I CAN FLY

I was dreaming of the lazy morning when dew settled and the sun rises upon your face; colouring it with a golden brown shade. I was dreaming of the sea, of the sea breeze that shook us like leaves in the storm on that evening we discovered each other’s truths. I was dreaming of the nights when we lingered on our naivety, where lights entered through the vents casting shadows on our body. I was dreaming of listening to your heartbeats when my head was lying on your chest, thinking if it was me who caused it to beat so fast. The warmth of your flesh felt soothing upon my face, even with your clothe separating our skins.

It was shameful, to be thinking only about the physical aspects of yours. The expressed and underlying emotions shuddering through your body, your thoughts and your quirks became lost to history becoming a part of my forgotten memories. It all grew pale against time, that the deeper conversations we had was a fragment of memories too taboo to be remembered. It was the picture of you that was sketched onto my mind, indelible like a tattoo. 

 I was dreaming of coming back to you even if it’s just for another one last time. It was a feeling of addiction and gravitation towards something both painful and exhilarating that you could not fathom nor resist, like a moth to a flame. Could you believe there were already a million times you had burnt me to ashes, yet still I’m dreaming of coming back to you just so you could set my heart on fire for the million one^th time? That the thought of getting to meet you just so you could burn me alive itself gave me strength to do it all over again? 

I was dreaming of colours – everything black and white and in between; of the brown sweater of yours, your worn out blue jeans that are skintight, your photochromic glasses that turn blue black in the bright sunlight, the royal blue cover of your laptop, your favourite grey assortment of wardrobe. The colourful recollections was a metaphor for my emotions for you; and they were more diverse than the rainbow. 

I knew for a fact I was recalling these details solely because losing you has become inevitable that my brain could not help from going overdrive trying to search and hang onto a single lining of your memories in our heydays to comfort myself. It could only capture the obvious details, yet the nuanced characteristics of yours has blurred into a void. This fault told me that I could no longer remember this complex and complete person that is you, that I had left your memories rotting away to oblivion because I couldn’t afford living beneath your shadows anymore.   

 These simple, simple things were grander in my mind than those blacked out memories of us quarreling, crying and shouting. How sad it is to be remembering the good things when only the thought of losing someone becomes imminent. It was out of fear that I began to desperately hold you tightly, trying to make peace with my shattered emotions as a means of bargaining with the certainty of losing. 

We absolved each other of the blame, true, but also in truth, we had denied each other’s rights to our shared history. We blacked out the forbidden memories, the lingering brutal truth that we suppressed deep behind our guilty conscience because remembering it would mean opening the scars of the wound that we could not even imagine bearing for the second time. We couldn’t comprehend our emotions that we decided to just leave it in its raw form without appropriately addressing it. 

It was a long journey of discovery. The nights became darker every time we met to relive our past. The anger was still there when our eyes met, the guilt grew immense when we bid our goodbyes.

We knew being young means attempting mistakes, and to each of us, we are the other’s biggest. For years, the ground underneath our feet shook, but we ignored the tremor simply by acting like it didn’t exist. 

 It was you, one day who began to dance to the tune of the dance floor. You were shaken awake from the deep slumber, wanting to fly into the skies. As we fell into the bottomless pit of despair, you grew a pair of wings just in time to save yourself, while I was free falling with terminal velocity to rock bottom. 

I was crushed underneath my grand unfulfilled expectations the moment I realized this is not meant to be. 

That I remembered everything wrongly, that the colours I envisioned were illusions, that the happier memories were all lies that my mind created to console myself to save me from wrecking. That your heart beats faster in rage. That I had misinterpreted all the signs, all the days: mornings, evenings and nights, all the different shades of memories and times. 

 Through my shattered rose-coloured glasses, all that I could see was dreams that were too good to be true. And indeed they were. 

I’m fine. It took me years just to say those words. I’m fine. Though there would be nights when I would miss you sorely and I wouldn't be fine, I knew that at the end of the day, I would pick myself again, piece by piece, and I would be full again no matter how long that may take. It may be years again before I could totally forget you, but wherever we would be by that time, I wish you all the happiness in the world. And even after you have broken my heart, I will still miss you with all those tiny broken pieces.