Missing someone is your heart’s way of reminding you that you love them.457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZIegvWtxVG
Happiness is like a room without a roof while sadness is a room filled with water without an exit. Life’s a bargain. I’m stuck in a barter between who I am, who I want to be and who I should be. It scares me that I don’t have any idea what to do with my life.
There’s Anna. But she wanted me out of her life. It pained me to think she doesn’t want me anymore. She doesn’t want to remember me anymore. It was so easy for her to let me go.
There are a lot of lies in this world that ironically tell the truth. And there are truths that tell lies. I don’t know which one Anna believes. I wish that some people in my life will just cut the bullshit and be totally honest about something just for once.
***
I found myself in front of Anna’s house.
She was sitting at their front porch, drawing—writing whatever she does with her pen. I wanted to run and hug her. I bit my lower lip so hard that it almost bled.
My piece of Heaven in this distorted earth.
It was how I found her. It was how I fell in love with her. Her flaws and infirmity made me love her.
She looked up and her eyes found their way to me. For a moment I saw that flicker of longing in her eyes that wanted me in. But then she drew the curtains down. She stood up and she went straight to the door. I ran as fast as I could to reach her.
I pity myself for being such a great martyr. I deserve to be a saint for this. I’m so pragmatic.
“You can’t avoid me forever, Anna.” I said. I felt the rush of the pain in me like the breaking of the dam. It burst on my vein like storming tidal waves.
She turned to me. She wore that same fake mask of steel in front of me. I pushed the idea of being intimidated. I didn’t want my purpose of being here ran for wasteland.
“I can’t forget about you.”
She huffed. “I sure can.” She waved her hands up in a pissed off way. She looked away like she was trying to not shed some tears in front of me. “I just got home from my weekly check-up. And you know what the doctor has to say? He said I’d be more forgetful this time.” Her voice cracked at the word “time”. When she turned to me, she blinked twice so that her tears wouldn’t go near her eye lashes. “The tumor took a lot of room inside my head that my memories had to flee.”
I had to let out a scoff. “You forgot how completely brazened I am.” Her eyebrows met in frustration.
“Why are you like that? Why are you so infuriatingly hard headed? I told you to leave already. Don’t you understand English?”
“I love you.” I said and she wilted. “That’s why.”
She pursed her lips and she nodded in a way she was trying to make some sense out of this.
“Three magic words.” She sniffed as she looked down at the floor boards of their front porch. “So little but when said it has a greater impact.” She sighed. She bit the inside of her cheek as she laced her hands. “I remember you, Dom. At least my heart does. I guess it will love you until humans learn how to live without oxygen.”
“Then why are you pushing me away?” I asked and when she looked up at me, tears started to water the earth.
“I want you to leave not because I don’t love you. Truth is, I want you to stay with me. There are a lot of things I want to understand and remember. But with you, everything’s just different. It feels like I don’t need to remember at all. My heart just knows.” She wiped her tears away and she forced out a laugh.
“I was glad to have you but then after the party, I realized what I was taking away from you. Your future. I was never gonna be a part of It.” her eyes beseeched me to understand but my mind was frail. It’s thick but it was so weak. “If you stay with me… all you’ve worked hard for years will be lost.”
“If I leave you, I will be lost.” I prompted.
“And if you stay, won’t you be in the end? I’m giving you a choice, Dom.”
“And I choose you!” I retorted as my hands voluntarily went up to run and grasp my hair. “Don’t you understand, Anna? I love you. I will always choose you.”
She shook her head as the stubbornness between us stretched on. “This conversation is going nowhere. I am tired of bickering, Dom. I love you…” she shrugged helplessly. “It’s weird because I really don’t know why I do. But it’s why my decision stands.”
“Fine.” I said when she once again turned her back on me. “I will go to Julliard if that’s you’re dying wish. But don’t deny me the days we have left together.”
“You are only prolonging the torture between us.”
“You’ve already done it. Why don’t we just extend it?”
She sighed in defeat. “I’ve given you a practice field already but you brought this on you. I’ve lived with pain all my life so I’m no longer new to it.”
