i never thought i’d meet you again here. in the bustling madness of a busy MRT station. between the tangled lines of people tapping out from the exit machine, your steps made their way to me. it was four years of my life, compacted into two seconds of fight or flight reaction. back then, we didn’t even allow ourselves a fight to fight, so this time i decided to man up against whatever gentleness you still carry in that same sweden backpack. hands meeting halfway, i guess some things are just simply incapable of changing.

it's been so long. has it? as we took the longer route to the center of the city, my hands began to tingle. i look up at the skyscrapers, then down to the scrapes of my heart.

time has lost its meaning, i wanted to say. for me, it's been six months of impossible performances. i have been wearing my machines down to the point of malfunction just to achieve half of the things on my checklist. i have been selling myself out, dropping the price each time i faced rejection. i have been staring at people's windows on my way home from work, wondering if there's anyone at the table kind enough to invite me in and save me from the excruciating pain of having dinners alone. it's been six lonely months, hanging by a thread that will soon choke me up to death.

you're working now. here for a visit. said you've been enjoying the city, though it's a bit too crowded for a country mouse like you. it's been a hard year, but things are getting better now that you've landed yourself a job that pays well. nothing too fancy, you downplayed. just enough to survive. well, isn't survival is what we're trading our souls for? i have to say, it's nice to be able to hear your voice again. you look beautiful now that your hair is a bit longer. there's a sharpness in your face that i don't recognize. but i guess that's what growing up does. it strips you down to your edges.

under the street lights, i was unable to meet your gaze. you laughed when i told you about the industrial city and the polluted air that might cost me lung cancer. you nodded as i ranted more about what it's like working with expats with difficult accents. how soul-consuming corporate social codes are. then it occurs to me that you've been giving me those eyes. those 'i'm proud of you' eyes that sent the younger version of me into a full-blown overdrive. it took everything in me to hold myself back from punching your face and bolts. God, you can't look at me like that.

because what the hell. what do you say to a person that you once loved with all your bones? you know how language fails at exactly the moments we are trained to rely on it? what are the words you're supposed to use in front of someone who had a connection to your every neuron? the question gnaws at me as seconds flicker to minutes, and minutes slip into the realization of how fleeting this moment is. in an hour or two, some metal tubes would have to bring you away from everything we are right now. and i would be as powerless as i was in september 2021, clad in my white shirt as the autumn wind blew us apart.

what are we doing anyway? sitting on a bench of a soccer field, shoulder to shoulder as the cold air engulfs us both. this is part solace, part lunar eclipse. it's like someone had whisked me away from my tiresome routine and allowed me a few minutes of heaven. but where do i go after this? knowing such heaven exists. knowing i might be able to afford it. i might be able to afford us. but with you, it's always a game of calculation, and i'm always a deer caught in the headlights of my own mathematics. so what do i know?

it's been years now. and for what it's worth, we both are adults. the place i'm returning to by the end of this night is a lifetime of empty rooms with single beds and suitcases that are always half-unpacked. i'm guessing the price i'm paying for rent and groceries is not knowing what a home looks like from the inside. it's standing between the line of the marxist root i was born into, and the capitalist promises of what life could have become. it's knowing that the only option i ever have is to keep moving forward. you know i'm a tough kid. hell bent on being able to withstand any storm with my own legs. but even i often would unconsciously peer down just to see if someone, anyone, will catch me if i fall.

i couldn't admit that to you, obviously. not when you already know it all without me having to spill my guts out. there's a depth in my soul that you know, but will always be a mystery to me. which is unfair as i have told you countless of times in my letters. i have nowhere to hide from you. i can lie to myself and say that things are going to be better. life is going to be worthy of all the mayhem i went through. but not in front of you. not with you sitting beside me with that same smile you wore when we first met. 

i took a deep exhale as we both walked back to the railway station. my dearest moon, i genuinely wished we could be blooming petunias, evergreen in someone's garden. but whimsical wishes are expensive, so i'm watching you board your train. electricity flows up to the overhead lines, doors are closing. funny how undeniably in love we looked to strangers stepping up to their commute journey. two young heart staring at each other through the fogged up window. well, you know how some love just simply cannot be resurrected without killing the people involved? but then again, my question is, did our love ever die at all?

that was rhetorical. i have questions running through my brain like a haywire prison break. maybe it is me breaking out of the prison cell and realizing how finite we are even beyond the walls. there were no weight to what i've been dwelling all night. there were no weight in our reunion. this doesn't change anything. you're leaving down south to our hometown, our highschool friends, and the tree lined street that lead you to beautiful churches. and i'm staying here, doing taxes and getting cheap takeouts on saturday nights. desperate to find out if i will ever be capable of falling in love again. 

