The Dance

I can hear the slow rock music captivating the hall. There are women dancing on the floor- swaying their hips and bodies to a tune that I am not familiar with. Some has men in their arms... men subserviently drifting away with their partners and the music. Men and women in each step of their feet crisscrossed with the life of the dance hall.

Then the world stopped... the room turned dark and the silence drowned the room. I stand frozen and the darkness is piercing my sight as I urge my brain to shift my reckless breathing into relaxed and rhythmic respirations. With my eyes closed, I could smell a man's perfume- strong and yet soothing. Then sporadically, as if the music is created underwater- fresh and shallow comes back into being. In sequence- piano, guitars, violin, drums and cymbals. This time, the music feels familiar but my cognition represses the memory of it. The drums sound synergistic with the thudding of my heart as if this heart inside the hurting chest commands the band. My senses are diluted in every way it should be, except this sight and touch.

I started to recreate a world out of the music: a large dimly lit banquet hall and a simple stage with a band of five unfaced men behind their instruments. No one else is here except for a man on a black suit with a fierce set of penetrating eyes and a sweet smile. His face feels familiar but his memory is lost. He seems to know me- every intricate detail in my being, every secret I have and thoughts that I had thought of and thoughts that I will think of in my tomorrows. He stares at me for long, longer than all my lovers' conversations. His face melts my reality and slowly I am being freed from the chains of my past and pain. He reaches out for my hand and as my fingertips touch his, I am permeated with a surge of joy and hope- the same emotions that had eluded me in years. With his strong grip, he led me to the center of the room. He puts my hand in his stalwart shoulders and slid his on my waist. He draws me intimately closer- too close that his smell vanishes and what is left to sense is his soft steady breathing drowning and pulling me immensely. His right hand clasped my left and he locked his fingers into my cold and sweaty fingers. I draw in one deep breath and he seems aware of it that he smiles, again. I can recognize his emotions but not his face- he seems very pleased.

The music changes its tempo. My heart seems to lose the baton of this hall's orchestra. He pulls me an inch closer ... too close that I lost the sight of his face and too proximate that I could only bury my face into his chest. I do not feel any discomfort because this man seems to belong to me and I to him. I look up to his face and tears are slowly rolling down his cheeks.

He leads me into a dance- his slow and assuring steps commencing a rhythmic waltzing around the hall. I am convalescing in his presence and I am willfully submitting into his grace. With the surge of joy, I can feel that my fears, my tears are gradually leaving a place of deceit, abandonment, insecurity and depression.

We dance the night.We dance until the day. We dance the days, weeks, months, years and moments away with each different music that our intertwined hearts are creating. We both could not feel any lost and recovery of physical energy  because we are but a one body.

I can now recognize who he is- in the midst of the slow and quick tempo and the shifting grasp and embrace of his, this man is no longer my stranger. He is my love and the love that loves my darkness, flaws...my laughter, happiness...my soul and my being.

I am home and the dance stopped.

No answers

I do not know the answers. 

I only know my questions and as I live this life each day, all these questions seem to pile up into a tangled string of conundrums. 

Please do not ask me how. Because I could not give you your answers...I could not even give myself a decent answer. Do not make me pack my boxes, do not make me fold my past and do not make me leave everything behind. Do not force me to live another life that I am scared of. I do not know how and I do not want you to show me how.

Do not ask me the "what's". I do not know what I want. I do not know what makes me happy. I do not know what makes me smile. I only know that I am doing okay when I hear myself inside my head- when I realize that I am talking to myself, again. I know that I am doing fine when I remember your "what's". I remember our "what's"... I remember us.  I remember everything about you. I remember them so much that it hurts to lose them tomorrow. Our memories in the past- it may seem bleak now but I know they were there, they are here, they are ours.

Please do not ask me why. Why do I love you? Why have I loved you? Why do I choose to love you for my forever, life and death. Do not ask these questions because I have been figuring out this myself. Each day I am seeking a rational sense why I live my life loving from afar. Do not ask me why I grabbed your hand when you wanted to leave, why I stood out in the rain trying to run away from you and why I could not force myself to sleep when I started thinking about you. I do not know why and I do not want to know why.

Ask me for whom. I love only  you. I will love you- away but forever.

