closure

Saturday.

You’re leaving? He queried.

Was I ever here? The sharp reply. The repetition meant to reiterate the gravity of the words. A double-slap served as cold as the Gobi at the last ice age.

Yes physically I am with you, now, among copious now’s and even more diverse then’s. But was I really here? You had my arms, wrapped in your porcelain skin, every night. But did you have my embrace? You had my body, every inch of its wearied landscape. Every one of my furtive marks, every peak you have challenged, every fold dug and explored. My fluids tasted in every imaginable source, as I have yours, much to my derision. But you never owned my flesh. You’ve tasted my lips, basking in my tongue’s graceful meanderings, and slurped every drop of my salivating urges. But have we ever kissed? Your lips were more consuming, voracious, desperate and passionate than any I’ve ever locked with, yet each seemed more ordinary than the last. I rested my head across your bare heaving chest every night when we’ve retired. Hearing the confident oscillations of your heart, slow and uneventful. Staking its claim and knowing its prize. But have you listened to mine?

Those eyes were piercing, searing his very flesh through sustained moments. Inciting a churning sensation he knows too well. Time’s glacial disposition defies reality, amidst the anarchy of urbane milieus, they stand there. A crowd shuffles hastily, bumping, grinding, grazing and glancing. Yet, their solitude felt most palpable. A purgatorial state where here isn’t here, and the passing of time irrelevant and utterly imperceptible.

His dissonant fingers fidgeting with the ominous sweating trademark. An eternity of anxious hyperventilation stares him at such close-range he can almost hear its deep putrid breathing. Foreboding, and starving to devour his fragility. A vulnerable heart ripe for the picking. Bursting with a mélange of past castings and previous collisions. Its seams loosening its strings, and integrity faltering from its core.

His eyes were welling. The futile struggle to hold back tears coming as an intrusion. He used to be that one that leaves them empty and broken. A tumultuous heap of weeping and begging. Fraught and distraught like children orphaned. His attention, an elixir, poisonous, volatile, intoxicating and addictive. And they were his junkies, banished with a ration inadequate its weight in gold to sustain their sanity and composure. Crawling and groveling for his disinterested affection.

Now, as if fate casted him in the sarcastic tragedy of the year, his eyes were the ones saltine and septic. Melting his knees, with a stoic catastrophe looming. A catalytic degradation of his core, blossoming from the depths of his false pride. Crumbling. As if he was them. But much more desperate, and defeated.

Can’t we talk this out? His plea.

Why? What for? I’m not as fickle-minded as you. Was the rebuttal.

What changed? He questioned.

Nothing, really. I just woke up and realized this isn’t a dream. And you’re not my dream. Silence.

Fingers became still, their breaths misting the windshield that humid summer afternoon. The expressway sped in front of them, endless, boundless and meaningful. Like a destination, offering to their wanderlust, a pleasant discovery alluring and seductive. The cardiac surgery unfolding before his eyes, with a dexterity he used to muster. He hoped they just kept on driving, sans the trajectory or logic he verbalizes often. That the least reason he needed was no more than to keep them in that state. Together.

But he realized, the same exquisite hands weren’t his, and that the gesture they portray aren’t as supportive as he imagined. Because he had seen those before done by the same limbs that terminate his arms. Except now they are at his sides, motionless, catatonic, much like his heart. Caught in mid-sentence, he moved his palms. To the closest set of fingers in front of him. Imploring for a change that is unlikely and unequivocal. A spiteful fate he chanced upon. Not by chance, but by the chances and indulgences he took, and forcibly exacted, from the person in front of him.

It came as a surprise. The motion was swift, agile and elegant. The intent forceful and decided. No second-guessing like last time. Suddenly the car was imploding, crushing him in a heap of shards and shrapnel. A scene recited before his glassine eyes. Surreal and expedient. Abrupt like a passing breeze. Hot flash of humility on his oblivious and derelict existence. He didn’t see it coming. Now he can’t bare to see it leaving. It was immediate and firm, complete and crisp.

Thud. The car door closed.

Silence.

Suffocating emptiness. Like the passenger seat.