Yilu

I first knew of her a decade or so ago now - the smart girl on the road to her valedictory address. I knew the name, I glimpsed her face but once. The second time I saw her - the one that stuck with me was in our subdivision. She was riding a bike. I was riding mine. I knew it was her. I don't think she even knew me. Fast forward to high school and we found ourselves in the same institution. I first spoke to her during our freshmen family day, eager to try out a game on her phone. All those other times I met her - in the hallway or elsewhere in the school grounds - I gave a vague nod of acknowledgement. We were never friends then, although that changed, very slightly, when a lot of us from our batch got addicted to Ragnarok Online. Among the things that I am very proud of, it's that I was classmates with all of us who graduated from high school, although we weren't classmates until our senior year. Like I said, we were more acquaintances than we were friends up until the day I decided to break the ice: I started bullying her after my own fashion, which is how I usually befriend somebody. After having gone through the past three years, the entire batch was well aware of her intense fascination with the color yellow. The walls of our classroom were apple green and, well, I love the color green, so I pointed out to her that she was surrounded and that the color green was clearly superior over yellow, and our classmates, realizing this, followed suit. And so it became known that green and yellow were at war. The rest was an immensely fun history.

I used to be one to struggle intensely against the looming change that tugged at all of us, threatening to unravel the knots we forged over the years. Needless to say, I found myself burned out and feeling tossed aside, but that is another story. Over the years, while I have grown distant from the rest of our batch, I still maintain our ties. Where there is awkwardness between me and the rest of our peers, with her, I feel I could run across endless fields of soil and sand, soaking in sun and rain alike: light and free, and most importantly, me. There is no judgment, only an understanding that can only come from kindred souls, bridging so wide a distance, physical and metaphorical, that it ceases to matter, which I sorely need at this stretch of my life's road where I have seen once-bosom friends shun me. At the end of all things, I know I will find yellow and myself upon a bench, sharing a good laugh as only friends can, and agree that it has been one maelstrom of a ride, and yet argue whether yellow or green is better than the other.

Raison d'être

There is a fundamental difference between our lives that strains to sever our bridges. I am an anchor weighing you down as you sail towards your dreams. Even then, I have yokes to bear alone: frustration, guilt, and wistful despair plague me incessantly. After all I went through, the surprise at being cast away has lost its novelty. It is as you said: do not complicate life. I am a tumor practically begging for a surgical removal. I live vicariously, leeching off of things until I am rid of.

It occurs to me now that perhaps people cross paths with my own to ascertain what they truly want - not too different from coveting a toy from behind a window, going into the shop to speak with the maker, and briefly trying the toy out only to find realize that you never wanted the toy at all and so you return it and leave contented. 

I am toy. This is my purpose: to be loved for a spell only to be outgrown, before the hands change again.

This is my fate: to be cherished until the child is grown, after which my fate is my own.

Things

Between leaving this space to start afresh, and staying to maintain some semblance of consistency, I was made to stay. I have weathered storms that left me broken these past few months, but their telling is for another time, or it may never come at all. Things come to us that are beyond all forms of control: the weather, a rip in your suit, you stumbling down the pavement in picturesque flailing of limbs, chance meetings with a lost friend, sharing a smile with a stranger, laughing inwardly to a joke remembered in our heads. I have laid down drafts for my departure, all intricately woven as to reflect my belief in some grand design I cannot comprehend that has me entangled. Shackled. That at my weakest I whisper to myself that all is not for naught in the end.

In the end.

In the end you come waltzing into my life and I find myself caught in your embrace, and your whispered professions, your - your honest confessions come knocking at my doors, incessantly hoping to weather the rock that once was a heart. I rebuff and reason that everything is too soon, that this briefness of time comes with a familiarity to it: a bitterness in my gut and a salty tang to my eyes. And in the end we come to this.

I hear nothing but the last beats of this heart at my feet. I see nothing but your face contorted in honest pain and yet your eyes still enthrall me so - I brim with the force of thawed ice that I cannot hold back. You whisper those words again, one hand raised in a final plea. 

Forgive me for this sin: I took the fall.