I shrugged cockily, taunting her even though inside I was burning mad at her, at me—at the world. “When I loved you, I’ve prepared myself for massive impacts to my heart. It will be a piece of cake. At least I was brave enough to fight for you. I just hope we felt the same way.”
“Yes, we do.” She said. “But I guess we both have a different dictionary for what love and bravery means.” She sighed tiredly as she brought her thumb and middle finger up to put pressure and to massage her temples.
“Go home, Dom.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Fine. Do whatever you want.”
When she shut the door behind her, she brought my soul with her. I was left in the front porch thinking how I should be able to move again.
I think I have counted decades before I became a zombie and I started to haunt the earth for fresh brains and hearts. I stood outside their house waiting for a chance to get back to life.
And then the rain poured. It plummeted on the roof, nailed on the ground and soaked me. It had poured too hard that I felt the Pacific Ocean got evaporated and then it condensate the earth. But I held my ground. I stood bravely, unwavering in front of her house like the noble tin soldier waiting for a glimpse of the beautiful ballerina he so much adored.
The front door finally opened…
Heaven saw me from where she stood, holding a bin of empty milk bottles. While I, on the other hand was soaked with the tears of the clouds. Her shoulders sagged from her heavy sigh. She placed the bin on the floor and she approached the front porch stairs, careful not to get caught in the rain.
She crossed her arms. “I told you to go home!”
“I’m not going anywhere!” I stubbornly said even though my teeth were already clattering.
She frowned at me. She might have noticed how stiff I was already. “You’re gonna catch cold!”
I smirked at her. “I’d welcome pneumonia like an old friend.”
She narrowed her eyes at me and then she disappeared inside the house, slamming the front door at me. I counted five seconds before she reappeared at the front door again. She left it open this time as she lashed at the pouring rain with her umbrella.
She sheltered me with it.
“You are so hard headed.” She chided.
I placed my hand on top of hers on the handle of the umbrella.
“I didn’t expect the deluge.”
She gave me a withered stare. We stood there at a stormy weather thinking of how dramatic and tragic our love story was.
“Please get inside.” she said. “I don’t want you to get sick.”
My body didn’t protest at all. I was already shivering so hard from the blanket of cold and the scarf of bitter rain.
***
About an hour and a half I’ve been sitting on a couch in front of a fire place covered with a thick blanket and a smoking hot chocolate warming the palms of my hands. Anna sat opposite to me with her own cup in her hands. I watched her with fervent eyes. Her eyes met mine from the brim of her cup as she drank.
“Where’s your mom?” I asked just to get rid of the silence stretching between us.
She bit her lower lip as she studies the contents of her cup. I was concluding she was counting the marshmallows on her hot chocolate.
“She went out to meet my dad.”
“Your dad?” I flinched. “Doesn’t he live here with you?”
She smiled as she looked at the line of picture frames on top of an old piano. I’ve been here countless of times but I’ve never took notice on those pictures even until now. Anna’s smile was one I could say she would give to someone who was long forgotten and missed. It was a smile that meant to say it was a sad story.
“My dad has another family.” She said quietly as she let her hand travel on top of the piano to the pictures lining on top of it. “His original family.”
I repositioned myself uncomfortably on the couch.
She let out a heavy breath before continuing. “I’m the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man. My mom and I are the second family. The secret family.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Life’s shitty sometimes.”
“Anna,”
She sighed. “Please don’t bother trying to change the subject, Dom. You are still the most beautiful thing that happened in my life. But my decision still stands.” She stood up and she went to the kitchen.
I’ve been contemplating a number of things inside my head; including when the down pour was gonna end. If she does want to leave me, she should have left me outside the pouring rain. Every drop felt like acid anyway. But everything that she does only made me realize how much she loves me, how much she doesn’t want to let me go. Maybe that was the sarcastic truth. The more you can’t get what you love, the more you long for it—the more you love it.
I was on my feet, ready to make amends and a debating discussion with her when I heard her cup break on the tiled kitchen floor. All my senses vibrated and my feet buckled like the whole world shook.
She was on the floor with her hands grasping her hair. She let out a painful cry. She gritted her teeth like they were about to shatter and her eyes filled with tormented tears. I sank to the floor beside her.