so, so long, my brightest star.

glad i've met you in my north.

 jocelyn, i heard they're locking your wedlock this July. 

you know it's a small town. rumors are bound to spread faster than a summer wildfire. it reached my doorstep before your white invitations did. i was disappointed that you weren't there to break the news. just your mother and her 2010 honda civic, leaving tire marks long enough to stretch my heart loose.  maybe it would've been better. i wouldn't know what to say. i never know what to do when it comes to you. 

they said the party would be small. closer to an elopement than an actual wedding. your family were a closed up methodists. never for big celebrations. just close family and friends, they said. i wasn't both, i guess. but it seems that we both agreed that i had to be there. 

honest as you are, it itched my ear when they're keep saying he's making a honest woman out of you. what were you thinking, jocelyn? going for a good-for-nothing son of a gun. you could've just run away from this city, maybe begin a life on the shore. not fancy nor church approved, but entirely yours. you light the whole city with your laughter and now you're walking down the aisle wearing a pan am smile. 

oh jocelyn, maybe it's just jealousy speaking. do i want to be your husband or do i want one my own, it's my own misery to dwell upon. you do look beautiful in that dress. but with every morphemes pouring down your lips, it's getting harder to keep tears falling down mine. i kept seeing the phantom of your burlesque days, radiant and in my arms. i kept seeing versions of myself, melting into the same altar. ah jocelyn, i really want to go home now.

because of course i want to go home. you know i was never the best and letting things go. the sun is setting now. they're lighting the fairy lights and you stepped down to mingle with the guests. i recognized your aunts, the cousins from your dad's side of the family, the hot uncles. i just stand there awkwardly, not knowing what to do with my hands, or with the scraps of my heart. they offered champagnes, but what i want is a can of ice cold root beers that's just balsamic enough to makes it disgusting. what i want is the color of your eyes, knitted into gigantic persian rugs. what i want is escape. what i want is my home cat that died when i was eleven. what i want is not here nor anywhere. jocelyn, you're one hell of an evil woman.

its killing me. i don't even care to pretend, cause it's just killing me real hard. you're not running. i'm not objecting. you're marrying a man and i'm melting into static sugar. what the hell is static sugar even supposed to mean? i lost. i lost. i whispered to you. congratulation J. the crowd whispers. liar liar supernova on fire. fucking childs game. i took my car keys and left the church. 

your wed is down locked, so be it.

our wed is down closed, so be it.

so be it.

so be it.

my child, there is something profoundly wrong with your logic. 

or should i say, with the lack of logic you possess. 

i have made a peace, Joanna. i promise to you that i have made my peace.

oh, where do i start? should i take you to Sid Vicious' deathbed, where misery and self destruction was portrayed as a romantic triumph? or to Giovanni's room, where lust and conventional morality collide over a simple dinner on a Tuesday night? or to the very altar of Heraion, where what you were born for and what you ended up possess betrayed each other in the name of a 'ground-breaking storyline'. well darling, it's just an intricate play of words. if you know me, you'll know half of it doesn't make any sense. 

between science and superstition, there were questions and desperations; a forecast of better days, a pledge for inevitable ones. 

you spoke highly of the man in the moon. lowering your voice whenever his name slipped from your tongue. you would slow your step on our way back home from school just to get more glimpse of it's phosphorous glow. i get jealous when you do that. throwing my fist while i reel into the midnight street. sulking on the trenches when your youthful grin came into the frame. stop acting like a child. you had lowered your knees to sit beside me. it was a burgeoning August, the scent of summer swarming under our fingertips in ways that thaw every frozen heart.

you were a believer, i was dubious at best. it's not like i didn't try. i gave all my youth delving into the redwood forests, trying to find the pieces of Enceladus you kept rattling about. who the fuck foraged a million acres worth of land for a chunk of broken satellite? my logic cannot compete with your faith so here i am, throwing pebbles on a pond of shredded innocence. so young and already lost so much. 

oh well, when did this even turn into a winning matter? when it comes to you, i speak only of resignation. i speak of obedience and pure devotion. you drag me out of that haunted house after all. you spent months and months trying to make the blood stop. you took what would trigger disgust and cherish it like i was a returning warrior. rogue dressed angel, virgo hell-raiser, i should've known it's never enough for you to sit and settle for one saved soul.

you were everything and more. 

so it did broke me down.

hell, what did you expect?

who the fuck leaves like that anyway? decks of cards, broken crystals, dried geraniums. men and women pass through the street where i went and race you up. walking to the downtown where our pictures burned in flames. who the fuck leaves like this? trusted benefactor to arch nemesis. i never thought you'd be the one standing with a dagger in your hand, hiding your face underneath an iron mask. i never thought you'd be the one seeping into the darkness of a winter solstice, leaving a phantom played to commemorate our tragic rite of passage.

