Tug

November 4, 2013

9:55 A.M.

I can’t remember how words were exactly put together but he said he’s always angry. Every time I open my mouth, words pushed downwards along my air trail and speaking means looking for a golden ring in a haystack and I know I can’t go out like that. It was not clear then but I could see him wear his traumas the way I wore mine like gravity holding the pain in place.

His chest was so soft, he’s lost his heart.

He spoke and his voice blundered across his heartbeat, his eyes flashed with the reflection of every vehicle’s low beam lights, his word shuffled into the air. I’ve been gone, he said. And he has no idea how to undo what he’s erased; he’s no idea how not to erase. He didn’t want to repeat history, so he puddled at the door, his expression looking like a deck of falling cards, like everything’s been playing him. His anger fuelled him to row through and all those wars he fought have turned his shine into rust.

I can’t even touch his heart.

I sat perplexed on the passenger’s seat holding my breath for the entire 46 seconds it took him to narrate the first sentence of his tale; I held his pain with my tornado chest.

For the first time, I understood him. I hadn’t written an honest love poem yet. I hadn’t met anyone I could fall so hard for ‘til the night I watched him sleep. I said I never want to catch up with the letting go; I have decided not to let him know so this could stay forever. I want to plead in my gullet to resent my vertebrae and the ridges of his shoes, hold him, even when I know I am never a pacifist.

I remember the exact look on his face, the first night he used my pillow. The next day, I hugged the fluffy pillow like fortysome times, ‘cause I never want to let him go. One should understand that leaving our solace after days of bliss hurts. It hurt like the light hurts my eye when someone opens the thick curtains in the morning.

I need not to speak of how I felt but there’s one thing I know to be true: It is the thought that in countless occasions; I saw him in the crowd and there’s this invisible string around his finger that stretched to mine. All night long he’d give that string the most minuscule pull, to assure me that he’s there, and I’d tug back.

That was love.

As easy as that.