"I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."- Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet

A Short Story (An Epilogue)

Stephanie, in her late twenties, has not changed at all. She still loves to stay in and spend her time crying over old romantic movies while underneath her blankets and thousand pillows- consciously sneaking each pillow into a position that would improbably asphyxiate her.

She has not changed at all. She still wears her decade old thick-framed glasses, clad in a monotonous colored dress and a sullen blank face. She still enjoys solving complex mathematical formulae or read her weekends away submerged in a hundred fiction books, the only invisible link she has with her deceased father. She still stays away from falling in love especially the kind of love that she has herself trapped into. And she still gets scared when she imagines herself growing old alone.

Stephanie thinks her time has frozen when she met Dave and she wishes her time has frozen with him. Before Dave, she knew that love is defined by boundaries. Love was a state of conditional acceptance. She witnessed the kind of love that was strongly defined by her parents over drunkenness, bruises and cuts, shortcomings and infidelities. She recognizes every emotion there is: hatred, desperation, envy, anxiety, anger, bitterness, misery, pleasure, happiness, contentment, gaiety… except love.

Then she met Dave. She often drove him away and yet would always find Dave waiting for her outside her apartment with a box of cold pizza and a few of his hours that felt like forever. Dave made Stephanie felt she was beautiful despite the thick-framed glasses, her colorless ensemble and passive face. They watched sunsets and sunrises, each so taciturn in their own interconnected worlds. He accepted her and she began to accept her own imperfections. Slowly, Dave stripped away her definition of love and showed her that love in its purest form is the kind of love that compels you to live.  

But Dave only lived his last six months with Stephanie.

The Red Shoes

She was jumping and hopping with her face in all smiles-
Too caught in the moment of playful tricks and disguise.
With her favorite doll, she ran after the colorful butterfly
Poor little girl did not know that her father just died.

She danced and whistled a tune so happy and gay;
And tapped her red shoes to a thousand worlds away
She giggled and laughed, oblivion to sadness and pain.
She could not understand but the skies are ash gray.

She grew up with pictures and stories about a man too dusty to recall.
Of a man whom she knew out of distant phone calls.
Who always reminded her that she was his greatest love above all
And with that gripping loss, she stopped living- her life has a vast hole.

"If only I could tap these red shoes and be with him"-the woman plead
Fly away from her darkness falsely kindled by lost men and their embraces
The crippling pain of not belonging dawned her existence to bleed
Beyond her blank stares, she could see  hopelessness and obliterated spaces.

Reflections

I looked at my refection
     and see the face of a wounded soul.
I glimpsed at the mirror
     and discovered a life with uncovered holes.
I stared at the face of a woman
     who is crying inside.
Because a love so enduring would never be
      the love he will ever find.

I tried to reach out to the aching heart
     But the hands could not- not with a distance apart.
I am longing to remember the past
     and keep the memories of a hidden love to last.
I wanted to hear his voice that fills up
     the vacuous core of the numbing noise.
I craved to feel the touch of his skin
    but the overwhelming senses stole the will to win.

Let me not drift away from you.
Let me not let of these memories of a love so true.
Hold my hand until the time will take us apart.
Breathe for me close because I no longer feel my heart.

10:12pm

Shadows

I walked away from you
Away from what makes me true.
I drifted afar like waves from the shore
Escaping the pain I could not mourn.
I hold on to your hand and afraid to let go
Of a love that I hope will last for long.
I tried to escape from this loneliness
    Like a shadow enclosed in a mess.
I longed for you while the sun is kissing the ocean's breath
Yearning that you can take me away from this death
I stared at the sky waiting for the light to return
Until the shadow of the past has learned.

But your love that I deserve
Is a love that I can never have.

A Second Chance

"Do you need more crayons, writing paper or these coloring books? Take whatever you want... anything you need at school. " he said.

I approached the counter with a handful of colored pens and a roll of writing paper with him at my side. He then took out his black leather wallet and pulled some crisp bills to pay out my whims. I, on the other hand, held close to him and stared at him- in awe of his seemingly valiant stance.

I remember this moment. Those were the few moments I was in awe of him. I was astonished of who he was... I adored him but not what he became.

The clock says 10:08 p.m.The rain falls hard blurring my view from the bus window. It is cold and the time freezes. I felt cold... I felt alone and helpless... you were cold, you were alone and helpless.

