The once promised land of hope became now the shattering Babylon garden of the separating voyage we never made time for. The chevy of your skin and your blood stained lips temper my mind into something hardened and crisped, ready to be broken, to give satisfaction. And yet I still miss you terribly, miss every second of our frizzy night and stupid promise.
*
You came in, with your baggy jeans and tucked-in shirt, taking away all my likings. It was an instant riot inside my mind when you detoured through the desks and landed your eyes briefly on me. My tendency of despising new comers took a halt as I saw you making your way to my behind, sitting down, and starting to poke my back asking for a hint of what is happening in the classroom. The audacity and courage of disturbing someone you didn’t know fascinated yet terrified me, and strangely set an obvious trap, dripping potentials waiting for me to step in. And I did without a stomping heartbeat.
During lunch we went out together, and I was attended by your not asking why wasn’t there anyone who would usually dine with me, well, more appeased. At some point, you took the lead and I just followed your trace, inattentively, as if I’m the fresh man that needed a dreading orientation. I bumped into your back, and the scent of clean laundry and a bit of warm welcomed me. I wanted to bottle it and keep it in the safe like a national treasure. I still couldn’t quite figure out the hold on me, a mischief knight with his satchel filled with golden feathers, venturing through poison ivy. I followed at my own risk, never knew that later I would avoid any scent relating to that at all costs.
It still amazes me how we would bond over burnt soggy sandwiches and a box of tea. I couldn’t figure out why we would hit it off, but I just knew, for whatever reason, I didn’t want it to end. You were the wild one, and I was the quiet one admiring your wildness, calculating your guile, and disturbing your over the top talks with my rational two cents. We became friends, naturally, unexpectedly, making very sense.
You asked me to come by to your home after school, and have a sleepover. It was the first time I actually was willing to go somewhere other than my safe haven and a current of pure joy and excitement ran through my veins, not butterflies in stomach, not anxiety of a crush, just a jolt of pure joy.
It was the first time I met your parents, and they were cooking a lousy dinner, with a glass in hands. You greeted them with the same lousy “I’m home” and led me to the way to your room. They glanced me, raising their glasses, and made a toast without shifting their eyes. The uninvitation in their expression somehow made its way into my head for the rest of the night.
We went into your room, and I was caught off guard by the warmth of wall decors fighting with the grungy pile of unwashed clothes laying around. The aura was like a guardian hound, hostile to the intruder, loyal to whom it serves. And there it was again, that smell, and I finally figure out where that warmth was coming from. Your slightly worn pile rapaciously soaked up the sun during daylight, that you named “rotating shelf”. Retaining the faintest smell of your body, and mixed with that laundry detergent, it was the secret recipe. If heaven exists, I hope this is what the air diffuser sends off. I don’t consider myself creepy, yet I was weirded out by the physical reaction projected at this one single element. I kept this as a secret for as long as I could.
“So this is your secret chamber.” It was a small double bed. The sheet had given in after too many washes, and developed the ultra softness through it wrinkles and loosened thread counts. There is a dent creeps in the middle of the bed, as if it was a trap made by a monster, hoping its catch is innocent and tired. Your pillow case told me you were a drooler, and I didn’t withhold that information long enough to prepare for a future zing. The miscellaneous conversation we had all night got me laughing so hard I cried with a runny nose and aching belly. We put aside school, and started our own mirage of education, laying bare with all my past and your so-called future, before we couldn’t figure out the tears were from laughter, sympathy, or yawn.
The bed was too small for both of us to lay flat. So we lied down, heads to feet. You turned around, hugging my legs, marking your territory, threatening to throw me off the bed if I ever kick you in the face. The move I made were so carefully planned to just annoy you with the right amount. You plucked my leg hair, and I put you in a head lock with my calf. Looking back at it, we were like a linkage of DNA, ever born, ever together.
