Tra Sole e Parole

When my friend told me he’d rather lose his lover by separation than by death, something finally clicked in me— not everyone knows how it feels to carry grief that has no grave. And it made sense; all the frowns, the sneers, the laughter, for not everyone recognizes this kind of misfortune. And how lucky they are to never have their souls tied to another who slips the knot and walks away. To never love someone with every fiber of their being, every neuron in their body, only to lose them. Every day I bargain in my head over which part of me I’d trade just to have him back. Maybe my left eye, maybe my right hand, maybe my liver, maybe my life. 535 days after he left, I understand why some people end their life over a heartbreak and how some people cannot begin to imagine it.

They say grief never really leaves. It stays, like the scar on your knee after falling off a bike, like the stain on your favorite white T-shirt. They say  you grow around grief, but after three hundred thirteen days, grief evolves. Grief used to knock at midnight. Now it barges through my door at seven  in the morning. It waits for me— in the bathroom mirror, slips into the ten quiet minutes I spare before getting ready for work. It swallows me whole as I brush my teeth, wash my face, scrub a body that still carries your scent I cannot rub off. Grief has rusted the edges of my hair straightener, leaves me with a screeching sound that burns into my ears with the question: does it matter being pretty on days you don’t see me? Grief strikes at seven, primes my face with tears, and holds me hostage until eight. Three hundred thirteen days, I’ve learned how to dodge the grief that crawls under my blanket before I sleep. But I still don’t know how to escape the kind that comes at s...

Behind every wedding dress I wonder how many tears have been spilled? I wonder if her cream white dress bleached with mine. I wonder if the laces around her shoulders  spun from the webs my fingers knotted in prayer, waiting for him to come back. Was her veil stitched from the sighs I breathed heavily into the dark? Were her pink lips tinted from the roses I watered faithfully in his garden? I wonder if the dreams I spent so much time dreaming, were nothing but bricks  to build her altar. Behind every wedding dress, I wonder how much of her joy was made from my ruin.

First Tide The first time I thought about dying, I was fifteen. I was watching New Moon when I saw Bella standing at the edge of a cliff, ready to jump. Ever since then, every time I visit the sea,  I watch as the waves break against the rocks and imagine what if instead of the water it was my body. Will the water still be blue Will the wind still sing Or will it be dark and silent? Second Tide I went to Phuket this year. I ran to the white sand beach, let the salty water wash the blisters still raw on my feet after walking away from you. I could feel the waves pulled me closer, held me tight— a familiar embrace the way yours once felt. I let the water replace the grief that lived in my lungs and realized  the only way to remove pain was to replace it with another. Then it hit me. Clarity flooded down my brain, memories pounded in my chest for all the names I no longer say, faces I tried to buried  rose to the surface. I gasped. But all I inhaled was the air you used to r...

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy. I write about you less and less. Most days, I just let the words sit with me  for minutes, sometimes hours,  as I drive through the streets still stained with your name. I think about you and then I forget. With enough distractions, enough someone elses, months later, what once was an open wound is now just a bruise. The kind you forget is there but still hurts when you touch it. They didn’t lie, time heals after all. So maybe the worst is over. Even if some nights, I still catch myself awake past midnight wondering where’s that one piece of me that went missing and never came back. But still, don’t get me wrong, I am happy. Even if happy doesn’t mean whole and definitely doesn’t mean complete. Maybe all of this is just my way of saying I miss you. And what a terrifying thought it is to still miss you after a year or two or five or ten. What a terrifying thought it is to keep moving forward without ever finding the strength  to move on from...

There’s a saying health is a luxury only the sick can see. And just like that, how lucky you are is only seen to the one who loved you but never received the love in return. 

I think this is it. I think this is finally it. Do it. The wall we built— so cracked, it’s barely standing and you get to throw the final strike. Do it. Let this be the end of it. Tear down the wall I plastered with my sweat, my blood, my devotion, my denial, everything I was, everything I had left. Tear down the wall that held every hope, every what-if, every should’ve, would’ve, could’ve. Throw one final blow, and that’s it. Let the bricks rain down on my body. Let them break my jaw, crush my spine, fracture my ribs for I am only— a small price you have to pay. A collateral damage too insignificant to notice. Break me until each neuron in my body stops screaming your name. Make me feel nothing. Turn me into nothing. And maybe, by then, you will be nothing too. Or so I wish.

If someone had been gone this long the authorities will have presumed them dead. So I threw you a funeral. The kind with  no casket and  no body. No sympathies, no condolences, no simple white lilies. No one’s wearing black, no one’s lighting candle. A devastation only I can feel. Although sometimes I do wish you were dead. So I could slice this sadness like a cake  and share the pieces  with someone else. Perhaps with your mother, or your sister, or some stranger across the street who’s heard good things about you. The day you died, I wish I could mark it. Carve it into a tree, scribble it on a wall, let the grief settle somewhere that isn’t always me. But I can’t. You’re still breathing somewhere— whole, content,  and perhaps fulfilled. And sometimes it feels unfair but other times it feels deserved. For all the strings in the past— that I cut without blinking, I’ve finally learned what it feels like to lose someone.

Years from now maybe I’ll be sitting in a park next to a child that has your eyes and your smile. And I’ll whisper “Thank your mother for me” She saved my life.

I know for a fact there’s not gonna be another you or another us. And I know I can’t grow another heart, can’t shape my wounds into butterflies. But I don’t know why I keep growing older while time stands still. I don’t know why the seasons still change when the world stopped spinning. It’s bizarre how many places I’ve been when I haven’t moved an inch. I tried running, I tried walking, I tried crawling. But all I get is one step forward, one step back. As if life were an endless burning desert and no matter how far I go, I’m still where you left me.

For a moment, I believed removing the dagger  from my chest would stop the pain. Only the wound opened wider. No hands to stitch it, six long months, and I’m still bleeding. I don’t know how to forgive myself for how long I’ve let it consume me, I’ve let it feast on me until I could no longer tell where the pain ends and I begin. I killed you, burned your body, buried the remnants of your bones deep beneath the ground, and still, you remain. Dostoyevsky was right. Your worst sin is to destroy and betray yourself for nothing.

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...