I moved far away from you and I wanted to. Further... until this space is filled with anger, resentment and bitterness and the only thread that connected us are these short memories of then and there. 


"Happy birthday, my dearest. I am sorry I could not buy you a decent birthday card" he wrote in his cigarette's aluminum foil.

You grinned at me with your widest smile and with a lost front tooth. I, on the other hand, folded the foil and fought back the tears. Not once have you failed to remember my birthday- a day shy away from yours. I have believed that I was your gift and that you were worth this precious gift. You were precious in my eyes then. I was in awe of you... I was astonished of who you were but you were different. You  felt different.

Passengers aligned the aisle and I stared at them. The clock now reads 10:14 p.m. The rain has stopped but the view is still blurred. There were faces outside- strangers' faces.
 You felt a stranger to me.

I moved far away from you not that I wanted to. You tried to fill all the spaces in between with new memories of then and there. But it was too late.

"I thank you-  without you I will not see the beauty of this world", I said in my graduation message.

I scanned the audience. Eyes stared at me and at 16, I didn't care of those strangers' eyes. I searched and looked for you. But I didn't find you.
I assumed everyone in that small town knew of our story and  it was unclear how their idea of you was different from mine.

The clock says 10:43 p.m. I am nearing my bus stop. The rain has long halted but the view is still blurred. My tears had blurred my view.

Your time stopped and all I held on are these tears from memories of there and then.

You are now far away from me not that I wanted to.

You never had your second chance.

But whenever it is painful and hopeless, these memories of then and there are your second chances. 


To you my father. I may have let go of the white balloon in your funeral but I won't let go of our memories of then and there.

I should write... I should write... Oh please let me write now...

Well, this is isn't the writing ambiance I imagined myself into after months of blog drought- tired and in between  a drenching stench of unlaundered clothes, crumpled green sheets, scattered reports on the floor and twelve opened tabs of researches and journals to read.

Unlike when I was younger, my writing forces me into a trance where butterflies in red and purple hue flew above an imagined world of sunsets and shores while a grand Sonata is playing on the background. With no particular ritual, the mind or the fingertips (whichever dominates) force me into this writing trance and dictate my destiny for one hour leaving this ambivalent self into a literacy satisfaction.

For the past months, I have always imagined writing something here- in this blog full of unexplained emotions, life's realizations and memories. But, I always ended up in a blank page where the cursor hauntingly blinks as if I have lost the words and my way back to that "writing" world.

I always start strong- one, two and three paragraphs about everything and often nothing (as long as this burning passion to write is pacified). In my head, I imagined the perfect unison of thoughts and the sound of my fingers tapping on the keyboard. In my head, I have strung letters into words, words into phrases, phrases into statements, statements into paragraphs while a portion of this brain obsesses on a list of bills to pay, reports to submit, tasks to do and not to mention people to please.

But in my head as always,  the weaving of words are overthrown by things adults like me should do or thoughts adults like me should think.

There is nothing special with my writing or this blog. In fact, sometimes my "adult grumpy" self would often think of putting this 8 year old blog into a permanent sleep along with its 97 memoirs. Sometimes, I want to pull the cord connecting my head and fingertips into that "writing trance" and force this introvert out of the real world and into a real conversation.

For now, before I click on the delete button and permanently erasing any traces of my frustrated literary pieces, let me write now. Let me forget all the things an adult like me should do or thoughts an adult like me should think.

Just once. Just this once.


Disclaimer: The author is not a poet or writer (though sometimes she pretends and claims to be one). No one is also restraining her to write but since the author considers herself as an "adult" and glorifies her busy schedule, she always blames herself for not having the free time to write.

The Musings of a Disillusioned Solitaire

I walk the same path everyday. I see the same strange faces and places. And in my head, I mumble a recurring similar thought:  that I am not a disillusioned solitaire. Unarguably, I am not lonely and alone, just a solitaire writhing out of the confined space of four-walled silence.

I observe the stranger's face- memorize every angle and the perfect positioning of his moles and birthmarks. I notice the slightest movement on his face. How he winks unknowingly or grimaces on stories that he has first heard of. Oh yes, I stare at him and it amuses me how the simplicity of him crooking his nose could give me bliss.

I am a disillusioned solitaire- not that I am lonely and alone.

