You forgot to love me today.
At 4 in the morning, I woke up and realized you were gone. Your side of the bed was as cold as the weather last December. I tried to sleep again, and after a few turns and sighs, I succeeded.
At 10:14 am, I took my phone, hesitated, and then called you. You didn’t answer.
At noon, I ate alone, anxiously checking the clock just to track the hours that I’m missing you.
Until 6 pm, I was at work, trying hard to take my mind off of you.
8:33, I arrived. The house was as empty as the juice box inside the fridge. You must have forgotten to take it out. Or maybe it was me. I’m not very sure.
10:00, I finally decided to stay awake and wait for you. Patiently, I waited.
At 11:47, you came home. You forgot to kiss my cheek. I said, “Hey.” You didn’t answer.
12:00 am, I couldn’t take it anymore. I asked you what was wrong.
12:03, you answered “I forgot to love you today.”
There are tons of reasons why people say I love you. These are a few I mentally noted while walking down the staircase of your heart.
Pierced hearts with words of disgust and loathe. On the very day you left the freshly picked daisy on the counter to die, an amalgam of self-pity and hatred played inside my chest, perforating every vein that I possess. I remembered that you don’t remember, and diatribes are passed along with the minutes of the day. A debacle waiting to be unfold, with culpability evident in your used to be refulgent and deceiving eyes. Blossoming flowers, no matter how beautiful, tend to die.
Quietness isn’t what I asked for, but it is all that I got.
This is what it is like — and how it will be like for the next ten, twenty, forever years. There is this pain that is so great it makes me grit my teeth. My heart is broken, and will continue to be broken for the rest of my days. How I wish I can bottle it up inside, place pebbles and shells and throw them at the sea. Perhaps this bottle will take my sorrows down to the darkest and coldest part of the waters— the one where memories are forgotten. Perhaps it can eat away all the hurt and scars that I can no longer bear. Perhaps this will do. Perhaps.
It’s hard to find impeccable beauty in people nowadays, but if you keep on trying, you’ll find the most beautiful, most precious and one of a kind beauty — and it is found deep down inside a person’s heart, a person’s soul. That’s precisely why it’s so hard to find. Only the curious and the reckless and the willing and the fearless will discover it.
We used to fill this silence with sweet words and truthful loving. It’s hurting to know that the silence is back — this time even louder, without passionate words to ease the pain, without love to satisfy the longing. We shout at each other, and then I stop to think The words that we say… it shouldn’t be like this. And then I caught myself biting my lip and stifling a sob. How could this be — when the silence that used to be filled with sweet words and truthful loving — is now filled with anguish and fears, frustration and tears. Please stop shouting, I think. You did. And then all that was left was the piercing tune of our hearts beating, painfully wanting to say I’m sorry but too afraid to show our vulnerability. Love should have told us what to do. It didn’t.
If only I can apologize, then I wouldn’t have to cry it out.
I don’t really believe in ‘I love you so much’. How much is ‘so much’ for someone, anyway? Is it the distance between countries, pressure of the plates, rise and fall of the tides? Is it the mere look in your eyes, or is it the inevitable beating of your heart? I’m not sure if I would like to know when your ‘so much’ will end. ‘So much’ isn’t nice to hear.
I prefer ‘I eternally love you’. I know ‘eternal’ is subjective to some, but ‘eternal’ is beautiful. It’s something indefinite, but definite. It’s something you can’t hold on to, except when you use your heart. I feel safe with eternal. So please, let me hear you say ‘I eternally love you’, because I eternally love you, August.
The vastness of possibilities of you and me still bothers me. What if I waited for you to speak first, or what if I said it this way? What if I waited for a while — a few minutes, hours, days — before speaking those words, or what if I didn’t at all? I can’t help but feel like I’m at fault. I’m culpable for the happenings that turned my world upside down. Maybe it affected you, too…but thinking that if affected you is a little selfish of me (I think). I am half-heartedly hoping it didn’t, so you won’t have to undergo this process of letting go. Oh God, I hate being so cliche about things, but forgive me. It’s the safest way to say it.
I used to call August ‘sweet’ and ‘caring’. But over the years, I learned to call him by the words that suit him very well — sad. He was beautiful, but sad. He was honest, but sad. He was everything good you can think of, but sad. He was sad, and all good things in the world don’t matter when he’s unhappy. They just don’t.
Nothing just can compare to the beauty of his smile, but there’s something about his beauty that I can’t put my finger on. Perhaps it is because he’s too beautiful to be sad, but being too beautiful is sad, too.
It’s just sad how among all the people in the world, sadness chose him.
To kiss you is the only thing I can offer to calm your heart, since sometimes, it is like suddenly all the words I’ve read and poems I’ve written become nonexistent when I face you. I am clueless. I am speechless and it is embarrassing at some point.
So yes, to kiss you is the only thing I can offer to calm your heart. I’m not good with my lips when it comes to words, but perhaps I’m good with it when it comes to something else. I hope you think I am, because I’m too fragile and too scared to do something to fight off a million of invisible monsters inside your head. The only thing I can do is kiss, kiss, kiss. Kiss you in the rain. Kiss you when you have a fever. Kiss you when you want me to. Kiss you when you’re scared. Kiss you when you feel like dying. Kiss you, kiss you, kiss you. Maybe my kiss can reach your heart, and your head too. Kiss.