We met our hand in the middle, like an “8“. Your warmth flowed right into me, and tickled me from the tip of my fingers to the back of my brain. We shared a synergy between us, acting like two powerful witches exploring the wilderness of magic, protecting each other, feeding off each other.
It was a spring bed. And the thing about a spring bed is that, it is a connected continent on the verge of separation. Even the slightly lurk of movement would shake up the whole world. I laid like a mummy, idle, containing every fibre on my body to not disturb you, or the warmth of you cascading through our touch hairs and shared breaths into my deepest sensory bank, and demanded a lifetime deposit. So I stayed there, drinking up every uncomfortable moment, never wish it to end. Who would have known that during the night neither of us got any sleep, for you believed in the very reason too. Over the soggy cereal, you asked me how did I sleep. Faster than a heartbeat, I answered, “Can’t wait to do it again. ” It was natural, harmless, hopeful, even a bit belligerent.
Over the countless nights, we talked about everything we could, mainly disapproving the awful world we have to live in, and building new ones in our heads, the ones where the only curse was that ever forced and alive hunting happiness. That was the first time your hurt surfaced to just beneath your skin, with the last benevolence it held to not ruin what you made of me.
“Do you ever feel like giving up? Like just go?”
“Everyday.”
“Seriously. Just go somewhere. I once went to this town in Germany. It was so quiet and peaceful I cried at the sight of a yellow house sitting in front of a mountain of trees. Buses were never rushing. Just taking their time sending people to their destinations without a hurry. Across the house, there was a tiny square, with 2 swings and several chipped bench chairs. I used to just lay there, looking into trees and the roadside down, thinking about the half-torn stickers on the corner wall. Two dogs were having sex, doggie style. The silence was a gift. But I worried every second that it was gonna be taken away from me. Even a couple of footsteps. It’s weird, to think that the existence of someone in that moment would ruin the whole thing, when in fact, it was someone who built the whole thing. Sometimes I wonder what is life when I crave to be alone but being alone is fabricated or conditioned by other people, how we are handing out our comfort to someone else we don’t know, how we rely peace on strangers not showing up.”
You just sit there, in the dent, looking out the window, and kept talking, lost in your words. Somehow I became the whole purpose of your conversation, but never finding myself diving in.
“I just really want to find a place like that and end my life in a way that I choose. You know, a total control over the last moment of my life.”
There was a spark in your voice, a glint so fragile that I didn’t know whether to protect it or diminish it. Your voice sounded shaky, body heating up, hands trapping mine. The torch of your palm nearly burnt me. But I stayed quiet, and listened.
“Can you kill me when I make the decision?”, you threw out this question. The sentence dragged me into somewhere faithless, dark, and gripping.
“Humankind disgusts me as well.” I tried to sound smart, but immediately regretted the sentence escaped from my stupid mouth, until the silence it followed became too solid to cut through.
“Don’t you feel like it’s a cruelty to live that long? Being that old and walk around with an additional of at least 4 legs to 2 wheels to assist you, sick of looking out to the same view but just lost the ability to even voice out the thought of changing?
“I’m serious. I can’t imagine myself being 80 and still go to the grocery store for some apples that are too hard for my dentures, scared that someday a sneeze could rattle ,y whole body and kill me painfully. And don’t get me started on the boredom. No one you know is gonna be around you. And soon your old ass friends would just disappear into nowhere, you don’t know when or how, cuz their family is more fixated of getting this thing over with than to inform an old friend of theirs, if they even still have a family. And I’m not having any children in this day and age. I always feel like I need to plan for my death a bit earlier, the earlier the better is what I’m saying. Just so I could get this out of the way. And I can choose the way I die, the way my death is announced, the pain. I would rather die in your hand, you know, and I know you’ll do a bloody great job”
Your voice became uncontrollably excited, and I started to regret not putting off the glint while I could. Your chest pumping, eyes lit, as if these thoughts were your drugs.