In my head, I asked "How was your day?" and in my head, I smiled when I imagined you said " Better now when you are around".  I do hope that what I have in my imagination aligns with your reality. This imaginative conundrum defies the fact that I am only a stranger- your stranger. A stranger who always sits in front of you and in desperate hours imagined asking you all my questions but hearing this deafening silence. A silence which means nothing to you but everything to me.

In silence, I stared as you hold her hand. And in that same moment, my heart precedes my head as it howls as if everything has just melted away. "I have never seen you smile this way",  " It's okay- as long as you are in front of me...as long as I see you each day, I would be okay", I told myself.

I walk the same path everyday. I see your face different than what I have in my recognition. It was your smile while you are with her that reverberates and eventually dispatches those tiny  happy memories.

And slowly I am becoming just a solitaire.

No Starless Sky

One night in the middle of the sound of crickets and the whooshing of the trees, I remembered curling up in bed with a pillow wrapped in my arms so tight. In the middle of a desperate attempt of getting myself out of yet another night of insomnia, I looked out from my window and counted the stars in the night sky. I counted one till ten, eleven and twelve until I was tired of counting. For ten seconds, the sound of crickets and the whooshing of the trees stopped. In that auspicious moment at eight years old, I realized - a sky can exist without the stars but the stars will never be without a sky. 

One night in that same bed, at that age when hormones rebelled against tampons and curfews, I hypothetically tested my mother about my discovery when I was eight. She seemed to me like someone who had been a star herself. Someone who shone in somebody’s sky, someone who loved but never loved enough in return. I asked her on why does a sky often if not completely takes the beauty of a star for granted. I asked her why stars look like accessories in the night sky- that they shine because they should. She pretended not to hear me. She did not answer me. But I heard her very loudly. I heard the sound of her aching silence. I felt her pain. I sensed her defeat. The wall that she created has started to fall down. And little by little in the years that followed, she started to rebuild her walls again with the bricks of her sorrows.

Not once did she allow herself look vulnerable to anyone especially me. Never did she show me her tears and fears. And never did she pretend not to be a star because for me she shines so beautifully. 

Unlike any mothers, she did not read me those mushy fairytale stories. She never told me the existence of happily-ever- after. She taught me what love really is: that is not enough and that it will never last forever.

She was a star and got tired of living in that somebody’s sky. But that doesn’t mean, she stopped trying to be a star because I am quite sure that she will never stop shining.

At twenty six, as I curled up in a different bed tonight, I remembered my star-sky theory. Adrenaline has kicked in and sleepiness won’t be bothering me in a few hours. In the middle of some melancholic Sarah Mclachlan’s song, I sat up and stared out from my window. And it was there, the antithesis of my theory:  the sky and a star- but not just any ordinary star.  As I stared with awe in the beauty of how two separate entities looked so perfectly in harmony, I put my preposition to rest. It is always like this from the start: a sky can never be exquisite without that single star that completes it and a star will always shine so beautifully in the right sky.

I wanted no starless sky.

But for the meantime, I will shine like her… beautifully.

A thousand fireflies

If only I can catch a thousand fireflies
I would and put it in my heart to find where you are now
A thousand fireflies under the moonlight glow
Seem unequal to the thousand stars in your skies

If only I can glow in this lifetime, I will
And I won't be scared of what is inside this darkness
I am but one firefly, a love that flickers in brief flashes
 Isolated, Fleeting, ephemeral and lifeless


I dance with the wind and I dance in the dark
A million waltzes in the starry sky
Hovering over you  and locked in the night
For in the morning I glow no more.

The silhoutte of my past is lurking through my soul
In sight are a thousand fireflies
Like scattered gems in the waveless sea
My hands are tied, I could not move.

Photo Credits: Grave of the Fireflies

I am such a blabber mouth when I write

I am writing again.

 I write just to create a space in my brain where thoughts flow in and out without my permission.

I write again in search of that half that makes me whole.

 I write to pen down the tulips and roses that fail to blossom in my spring time.

I write songs but the melody is out of tune. I write to feel how perfect a song is without listening to it. Cymbals, harp, triangle, electric guitar, piano and violin are all playing out of tune but somehow and somewhere in the chorus, they all blended, trying to give out a harmony for a song that feels… a song that cries.

I write because I feel.

I write when I cry.

I am writing because of you. I am writing because you give me the sole reason why I should not to.

