestly thought I heard you calling my name. I was at a nearby café, and it was noisy all around me, and my cup of tea wasn’t really feeling like my cup of tea on that day alone. Suddenly, I heard you call my name. It was unmistakably you, that tone of voice that gentles slowly from the first alphabet to the last, as if the quieter you spoke it, the more it’ll disappear. I turned around, but of course, you weren’t there. In fact, there was nobody there. On a weekday at a regularly crowded café. With much noise. Yet, there was nobody there.

It was all not making sense.

I grabbed my bag and prepared to leave. But then something else held me back, like a glimmer of possibility. It was a straw wrapper, torn and tattered and strewn against the dirt of the floor below the stark of my table. I’m not sure what compelled me to pick someone else’s trash up, especially with the smear of HFMD spreading like the inevitable losing of my mind.

Still, I did it without hesitation. I stooped to that lower level and picked up someone else’s trash.

I unravelled the cuts and folds, and found myself staring at it. And there it was…. Just that. It was just another straw wrapper, torn and tattered and strewn against the dirt of the floor below the stark of my table. No hidden messages, no mysteriously deceiving code to decipher, nothing. I drew a blank, and for once, thought of nothing.

Ironically, that was the epiphany I needed to just be.

And so I woke up. Walked away. Closed that door. Faced reality.

Accidental Babies by Damien Rice plays on this messy night. I say messy and not mess-of-a because it just seems apt. I don’t bother much about the grammatical errors of my sitting here typing, but Accidental Babies by Damien Rice plays on this messy night, and it just seems apt to make mistakes.

I miss you.

i could write a million shreds of scattered recollections over and over again until they formed a reasonable explanation for my sitting here thinking about you, a degenerate with low expectations of life yet high ambitions for love, but i won’t. i shouldn’t. you belong to someone else, and i, i have moved on farther than you could even imagine. i tried not to let it bother me - seeing you so perfectly loved by her - but it did.

you look good, by the way. perhaps that’s just me, blinded as i always was when it came to you. but you look good. slightly aged, slightly worn, but always good. it was good that we spent some time just letting go, just being ourselves. five minutes was better than nothing. i wanted more. i wanted to order another round of iced milo, and dwell in the three years that we forgot one another. i wanted to tell you about the many broken friendships since then, i wanted to tell you about the joy of being a mom, i wanted to tell you about everything that i have kept to myself since you left. i wanted to ask if you remembered me, if you ever thought about me, if you even knew to spell my name… i wanted to ask you for more.

i wanted to know how you’ve been doing. i wanted to ask if life has been good to you, if you’re finally a teacher, if your kids look up to you as much as i once did… as much as i still do. i wanted to know so much about you, as if we never stopped speaking, as if we were still friends. but i didn’t, because we’re not. and i intend to keep it that way.

you said this repeatedly: it was good seeing you, it was really good seeing you. i don’t know if i could ever believe you again, but it was good seeing you, too, bbff… it was really good seeing you.

Currently playing : Back 2 good by Matchbox Twenty

I needed to see you, not because I still cared, but because I had to know that I no longer did. You needed to see me, but I will only believe it’s because you had to know that I could not get over you. I can no longer let myself believe you meant any good.

I tried so hard not to speak to you, not because I could not forgive, but because you did not deserve to be spoken to. You tried so hard to speak to me, but only because that’s just what you do: you’ve always felt the need to speak on my behalf.

Still, no matter how hard I try, I am as drawn to you as you are to me, good or bad as your intentions may be. And because of that, I don’t think I should ever see you again. I only hope you understand.

There is a missing between you and I, and I miss you enough to know that you feel it too, wherever you are. I am your worst enemy, I know, I am your worst mistake. You will never speak to me again; you will never speak about me again. And though it breaks my heart to know that I am shamefully misplaced, I still miss you far and wide and I will keep missing you until you feel it, too. Because you are beautiful to me, and I hope one day you will see that all it takes is a few mistakes to get to where you need to be – far away from we.

Pass the silver revolver, lover. I would die a million times for another swim in the lake.

The worst thing about a breakup is that you lose all your favorites – favorite songs, favorite eateries, favorite paths that lead to favorite hilltops overlooking favorite corners of your favorite town. Favorite movies, favorite clothing, favorite fragments of favorite kisses and favorite misses diminished with one unappreciative goodbye.

Then again, our hearts are greedy. Favorites come and go, favorites multiple, favorites forget that they were ever favorites to begin with. Last night’s amazing supper is today’s hefty trash. So in a way, the worst part about a breakup is the best part about a breakup – a clean slate. Because one can’t leave a trash bag filled with rotting garbage in the kitchen for very long.

I have no memory of who you were, neither do I remember who I was. It’s hard to consider a time that chose to erase itself for guilty reasons; our reason being that we were never meant to exist in the first place. Three years now, and I’ve retold our story so many times to so many people that while the names – our names – have improved tenfold, the moments are left scattered and used and abused as we are. We were friends, we overstepped boundaries, you walked away, I walked away, you begged me to come back, I dared you to come back; the sick cycle carousel that we rode until our spare change ran out. I told them about the complications, the expectations, the desirous words, the careless recollections, and the pang that pops up every now and then just as I begin to forget you.

I love that pang, it makes my heart sink as if I were falling. I love the rush of simply falling. And that is why I loved being around you. All those nights you spent tripping me over for the sake of entertaining your lonely soul, I gladly fell because I was feeding my own lonely soul. And in that way, technicalities aside, we were soul mates in falling apart.

Try as I might to reroute the story and admit otherwise, I was in love with you. Maybe not intentionally, maybe much unexpectedly, maybe not in the most traditional fashion of loving one should be, but I was in love with you. The way you laughed, the way you spoke, the way you looked at me, the way you panicked every single time you caught yourself looking too long. The way your hair fell so languidly against the rough of your skin, the way your eyes soften within each story you’ve ever heard, the way your words grazed across my lips like they were meant for me. The way you betrayed yourself, the way you misjudged yourself, the way you faltered under the strength of others.

You told me to wait, don’t you remember? You told me not to walk away, not to give up on our friendship. You told me to trust you, to believe that I meant something to you, to believe that you would save us. I tried so many times to walk away; you pulled me back and told me to stay. And because all that time I truly believed that you were the kindest, most generous, most understated artist of a mind, I believed you. I truly believed, with all my heart, that you were my best friend. And you would do good unto me.

But that was then and this is now. Three years ago, I gave you all of my favorites. I gave them to you hoping you would stay. But you didn’t. You left without an explanation, taking every single favorite I’ve ever shared with you in a luggage overflowing with regrets, with apologies, with all those words you should’ve said to me. You took all my favorites and gave them away. And in that moment, that one single moment you decided to carelessly shrug away all other moments shared with me, I moved on. I moved on to eventuality. I am now very, extraordinarily happy.

So why do I still think of you, forgetful as a thought may be? Sometimes, to clean a slate and destroy a foundation in all its frailty, one gains a scar; you were the very last favorite I salvaged within the wreckage that was our friendship. I wish you nothing but the best, my friend.