I did know how to deal with your monologue. The silence solidifies as I try to grasp my last sense of rationale even evaluating the pros and cons. I see in your eyes, they yearned for my simplest validation, behind them is just a puzzled mind trying to feel something. I wanted to see through your eyes, what your world is like, how was I in it. And I did.
“Sure,” I stared at you, slowly breathing out the answer you wanted to hear, “only if you would do the same for me.” I wanted to hug you, flew you across the world to find the place you talked about, gave you everything you ever dreamed of, just so you’d stop drowning in those thoughts. I wanted to be in the dark with you, but also wanted to give you the darkness you wanted. Truly.
“Deal.” You grabbed my hands, and shook on this carelessly made decision. I swore to hide my will under this spell. We pictured the way we lay in the other’s arms, and saying goodbye by the grace of two identical knives. It was the night we promised to only die in each other’s hand, and there were something else in your eyes, willingness, powerless, stern, and the light they shone brighter and brighter, till I became Icarus.
You once told me about your family, though it wasn’t hard to piece the story together. You family always wore that disapproving expression when I came over, as if I was the siren attracts the bright-eyed sailor with my fatality. You said they were never exceptional in anything, thus shooting for the best while landing just above the line would make them more than satisfied. They seemed to have their own problems, but it was clear that disapproving me wasn’t a difficult daily chore they’d pick up. It was only a matter of how much eyeing I can take before I find a way to your window and sneak in for good. It’s kinda like the modern act of Romeo and Juliet, only Romeo doesn’t want to fuck Juliet and Juliet is a nice timid broad and they have a sick twisted binding of killing each other and maybe in this case we are both characters, shifting lines and responsibilities but running in the same direction, as always.
We grew closer, in a way I have never experienced but you made me home. Everything becomes anecdotes and every matter becomes a two person baring. I told you about the ice cream dinner my mom made and you told me how they rip you off at that convince store that also sold fruits. We made half ass cocktails and drank your family’s stash. We dancing around the kitchen table, sailing to the sun rise. We collapsed into each other, into the indent of the couch, watching true crime shows and arguing with coffee table bells and air clap sounds. I hit you with that cushion. You didn’t hate it. We built a fort in the middle of the road and pirated through flying drones and crooked antennas. We didn’t know what future holds against us, but we flew over the concrete like we have seen the ending, and it was good.
I never picked up the subtle message of your puff, until that day when you showed me your secret stash. You said you stole those from someone’s locker. Something in the way you talk told me it was not your first rodeo, but I went along for the ride. I chose to stay around when you blew aircrafts through smokes. So many times I got so close to venture into euphoria with you, yet seeing your mind slowly leaving tied me down to reality, and guardian was all I could be.
Slowly, I started to go with you to a wasted backyard, and see you blow through a circle or two, playing tricks with what’s left of it. I still remember the evening when everyone was snapping a picture of those burning clouds strangled by the winds. We sat there on lawn chairs, just staring at the skyline turning into gradient. “It was quick. The sky changes color.” You barely open your eyes when you said it. “But when you look at it, you wonder the sky has always been there since before, before you raise your head. It was always this serendipitous thing that people just can’t get enough off, but the truth is they have always been there, just hidden in different colours.”
I didn’t say a word, just sinking into your stoned thoughts. I couldn’t quite figure out how to fade into the background when you started to talk, but you never asked me to be comfortable, or natural. Maybe that was our code, stained with silence and the smell of pot. I liked it a lot.
We began to venture into the backyards of empty holiday houses by the grey shore, checking off the list one by one. The dying market made people want to snatch up a house for the price of low maintenance and winter mold.
Things started to go downhill when we are at the second to last house down the shore. As usual, we would waltz in, kick some dirts, and align something to rest on. After a hour of looking for nothing and mindless giggles, we heard a click. The room behind us lit up, and light illuminated the weed breeding ground through dirty windows. I yanked you to the ground, to blend into the shadows, as the voice grew louder and more violent behind us. In the midst of chatters, I pieced together the money counting, dealer yelling, knife chopping, and chair breaking.