I am writing now and I will be writing tomorrow. No more should I hide this pen or crumple this paper.

I write especially when I sing with Macy Gray. I write while she sings her bitterness in a man’s voice.

I write because I live and I live more when I write.

I babble when I write.

I write about everything and about everyone.

I write about you- how you hold me in your arms when I rant about my flabby stomach. I write about how you fix my hair or the zipper in my bag.

I write about them. Yes! Those friends who always make me laugh so loud in the middle of the streets or those who I rarely see but will always know how to make me scream in every falling star we see.

I write because I cannot speak out. I write because I choose not to speak out. I write because I can’t just tell everything to you.

I write because if I talk, I might hurt you.

I write because I find comfort in words. I find romance in the marriage of words and paper.

I write because I love how my right hand strokes the paper in every curve and lines I pen down.

I write because I love how my thumb flips the pages of my life.

I write because I don’t have the answers to all of our questions because if I do then I will just be blurting it out to you.

I write when I am hurting.

And I write because it perfectly describes my sanity ( and in this case, insanity!)

If I Run

If I run to you today

Will you still know my face from a thousand strangers?

A love’s lost in the dark, a love I hold on so long

For I have ne’er find the courage to declare

If I talk to you today

Will you know what’s inside me?

Fears and tears, shame to blame no one but you

Will you know if I am hurting?

Will you recognize that this smile, so forceful but to pretend?

If you hold my hands today

Can we still know there’s no difference?

Between the fight and the desire to hold you tight

I no longer crave to walk to you and with you

Years have flown away, memories have faded

And the familiarity has turned to null, these hands are empty

If you have run to me yesterday

I still know your face from a thousand strangers

Maybe…just maybe, a love that is short lived

From desolation, our love will sweep us away.

Yearning

April 15, 2008

Trailing ahead ablaze in a path

A yearning to feel, a yearning to love

But in my heart filled with conceit and wrath

I ran away, as swift as the light’s hub

I lost the grip to care, the desire to feel and need

I dance in the rhythm of chaos and intuition for long

As I am staring in your eyes, can’t you see in you I heed?

In silence, I am bleeding and screaming with nothing. I am alone.

Words welled up inside; words all left unsaid.

Searching and fleeting, asking and failing

In weakness, in pretends with no one but dead

This heart is empty, I am grieving, and I am ailing.

I left, I ran away once more

Then the words are no longer kept away

Finally this mouth has spoken, innocence no longer restored

This self, this fire that vanished and truth in bare has laid

Wings have flown softly and blindly in depth

Clipped, tripped, stumbled and humbled

Surrounded, locked in golden chains and in noise and deaf

“I love you” that was all I mumbled.

Metamorphosis

Broken pieces of vision and vigor love
Was wrecked by sour confusion and horrid betrayal
Was crushed by hatred and disguised mercy
And worsen by affliction and bleak hope for tomorrow.

An illumined knowledge darkened by false identity
Of insincere strangers wandering around
Bearing facts of morbid awareness
As they scorn proofs of unbounded truth.

Locked in the cage of slavery and sin, I can not breakthrough
From opposing forces of contentment and loneliness
Blinded by earthly wealth and endless felicity
Of acceptance and hearing serene music of laughter.

Day by day, hope tried to seek in
In every closed mind and cold heart
Bleakness of tomorrow was no longer seen
And lights of trust caves into the heart.


-Year 2003

Breath of Faith

His shattered trust compelled you to live with me
With fault and shame, His goodness I failed to see
You opened my eyes for me to realize
How forgiving He is to pardon all my lies.

The blood from your wounds cried out His truth and glory
But my ignorance tormented your pursuit
His calm endurance has made me believe
He is always with me as I walk with you in this road.

Imprisoned in sorrow and despair, I tried to escape
Your cold flesh unchained me from slavery
Stirred to a passion of gratitude I strained my own ear
And your honest assurance washed away my fears.

In the darkness, I stumbled down: I searched for your hands
The tears from my wretchedness brought me near to you
The warmth of your touch filled my heart with exuberance
Pouring my soul with immeasurable lenience and favor.


Your generosity, I etched indelibly in my mind
Like the sun that won't leave the skies behind
Your undefiled mercy penetrated the depth of my sinfulness
In your presence, my lost soul will rest.