it's true that i chase pavements waiting for your return here in an abandoned railway station. a ghost in a brown coat, holding a basket of four leaf clovers crocheted from thin silver lining threads. weeds growing under my high school shoes, air thick with accidental indentations. well it's been three years after all. a thousand and ninety five moon hovering above what you would call 'fortitude'. big words, bigger lies. all i know was i wasn't going to give up until you came and take my bones away. mortals break into immortality. perform a proper burial, will you?

unless you close the tomb, i would not know how to stop wishing for more. unless you burry me with your stone bead bracelet, i would not know peace. those nights you spent tracing constellation on my arms were burning in a film reel. the longest seven minutes of my life. a part of me wanted to stay in this perpetual torture just to get a glimpse of your sickening beauty. it tears me apart to say i want to let us go. but i have been standing here for three years and i can hear the siren coming. as you'll hear when you know the end is near. as you'll hear when you know it's time to go. 

will you do that for me? will you put an end of this? our secret life in the redwood forest shall be the heaviest weight i will ever bestow but nothing could ever compare. it's a soul-consuming love but nothing could ever compare. i've been drowning in lies and betrayal but nothing could ever compare. can you hear me on my knees begging? 

please take me away. to a place where a pledge means more than crumpled letters addressed to names we choose for each other. where forecasts means hope and not shivers of anxiety. to a place where you and i exist as a picture of a beautiful memory and not the beginning of Achilles' downfall. to a place where we stood between science and superstition, a knowing grin on both our lips as we watch the redwood forest burn. 

take me to a place where i can finally let this go and be free.

in a dark living room for two, mingled in the silence, i almost forgot that we had to exist. 

is it true that hell is the void in things that was meant to be vociferous?

whatever your answer is i know it is a lie. hell is a myth. hell is a concept. hell is your reflection on a three am pacing session. hell is everything you could've done and avoid. hell is the carnage you commit on every version of yourself. it doesn't matter. i know it'll return to you somehow. you who take pleasure in watching people fall onto their knees, knowing that it takes an entire lifetime for them to recover from the shame. you who bathe in words of worships and sorts prayer by how desperate it rings into your altar. hell is your sickeningly kind words, dripping into my ears like a honeyed torment. 

did you know how much i bleed and starve just to be here? just to be damned by your stupid hellhounds. i know that a tender hand is never a symbol of hardship. so i let it dried and calloused. i let the wound open for months and months now my hand is just layers of swollen tissues and i send you letters to ask whether my devotion is worthy enough. oh, it's never enough. when you need it to be bad i show up with a ribbon on my head. when you need me to be good i drag my muddy feet across your hall of deity, rotten flesh dripping from my back. it's never enough. a dagger in my chest. it's never enough. a bullet in my head. it's never enough. it's never enough!

i tried everything. what would you do when you know that your birth was cursed by Arae herself? when the angels told you that the heat of hellfire shall inevitably engulfed every living being, but when you look around, you're the only one standing and burning. the pungent taste of deception in your mouth telling you it's no use to try. but you have to try. or else you'll be less of a man. you have to try again and again and again until they lower their heads in pity. 

it's getting tiring down here. to look up and see the beautiful skies i could never reach, not in a thousand lifetimes. i wanted you to be kind. i needed you to be kind. i need you to recognize my bloody tears and lift me up under your warm embrace, like you did with everybody else. it's so suffocating to exist like this. to wonder whether your betrayal was what i deserved or was it what was i am meant for. why did you left me? how could you abandon me like that? why didn't you take me with you? am i not enough? is this not enough for you? you're the one who made me. why did you create something that you'll end up resent? 

i am utterly at loss of everything. what more do you want of me? this is my final begging to be found. i want nothing more. look at me. talk to me. to the most merciful and gracious. to the creator of all creator. this is my final begging to be saved.

you were talking about entropy on our way back home.

thermodynamics. Lorentz theory of chaos. Gibbs paradox. two pendulum in motion. randomness of a system. greater degree of disorder. how cunning of you to hide those childhood dreams under the pretentious notion of physics and philosophy?

in a lot of ways, i must admit that you are better than me. maybe it was the ten kilometer run you took alongside the coastal road every morning. maybe it was the amount of self-help books you own. maybe it was your aptitude in things i can't even begin to learn. maybe it was the fact that you don't need any medication to feel sane. maybe its simply just because you're older. and wiser. and well, just, better.