I looked over to you, you with clarity and scare shaken in your face. You held me so tightly with your hand that I had to yank the life out of you just so we could make a run for it.
The chatter became louder, and turned into yelling and punching. A click so crisp that only one sound in the movies resembled them. The clicked was the followed by the cracking of a firework made the ground shatter. I was frozen, paralysed even, sweating into the bricks. I looked over, and you were just there, staring into the lit room, looking into the sun like you used to.
Your brows jumped, and started to run with me as your weight. The force hit so hard all of a sudden, pushed me into the ground. I found my way back up, rubbed dirt in your hand, and saw your expressionless face.
“They saw me.” You mouthed me.
Breath became heavy as we finally made onto the road and found darkness into the alley. “They saw me. I made eye contact.” I had to hug you so hard that you didn’t have the room to shake when you voiced out.
“Let’s go home. It’s okay.”
“I saw them. They will come for me.” Your eyes cleared with tears, struggling to not let go.
“Let’s go home. Let’s just go home.”
That night, I made the first mistake of not sticking around.
You went M.I.A.. You stopped showing up to school, ignoring my calls, and just disappeared. I tried to see the ending of you, but I knew you are still out there. There was a charge of vibrance ventilating through the hallway, and the current started from outside the school, when people I saw in that house would constantly patrolling the surrounding.
I knew where you were now. The schemes ran through my mind and I tried to calm myself before acting on my suspicion.
Tireless buzzes from your parents dragged me through the hurt, anxiety, and hope they grounded me in. I was the only one who knew you, they said. I was the only one you trusted, they said. Please bring you back, they said. They would welcome me as their own after this, they said. I made empty promises with them, taking on the weight of three worlds onto my shoulder, and headed for the avalanche.
So I came for you. Not for your family. I had biked around the house, trying to find your traces through those barred window. The pounding hearts of ours missed several beats when I spotted you in the kitchen, locked up. With your shirts undone and bruised arms, for a second, time paralysed me into the moment, forcing me to suck up both joy and pain for finding you. A man came in, kicked you in your shin, and left you with your hoarse screaming through a dirty cloth. The muffled cry blended with mocking chatter shattered me. I leaned on brick wall, sit in dirt, trying to spy on the guards after my vision came back to me in one piece.
I called the cops, and started to pray to everything I can, holding every sign accountable. I prayed to the angel and assured myself they were around me when 11:11 lights up, even though I had been checking my phone every five damn seconds. The mania turned into paranoia, and sprung out of control, leaving me biting my nails and fumbling through every bad scenario, holding onto this ridiculous hope that if I can foresee them, none of them would happen. Desperate people find faith. I now knew where the hopeful recklessness feels like.
Bang.
The sound crashed into my skull, as I find my eyes laying in your bloody head. Your eyes were closed, and you stopped putting up a fight. Adrenaline charged by the terrifying echo pushed me off the ground. I sneak in, with my legs shaking in 30 degrees heat, making my way to you. The kitchen glowed in translucent light, deadly grey with a pinch of vulgar. You were cuffed to the door, deadly silent. The guard was putting down his bat, trying to grab a beer from the fridge right across you. A wine opener laid on the table, devilishly waiting. I made my way to him, grabbing the spiral, and drilled the tip into his neck.
Again, again, again, again….. I kept going, until the resistance ceased till it resembled an overly ripen avocado, till the movement wrote into my mind like a programme, till I lost sight of what’s in my hand, I pull the opener out, mechanically tossing it into the sink, feeling the temperature drops as the blood slowly evaporates and becomes cold and sticky. Everything became blurry and fuzzy. I tried to call you, with a vision compromised by red stains and sweats. The more I try to clear out the barrier, the foggier it gets and the further I was away from you.
