Tra Sole e Parole

Let’s say the world was ending tomorrow. Cities bombed, electricity cut, strangers running in the streets, names turning into statistics.   I wonder, in that moment, when your whole life flashes before your eyes, would I be there? Would you see glimpses of me in the cracks of the road, hear my voice between the deafening sirens, would you remember me at all?   If the world were ending tomorrow, would you push through chaos, through burning billboards and broken houses, through miles of gridlocked freeways, just to get through me? Because if the world were ending tomorrow, I’d come for you.  Barefoot, if I had to. Through fire, through flood, through every fear. For my world would only end if there’s no you in it.   But m aybe  it already has ended. Maybe we ran through every red light, climbed every fire escape, but the bridges burned without an exit. The river pulled us under before we could reach the shore.   Maybe the apocalypse  is just another wor...

During our relationship, only one of us was in love and that person wasn’t you. Although time has been nothing but forgiving, one question remains unanswered. How does one who loves the least hold the most power? Perhaps power lies in the weight of absence. Perhaps control is the privilege of indifference. Or perhaps love is just a losing game and only you knew how to win.

I hope Jakarta is a big enough city. With thousands of tangled streets, and millions of people, I hope we are just two souls, lost in separate lives, never crossing paths. Not on a crowded sidewalk,  or in a quiet alley, I hope you never catch me off guard with my tired eyes, and realize they’re only mirrors, still reflecting you. I hope we are just two ghosts, haunting separate corners, never colliding. Not in a packed restaurant  or in an empty coffee shop, I hope I never see your happy face. I don’t want to watch you stand up, smile, and wrap your arms around my shoulders like we were some old friends. We were never friends. I loved you, you were never my friend. I don’t want to greet you with a hello, or ask a lousy how are you. I don’t want to pretend you were just some stranger— I met on a random Saturday afternoon, three years ago. But if for some reason Jakarta folds in on itself and delivers you to me, perhaps on a weary Wednesday evening after a long, back-to-back me...

I haven’t checked your Instagram in weeks. I hid all your friends’ profiles, tucked them away next to the knives at the bottom of my kitchen cabinet. “Never play with sharp things,” my mother said.  No new news, just the same repetitive beats playing, looping, stuck. I haven’t written your name in months. My fingers have forgotten its shape, the way it curved, the way it used to dance across my keyboard, like some foreign alphabet I don’t recognize anymore. I haven’t said your name in months. When someone asked me about you,  I would use all the words in the dictionary, anything— but you. Funny enough, hearing the name of someone I used to hold so tightly, now hits like lightning in broad daylight, like a slap in a silent room. Sudden, strange, loud in all the wrong ways. I think, slowly,  you’re dissolving into a distant memory. A blurred picture on an old TV screen, a half-remembered dream. And for that, I’m grateful. Perhaps, all the tears I left in your pillowcase ha...

I wish you had come with a warning label, stamped on your forehead, caps locked, bold letters— CAUTION: MAY CAUSE COLLAPSE   I wish you had attached pages of side effects to the bottom of your first text message. Because this time the only language heartbreak translates into is physical pain.   It isn’t poetry, it isn’t sad songs you play on repeat, it is weight. It is a chest that becomes too heavy for a ribcage to carry, it is lungs that refuse to do their job, it is my whole body orchestrating a rebellion against me.   As if my brain had secretly transported messages through my veins a nd told them that  the only person who makes my life worth living  had left for good, so what’s the point of keeping on going?   And grief, just like an uninvited guest, grief moves in without asking. Makes itself at home in my stomach, my lungs, my muscles.   It hijacks my mornings, sits in the passenger seat while I cry on the way to work, holds my hair as I puke in...