we grew up together watching landslides unfolds. covering and uncovering skeletons in its wake. i was born an observer and you were born a thinker. i watch how the ground swells and fell to the earth, you question the magnitude of its damage. i kept count of each screams we heard, your mind wanders to the possibility of survival. two divergent souls learning which ropes to climb. two birds getting caught by one stone. i wish i could've told us that the world doesn't end on that small alleyway. it doesn't end when you came home with blood on your arms. or when i went batshit crazy from hearing cameras clicking all over my head. 

i have simplified too many things. was it to save a face or as a undeniable proof of my cowardness, i'm not quite sure. to lift our chin and moves forward was our sole mission in life. but with you being constantly pushed to the school fences, and me against the school bathroom stalls, i never thought that we'd ever found our way outside this walls. and yet we did. it took so much of us to be able to stand this tall. but we did. if you follow all the scars and burnt marks they had tore on our skin, everything traces back to that one night where we set up a a campfire, bodies pressed to each other as we giggled to the horror stories our dad was telling us. for true horror doesn't lay on those faceless monsters, it lives on the eyes of our teachers and friends. 

our coming of age has come and gone now. i once stood in front of a reservoir. wondering if it was my calling to just jumped into the water. you always said that you preferred to drown, but the idea of cold water filling my lungs was almost too hard to bear. i couldn't do it. i wanted to say to you. a heart is a heavy burden and i don't think i can handle such amount of cosmic turmoil. i am not as strong as you, who swam to point nemo for shits and giggles. you who jumped from a moving shinkansen with your high school shirt undone. you whose ideas of fun always involves committing arson and public disturbance. so many hills to die on. you said and left all your baggage behind for me to unearth. 

the power is out and it's stormy outside. you were still talking about entropy and i had to stop you. there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. i wanted to say that it wasn't our fault. i wanted to say that we did so great in this thing we called living. i wanted to use our mother tongue and said that i love you. so so much words cannot begin to describe themselves. oh, how we were just a kid. we were just kids in a burning house with nothing to shield us from the heat. and yet we learnt how to recover. we learnt how to love and forgive. we learnt how to be kind. we were just kids, oh Gods, we were just kids. 

so many things are said in the unsaid. silence was our answer so i tap your shoulder. you'll be flying back up northeast in the morning. we still got time to look back on the old albums, reading through all the old letters, or watch our favorite TV shows. we still got time to listen to that records. we still got time if you want to go to the beach and race me up into the sunset. we still got time to visit that old abandoned house near the mountain. we still got time to hop on our bicycles and go to the river. we still got time to return to that day when we were seven and thirteen and nothing bad had happened to us. i lift up my face to see the resemblance of us, painted on your usual grin. 

i'll take the beach.

the beach it is.

we were two intersecting lines, carrying the weight of our crossing spot. 

we were in love. or so i finally realized on a random tuesday, digging into my takeout plate in despair. what we had was true. whether we betrayed God or was being betrayed by him, i knew that we once stood upon the goodness of love. i went over and over it and my answer stands the same. how did the first love that had the grandeur of Alfeheim's golden gate turns to dusty ruins? well that's another case worth dwelling for. but in the end, there are no odds. we rise and then we falter. this is the cycle of cataclysm. we were bound to be damned. 

you made it clear that you want to see me happy. selfish bastard. and yet, i couldn't elude the power you have over me. you happen to be the moon to my tide, controlling my breath from afar. i'll go to Rome for you. i'll take my master. i'll nurture the Tabebuia argentea that you gave to my mother. i'll wash away the pain. i'll grow up and never let the time touches my soul, it will be as youthful as you preferred. i'll do anything. i'll take any pain. i'll burn down the world if you asked me to. so please, when that spring does come, do your side of the job. walk trough that door and return to me. 

"i'm so proud of everything that you have achieved." was your promised line. mine was "thank you." and despite how much it understate the amount of happiness i have received from you, for what it's worth, i'll say it as it is. you don't know how grateful i am for being able to love as much as i did. to know and to be known. to touch and to be touched. to be a genuflecting ghost, kneeling on every altar to wish you a good night sleep. to carry the weight of our crossing line. to have you break my heart with your silence. this is my final, unspoken, devotion.

you'll have kids and Christmases. i'll have my passport and a heart to heal. i'll watch you settle while you watch me shine. that smile of yours was as haunting as it was. holding me down and telling me to run. the sun is going down in your eyes. oh i'm tearing up now. this is a prolonged tug of war and i'm losing. i'll accept it as our redemption. i'll pay the price of us. so kiss your wife and pass her my gratitude. so long my dove. so long. i can't believe i'm saying this but so long. 

i'm closing the gate.

so long my darling.

my moon.

my brightest star.

i'll see you up in the north.

i don't know where to begin.