But you weren’t with me. I grabbed the keys from the human mass on the ground, and unchained your ringed wrists. By my slippery hand, I tried to grab and ignite the last sense in you, until you opened your eyes and saw me from that silver. I don’t know how long did it take for us to flee, the only washy memory remained is the picture of your bumping into so many walls till we got out. I dragged you into the car, dropping you off at your home. On the way back, you came back to yourself, bit by bit, riding on the wind, with one hand running through the air, another grabbing mine. We didn’t say a word.
I carried you to the door, hoping someone behind can take actual good care of you, of us. The door opened, with your parents’ lit up eyes, beaming of life. As you stumbled into their arms, their eyes were no longer hopeful, more hostile, the good old despise with a smidgen of gratitude. They casted me out for dragging you down with me, and losing my grip of protection of you, while they roped me in with the guilt of doing the right thing and taking you home. They didn’t even ask whose blood is on my hand.
I didn’t put up a fight, and neither did you. You just sit there in the hall, before your parents puppet you into your room, with your eyes gripping mine. You sucked up those tears, and put together in a smile, mouthing me “Are we gon be alright?”. “I don’t know.”, I whispered.
I didn’t walk away. I couldn’t until the light went out and saw your cut out faded into the dark. Your front porch light was off. I still stayed the night, thinking about the promise unbroken by my hand. Promises, what a strange shapeshifter. We make promises in hope of keeping them, yet always inevitably it became the preventer of our intentions, guiding our actions. Promises are sordid little things, rooting an idea deep into our head till two minds twist into one with a bond that can be easily broken, it is so fragile that we got high on protecting them.
The death of that guard was made priority by the police. I figured it was only a matter of time before they find the opener in the sink, still hooking on a little part of his skin. It was all over the news. I couldn’t care less. Your family locked you up, forbid you to meet me. So I staying with you through the window, seeing you in your room, pacing around, banging your head into your bed, looking down on me. Nothing was behind your gaze, and the hollow devoured me mercilessly. You never smiled. Nor did I.
The last time you talked to me, was from the news. The police announced the suicide of a confessed killer. And your picture was there. You left a note on the bridge under the rock, coming clean with the false confession, saying I’m sorry, and washed away with the tides. The case was closed. They said it was just another addict gone cuckoo.
Every strength I had in me left with you in the water. And denial hurt like a mother.
The seemingly indestructible anger was overpowered by my insurmountable grief, fabricating the darkness night I had ever seen. The thing about being in the dark, is that when you get too used to the void, you become overly confident navigating through the darkness and one day your ego will bound to be bruised by the lurking emotions following you, never left.
For the first 6 months, I was stuck in the endless humid March. Every breath of damp air curses my lungs when I pretend to be stoic, indifferent, furious. Then comes right along is being trapped in August, searching for a breeze in the merciless summer with both hands holding on for my diplomatic responses to the outside. It’s how I was taught. It’s how I want to be seen, I’m okay.
The weird thing about emotions, is that it’s temporary. It only lasts for a certain amount of time, and it vanishes when it’s due. I can’t begin to hate you after these months. I try so hard to pin my depression and mania on you, blaming your for all my insanity and masochism. Fury held me back from missing you. And when it slowly died, I was all bare, in the storm of memories with you. I tried to invoke my final shield, only to find me losing power over emotions, yet giving in into the physical reaction shadowed with it. My body remembered how to act, but I can only taste the air back when, nothing more. I’m stuck out in the rain, again.
When I closed my eyes, I tried to picture your wary eyes behind those few strands of hair, deep, sometimes with such purposes, stamina, and always thinking. I came back to the night we made our promise, and stew in the broken oath, bathing in disbelief and tears. I wonder if at any given moments I should have been able to figure out your sly minds and confront you with god forbid courage and justice. But I didn’t.
*
It’s been a year now. I have stopped calculated the days we’ve known each other. I have slowly erased myself from my life, because every trace of myself still reminds me of you. I grew quiet, small, plain, with a deafening urge of almost wiping myself out from this town. I don’t believe in heaven, but I sure hope you are well.