This poem was written in 2002 and was selected as a finalist in Poetry.com's contest .

Ward is under renovation.

The old lady was half-awake as she breathed in and out with the help of the respirator; as her husband of 50 (plus) years stood by her bedside and gripped her lifeless hands.

For the past days, I am struggling to erase this short memory from my mind; not because I feel for the old woman who does not deserve to be in her present predicament but moreso I pity for the husband who blame himself on why her wife was all oblivious, battered and black and blue. So far, the only time that the old man left her wife's side was when he hurried to their cabinet to take out some rolled tissue to wipe his own tears.

He is a young husband, around 35 I guess. When he was admitted in the bed next to our mini- station, his wife and relatives were crying incessantly. They were much aware of the reality that he may not survive, since not much has survived a gun shot wound in the head.

His wife has been the one running around for laboratory and medicine errands. She is the one who painstakingly ignored her numb muscles for running around so much. When doctors prescribed something, she without hesitance rushed to the pharmacy. Because deep down she knows if this is how second chances work, then she will not moan a single selfish complaint. For days, the husband showed no signs of improvement until the day when his eyes opened and caught the sight of her wife tired and sleepless; with her hand holding his.

Life has allowed the peculiar evolution of both rational and irrational thoughts, feelings and actions in us. And as I witness to the constant swings and shifts of these feelings and thoughts associated with morbidities and mortalities, I was reminded by a very simple life philosophy: "All we need is someone who can hold our hands in our lifeless and waking moments".

I should better be assigned back to the ward. The commotions of leaking I.V fluids, feeding tubes being pulled out, parents overly frantic about late procedures and hospital staff and students chasing after patients' charts would definitely keep my mind off these over-sentimental philosophies.

Perfecting Imperfections

In a dark and damp room, I found myself drifting away from the vacuous cynicism of life, faith and love, in general. I realized that how much I try to correct every mistake in my life, the more I am incessantly reminded that I have no ability to right every inconceivable wrong. And the more I have tried perfecting every single imperfection that my egotistic mind generated, all efforts are just one set of missed baseball pitches.

I have lost the ability to recognize that sunsets have contrasting hues of black, blue, orange, yellow and red. What had happened to that little girl who was fond of watching sunsets in her hometown's seashore and that in every sunset she had, all she could mumble in herself was that all her dreams will definitely come true. To that little girl, sunsets were her dream portals. And now, when I stare at it , all I see is just the sun setting and settling into the beds of the ocean's roaring waves. No more wishes, no more dreams, no more portals, just plain sunsets.

I have lost the awe in every falling star brushing thru the skies. I no longer recognize that stars fall just so they could meet their destiny... that they were tired of just hanging above the earth who had not once failed to be in utmost wonder of her twinkling and light. What happened to that old self who believed in happy endings and sappy first loves. Who rationalized less on signals, who did not apply the complexities of x and y variables and the square roots of formulae to figure out a guy's intentions.

I have failed to identify the difference between a full moon and its half counterpart, no longer recognized that the moonlight emanating from a full moon, half moon or quarter moon are all the same and has the ability to clear some of life's conundrums. I have failed to delineate the distinction of a crowded room to an unoccupied room. I realized that in a crowd of strange faces, you could not help but feel alone. People, yes people were meant to say goodbye. And it doesn't matter where, when and how... But the truth is, people do say goodbye.

What happened to that little girl who laugh in every blunders and spilled soda in her blouse; who was contented in life's simple pleasures of friendships and free lollipops; who had her dreams of perfect endings in love. What happened to her?

Maybe she just grew up.

Yet another untold short story

Stephanie stared at her reflection once more and adjusted the hem of her soft silk green dress. "This would be the night." she thought. She nervously dabbed a tint of pink on her cheeks as she had no experience of putting make-up on ordinary days. She ran her fingers in her short unruly hair and tried so much to put every strand into perfection. And tonight, she effortlessly hooked a necklace in place- the one she always have locked away in her cabinet.

She stared at her reflection. She was quite contented with how she looked. "Tonight..." she mumbled to herself.

She adjusted the hem of her soft silk green dress as she waited patiently for him at the coffee shop. She glanced at her watch: 8:42 p.m. She had been waiting for 40 minutes and still there was no sign of him. She went up and managed to order a frappucino in the counter and forced a smile at the barista who handed her the frap. She went back at her table and thought... " Tonight... I am still his friend."