“Anna,” I reached for her but she was pushing me away. The pain coursing through her head sent another piercing cry out of her lips. Her pain was stronger than I was. It was hurting her so much that it came to the point she was grinding her teeth and punching her head with her fists.
I wrapped my arms securely around her as her sobs blended with my own tears.
“It’s gonna be okay, Anna.” I whispered down to her.
“Please make it stop.” She sobbed. “I can’t take it anymore.”
I felt so useless for the first time. It was like I’ve been thrown off the labyrinth and I came to meet the Minotaur in the wrong time. I’ve become a prisoner of my own fear being realized in front of me. The fear and the pain had brought me to the point of numbness.
She cried as she grasped her hair tighter. I pulled her closer to me. I bent my head to her ear and whispered, “It’s okay, Anna. It’s gonna be okay. I’m here. You can lean on me. I’m here… I’m here…” she wept in my arms. I made her face me as I cupped her face. “Look at me, Anna. Just look at me. Focus on me and nothing else.”
She painfully nodded as she held on to my arm supporting her. I cried with her. I repeated the words “It’s okay” and “I’m here” like a prayer than a mantra to her until the pain subsided. Her arms had found mine she took her strength from it. I cradled her face in my hand and I kissed the pain away from her aching temple.
“I love you. I will never leave you.” I reassured her as she leaned her head on my shoulder.
***
Anna’s pain subsided like the rain. It walked away in one piece but it left her in broken pieces. The last of the pain tremors made her shake in weakness. She surrendered herself into it by closing her eyes and drifting to sleep.
I put her to bed and I watched her closely.
Nothing would be more painful than to see your loved one suffer and the cause was not even you. Her mother arrived a few minutes after she got unconscious. She said the violent headaches had been more frequent than the seizures. It was like a bomb. It just explodes when it wants to. And Anna, my poor Anna got the whole attack inside her head without having a chance to fight back or escape. Anna usually could surpass the pain. But right now, after what happened, things have changed and pain was a neighbor.
After what I had witnessed, I could not bear to lose her from my side. The sight of her in pain was shredding me into a thousand pieces. The pain was gnawing me inside and out like a dagger puncturing my heart. I wanted to get an ounce of that pain but it was long locked inside of her. Only to torture her.
“I want to die.” She whispered when she woke up and saw me beside her. “I’m not kidding. I want to die.”
“You want to leave me?” I asked. The pain, I guess it won’t pass between us.
A tear fell down from her eye. She smiled. And for a brief moment, I saw that girl who loved and remembered me. The one I saw at the park and fell in love with.
“How can I leave you when you are such a cry-baby?”
I wiped away my tears without knowing how they have fallen like Troy and Pompeii.
“Dom, aren’t you tired of me?”
I looked deep into her eyes and answered, “No.”
She sighed tiredly and she closed her eyes. “Why not?”
“Because when you love someone you don’t give up.”
She reached for me and I took her hand. I placed it to rest safely on my face. If the end’s really near and it’s gonna be like this, I don’t know if I’d be willing to let her go.
“How long will you love me?” she asked.
I kissed the palm of her hand. “As long as the wind blows on your cheek. As long as the ocean is blue. As long as the stars shine above you.” I whispered to her like a soft promise. “And longer if I can.”
A tear escaped from my eye and she leaned in to kiss it.
“How long will you be with me, Anna?”
She smiled sadly. “Longer if I may.”
“You’re gonna tell me, right?” I said as I searched for the light left in her. “The last time you didn’t say goodbye. You just left me.”
“I told you: you loved the wrong girl.”
“No girl is gonna be good enough for me except you, Anna.”
She closed her eyes as she leaned her head down on the safety of my shoulders.
“I think of thoughts that cannot be,” she whispered to sleep.
I looked up the constellation of words on the ceiling and I found the verse she recited.
I think of thoughts that cannot be,
No hand can reach across this sea,
The seasons change on distant shores,
From frosty skies to sunshine blue,
As summer’s touch undresses you—
Reminding me of all the things I often wish,
But cannot do.
(“Away from you” by Michael Faudet)457Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuA4YjWkNA1