Your parents left town after your funeral, and never came back. I heard they didn’t pack what’s left of you. Understandable. I wouldn’t either. Who needs a reminder of the wilting in their garden?
I still go to those backyards sometimes, just to see if there were still people around. I would find the same dent by the wall, and sit there for hours on end, try not to think about what happened.
This time, I looked down, thinking I would spot the place where I almost fell. And there is is. A folded notes stashed in the cracks of bricks.
It was a picture of a yellow house by the mountain. The creases stained white while the edges fades into black, but the vibrancy of the yellow almost hurt my eyes.
I’m sorry.
On the back reads an address. Your address. The place I have been avoiding at all cost. The note. What are you trying to do to me? The reminder flares up pain and knowing this is you soothes it almost instantly. I pack myself, following the direction.
And there it is. The window that paved me the passage to you. Your weed lawn. The stairs with that same chipped step. It’s all the same.
Maybe it’s just a fever dream. I stop myself from overthinking, scared the maybes becoming the truth. You are not here.
I open the door, disturbing the moment of silence occupying this once bubbly house. Everything is the same, the same crease in the curtain, the water stain on that wooden counter, the almost opaque air and the dancing particles when we first opened the cupboard, the same beaten up pillow in that slightly dented couch where we uses to make habitat for hours on end trying to figure out who murdered that lady on TV.
I made myself a glass. Muscle memories sneak in and tricking my body into believing you are still here. I loved that trickery. I made another glass, slightly altered to your liking, and placing it onto the counter.
I go up, following the same carpet marking leading to your old bedroom. I flare the dust and dancing into them, remembering your swift motions gliding down even though I told you a million times to quit it. I follow the air to your room. There it is. The smell of your beddings, the clean, skin like smell, blended with sunshine and artificial laundry detergent, ravishing through my body like a rapid fire soaring through the dry summer heat. The smell is so palpable I could almost cut the shape of you out and hug you like you never left.
I lay in your cavity in the bed. I never laid on your side, Why can something look so similar yet feel like the first time? The light yellow stain on your pillow case turns on the switch of me. I lay in your position, bury my face in, trying to feel your presence, mapping out the shape of you with the smell in my brain. I stopped abruptly, scaring that it may go away too quickly. It’s like when you get hold of your favourite candy, and you suddenly got stung by the generosity and abundance that you lost track of rations, going manically over the extreme high of your possession and devastating low when the gems run out.
A note followed my eyesight as I look outside the window, It’s you. “I’m sorry I broke our promise. A person dies twice. You saw the first time. The second time is when the last thing related to you gets erased. Here lies all the things proving I existed. You know I’m with you like I have never left.”
I smiled. You sneaky little bastard. So this is where you left and want to meet me again. I picked up the match box beside that note, and on the side it marked out your name.
I strike a match with your sake of help, and delicately place it on the carpet. Fire runs slowly, trying to get hold of the situation. Then it thrives, hugging every surface, making love to the floor, the chair, and finding its way on to the armrest of the stairs.
I sneak into your bed, drown in your last scent of smell. The sunshine, the detergent, the body wash, the smoky cigarette. It feels a bit too cozy, too comfortable, too familiar.
I close my eyes, reaching out my hand, just like that night, touching the tip of your fingers, holding onto the last essence of you for dear life. I know you will stay by the window, even if it’s too late and you would almost fall asleep, waiting for me to come. And I would arrive, not one second early, not one second late. Just on time.
I see the yellow house, lying in front of the forest. I see the edges gripping the green, and the bus roaming around. I see people move slowly, never rushing. I see the benches in the park, and the chipped boarder. I see the sky now, bright blue. I see the red hidden behind the cloud, white fogs dancing with the trees.
I see you at the corner, studying that sticker. You walked up to me, still blowing that smoke. I see us walking into the yellow door. I see us in that attic, making the same stupid promise, then swear to keep them until the end of time.
We kept our promises at last. Funny thing.