traces of you

Naoko,


To say that I don’t miss you would be a denial of my own awareness. Each moment passes with a palpability that reminds me of a reality we lived. The gaps of my fingers lay like barren chasms in that divide that separates us. My cold skin, remembering your touch, aches during frigid evenings. My nape, swollen from the last breath you exhaled. My lips, parched from a hunger that knows no satiation. How I held you between the sheets and caressed your mind with mine. How our bodies filled pages of poetry, entwined and elegant.

But they are precisely what they are, moments. Pieces of a puzzle missing its center tile. Lost and frail memories effervescent and distant. I do not fear the day that these memories would sublimate to oblivion, only because I know that that day will never arrive. Your words, how they inhabit my consciousness like foreign urban paths. Menacing and familiar, dark and comforting.

Ironic how it ended where it all began. Along chaffed streets lit by dull lamps.

Looking back, there were moments that foretold of an impending dissolution. My ignorance birthed not from the poverty of awareness, but through the conduit of hope that maybe it is transient, and we can weather these chinks in our own little world, hermitic and substantial. Yet, we were beautifully flawed, you and I, perfect in our imperfections. And what we shared were attempts to satisfy fissures that previously had been dormant. It was surreal, and incongruous, how one can discover another so moving and consuming that you question certainty, thus unwillingly inscribing expiration.

I won’t question the veracity of our relationship, I know enough to know that during that time it was real, and sincere. Genuine and exquisite. But truth shifts indecisively and fate weaves her sword swiftly. Emotions waver, beliefs questioned, and soon the disparities that we have vehemently kept at bay resurfaces to remind us that to be with someone, we must first be complete ourselves. To be whole first, before we can offer our wholeness to another. We cannot share what we don’t possess.

To ask you to stay beyond what your heart expresses would be selfish. To say that I will await your return would be equally unfair, to you for the burden, and to me for the tedium of helplessness. And to encumber you with such an onus is a servitude that you never wish to obligate from another, for someone who thrives in free-spiritedness, and to concede myself to somnolent anticipation would be an obscure reality to live for someone who dwells in vivid contexts.

I prefer to leave with the optimistic thought that our parting is but an intermediary. A farewell to your journey of discovery. To find the answers that you sought, and did not find with, and in, me. That maybe, by this action of liberty, you’ll find the pieces that will suture the interruptions. Whether or not those pieces would lead you back to me is inconsequential, I am happy to be a humble catalyst, but know that I wish you the fortitude to seek your specific invention, not by the decisions that define your circumstances, but by that catharsis of being who you should be, or at least knowing and acknowledging it. And achieve the balance of pathos and ethos that I myself pine.

Koori once mentioned how you longed for someone who can passionately move you to implosion, that overwhelming intensity boundless and radiant. Who can make you quiver by the sound of his voice, or misty by the touch of his fingers. How I longed to be that someone. Maybe I was, for some time. Maybe I lacked, too, that missing piece, essential and elementary, that lead to an unfurling, and ceased me from being that singularity.

So here we are.

I could easily conjure a myriad of reasons why it led to that misty evening. How the heavens seemed to wail, echoing and reverberant. How it felt like a defeat that begged for closure. A formality. A finality. So that you can progress, and I, simply continue. The silence that bound us contemplates the evanescence of that moment. I suppose too, that maybe the glint was too seductive we failed to discern it was cubic zirconia. Or that zeal distorted perceptions, and fed incoherent dreams. But the reasons would be irrelevant, truth remains that the decision was never mine to begin with, and by that act of exclusion you have asserted your defiance, questioned our pact, and negated my opinion.

Even now, I could still recall distinctly the innocuous details of our time together. Possibly due to an inherent memory acuity, more plausibly from the palpability of that period, for we latch on fervently to memories coinciding and defined by emotions. To assert that I was unhurt would be too couth and condescending, besides being a lie. But I also contemplate the possibility that what I possess and command is unparallel to what you yearn and concede. That possibly my predilection to logic and comprehension may have been too intense for my own good. That by the simple act of comprehension, I culled issues you meant to clandestinely ignore. That by my empathy I have unearthed semblances of a history you wished to rewrite. I cannot apologize for my own nature, but I would offer my acknowledgement that your salient points do hold water, to some depth at least.

In languor I would be reminded of distinct moments endemic to our narrative. The impatience to hold my hand on our first date, that lead to our first kiss. The thrill of our brief and illicit encounter at a café’s mezzanine toilet. The tranquility of your inebriated slumber upon my chest, whenever we were out drinking with your friends. The anxiety of us both when I introduced you to my friends. The surreal conversations we had whenever we found ourselves in Kabuo district searching for a place to get nasty. The luminance of your irises whenever we discussed our interests. The reassuring way we seek each others’ hands, and the audacity we held as by walking joined in-palm. Those leisurely nights at Martoa when all we had is a few hundred to spend. The simplicity of eating at Ba-ga Mashin, all the while holding hands. It seems infinite, those moments, and I would be inconvenient to specify all. But each one so distinct, unique, exquisite that their imprints reside in me with such adamantine completion, and to expound on would be a soliloquy you might find exhaustive.

Yet there they are. Moments immortalized in my frail heart seeking no validation, and demanding no warrant. Licentious may it be to have expressed them here, but it is not my intent to enumerate, but rather to elucidate. That I hold each of those moments precious, as remnants of our lost treasure.

I find no fault in the progression of this plot. I wish not to seem like an actor, portraying scenes to exact a reaction. I have no audience. I still am that chap, mesmerized by the poetry of your existence. And bear no resentment in your allowance to share that succinct serenade with you. I needed the distance to process it, empirically, to allow the truth of your absence to descend in my pool, so my heart could get accustomed to it. The sensation of your physiognomy embedded in my skin, factual and faint. And hope maybe, in that slight chance, I too have left an imprint in yours.

I long only that my being allow me to retain these traces of you. So that when fate beckons my heart to unlock once more, your memory may have enriched me with the wisdom of erudition.


Toru

We won't say our goodbyes
You know it's better that way
We won't break, we won't die
It's just a moment of change
All we are, all we are
Is everything that's right
All we need, all we need
A lover's alibi
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1996 Dreamin Out Loud
Tim Myers, Ryan Tedder

Image from here.