Earlier that day, she received a text message from his bestfriend. "Hey, we broke up. Are you free tonight? I can use some company. Meet you at 8pm in our table." She had planned a different night though, lined up 27 dresses, My Bestfriend's Wedding and P.S I love you and stacked up microwavable popcorn for her usual Saturday DVD night. But everytime her bestfriend needs her, she always as expected postpones her DVD nights and delays her deadlines.

She had not heard from him in a while. As she waited for him, she calculated that it has been 13 months since they last shared the "table". The last time she remembered, he was pouring his stories over some girl he had met in the office. He was ecstatic on the simplicity of that girl, and on how he love the idea that this girl might be his soulmate. He was happy while she was bleeding inside. For 10 years or so, Stephanie managed to be his bestfriend.

9:09 p.m. She received a text message from him: "Sorry, I could not make it. I am with Liz. You're right. She is worth fighting for. Thanks best!"

This is not what she expected. "Tonight, she thought... I thought I can be his someone.Not just anyone.."

Conversations with Love

The phone rang once... twice... My head is screaming its hesitancy of picking it up. I just came home from work and my body demands nothing but to rest. Not tonight. Whoever's calling now, would call early in the morning.

The phone rang thrice. And on the fourth, I gave up.

"Hello"

"Hi..It's me."

His voice was very familiar, but I could not figure out who he was.

"Uhmm.. I am not sure. But who's this?"

"It's me... Love"

"Love? Oohh.. how are you?"

"You... how are you? It's been a while since you have me in your life. I hope you're not mad at me. Are you?"

"How can I be mad at you? It was never your fault, anyway. We both took the risk of having you and hoped that you would stay for long."

"I'm sorry. You know how this work, right?"

"Yeah... I know very well.. Hey, I had a bad day, so can I hang up?"

"Sure... " Love said.

I was lying numb on my bed as I re-run the conversation I just had with Love. "It's been a while.." And what now? What does Love want from me now? In my last conversation with him, I vaguely remembered that I clearly asked him to stay out of my life... to just leave me alone and not to bother me anymore.

"Please, no more assurances. No more falling stars. No more happy endings. Just stay away from me, especially now that I am picking up myself again."

He said: " You can never make me stay out of your life. You live because of me. I can never promise tomorrows without heartaches or tomorrows without tears. I can never force him to love you more than you love him. I can never make everything last forever. Because, you know it well...Nothing lasts forever."

"Well, I no longer believe in you, Love. I was deluded by your expectations. I am not like you. I don't believe in second chances anymore."

"Is this really what you want? If you just let me, I will undo all the bitterness and tears that he caused you. I will answer all your unanswered questions. On why he failed you... why he chose to hurt you."

"No...it would be useless now, Love. I don't need you. I need Time."

What does Love want from me now? It's 2:41 a.m and I haven't had a decent sleep for five days. The only thing that I need right now is not a crappy conversation with Love... I don't need him. I cannot afford to have him right now.

The next day, I called Love. I know, I had been rude hanging up on him that way.

"Why are you here, Love? Why...it's too soon"

"I just want you to have me in your life now. I told you, I cannot leave you."

"I am not sure if I can trust on you again Love. How many times have you failed me?"

"Not once did I fail you. You just stopped believing on me... You stopped hoping on me. You were too scared like he was. "

Silence.

Yes, it's true. I was scared at first, but then I let Love do his magic. I jumped. I had not once stopped hoping on love. I held on until I have lose all the strength to hold on and the reasons to hold on. It wasn't me who gave up. He gave up first.

" Love, I am not sure on what you said that I live because of you. I realized that I am capable of living without you. You know me very well. I will never abandon you. I won't give you up. In fact, I'll do everything for you. But, I have to live without you enough to make me feel alive."

I can hear Love sobbing...Tears too are flowing out of my eyes.

Then he finally said: "Please don't lose your faith in me. He just asked me to come talk to you. You have waited for four years for him to finally have the courage to face his fears. He never let me go. He told me, you are the only right thing in his life so he hold onto me. I was his only sweet memory of you. If you want, I'll make him wait. And when I come back at you, please dont shut me away. Don't be too scared. I'll be here waiting for you.Then let's just hope, I am here to stay"