the feeling of falling

I sat in the middle of the sandbox, my legs folded under a skirt littered with lace, soft chiffon fabric, a print of a dog chasing a dot, or a heart. I forget exactly. I’ve laid waste to the little plastic cups that I could have used to build myself a sand castle. After all, there is too little that is fortified in the coarse, porous structure of that sand-built fortress. Instead, I had collected pebbles and rocks into a standing wall of protection— the sandbox and I, the playground and the others.

The wind blows softly against my hair, and I look up to see the sunshine being lightly filtered by the rustling autumn leaves. Again, I realize the futility of the exercise. I imagine my tiny fortress of pebbles and rocks falling apart, a piece at a time, into rubble and brokenness.

The sensation of it is all too familiar, myself falling into myself, slowly falling apart. You are the battle I find myself constantly losing, the resolve I am incapable of keeping alive. You break my heart without having it, and so it is clear the power you can wield with it in your hands.

As I clear the rubble of what used to be my impenetrable fortress of pebbles and rocks, I sweep my hair to the side. I sigh, knowing full well that come tomorrow, I will be back building this tiny fortress in my little sandbox, hoping that it will soon serve its purpose of making me unconquerable.

and suddenly, all the fear, the pain, the sadness— all these dark things that have unknowingly become part of who i am— surfaced and made me realize that no, i am not okay.

i am tired of writing. about you. about us. about the fact that we will never be more than the words i write, and the breath that i take when at the thought of you, my chest tightens and my heart skips a beat.

i am tired of writing, with words more beautiful than anything reality can afford me. in my writing the words that refer to you and me flow and ebb, colliding in the tide of maybe love, maybe passion, maybe obsession.

i am tired of writing about this image of you that i will never know nor possess. as life owes me nothing, i feel i am no longer obliged to write you songs, and poems, and love stories.

but then again, there is bliss that comes only from making love to you with my words, in adorning the thought of you with everything beautiful at my disposal.

and oh, the words that flow from my heart to my hands to the tips of my fingers as i touch you with those fingers, with those hands, with my lips, with my bare skin.

i shall kiss your soft lips with the word tender, i shall softly bite your left ear with tease. you shall undress me with sensual, you shall hold me with vulnerable. we shall hold hands with grasp, we shall make love with intense. we shall wake in the morning with maybe, maybe, maybe this is what we want for the rest of our lives.

i loved you in this city, and it was here where i decided that you can have your way with me.

i have always liked future things better, because thrown straight into the future i am more feeling than thinking, more beautiful than real. when i fixate in what is now, i am able to fool myself of the weight of the decisions that have to be made at this moment, made with the careful weighing of gains and consequences, of a line i drew no farther than the tip of my foot from where i stood. but in truth, i have long made the decisions i am yet to make, giving up all future nows for the beauty of the certainty in future things from a future time.

for instance, how i loved you in this city, and it was here where i decided that you can have your way with me. i loved you in this city, and as a result, i love it too.

so the answer is no, to the question you asked as we held each other on that rainy evening: did you close your eyes to make up your mind? no, i merely wanted to feel the touch of your lips as it masked the weight of the decision i long ago made.

it feels like the tide is turning, like the years i have lived are coming together into a series of steps into the rest of my life. after all these years, i am ready to grow up— to forgive myself for all my bad decisions, to give myself credit for the good ones, to make the next ones with no hesitation or delay. most of all, i want to be able to make the decisions that come with growing up, those that change the path on which my feet tread.

i want to be the sort of person that people can depend on, that people can trust to do right by them always.

i no longer just want the resilience to deal with unhappiness and its inevitable place in my life; what i want is the ability to find happiness and keep it. i want to know how to handle not getting my way without being a brat about it, even if what i want right now is for me to please, get what i want.

i want to find myself in the cities i lose myself in, but know that in the whirlwind i will remain to be the person i am because i have anchors that ground me to the people i love, the values i hold dear, to the ideas i believe in. i want more chances to find myself in awe over all the world holds, and appreciate my place in all creation.

i want, this time, to really fall in love, and to be loved in a “for the rest of my life” way. i want in all this passion, respect, forgiveness, openness, commitment, maybe even excitement and poetry. i am ready for something that will not take my breath away but feel right, even as i close my eyes after a long day at work. i want to be for someone the love that they choose to keep. i can afford patience, this time around, for something more than a great kiss or a pleasant morning after.

most importantly, i want to know for certain what i want to do with my life, and how to go from here. i want to know how i can change the world and the people who are in it, how to leave my place in creation at a much better state than before i was in it.

to be truly, brutally honest:
i associate you with darkness,
the unknown beyond my control—
the sudden dishonesty of my body
as i tap your back with my hand
even when a current passes
through my fingers
telling me to grasp yours;
the uncomfortable jealousy
directed towards anything
and everything that holds
the tiniest bit of your attention; and
the lies, oh the lies
that shape in my mind
when i say “goodbye,”
when what i mean to say 
is, “i am waiting for you to ask me to stay.”

i think it’s time to say goodbye to the voice inside my head, the one that stands in for the words you never have time to say.

farewell, to the image of our first kiss, the one that projects, imagined, as our second, our third, our fourth.

it’s time to forget the pregnant imaginings of alcohol and desire, mingled perfectly in my mind last night, tonight, every night.

somewhere in my mind i wish to hear you say, “stop. wait. stay.” in quick succession, seemingly afraid to let the words slide through too many seconds.

and yet as my bare feet climb down the steps slowly, softly, i can still hear you breathing calmly in your sleep.

at this precise moment, i just want to stop hurting.

hurting for you, more specifically.

I’ve decided that every word I write, from this point on, will be about you. There will be sighs and breaths and pauses between the words that everyone else will never know about, but you’ll know they’re there, and read them through the words. I will write the sighs and breaths and pauses of my life into my words so that I will not have to bear them when you are away, as you should be. I will write the sighs and breaths and pauses of my life into my words so that you’ll hear them even as you sleep.

I want to know your face in the morning, with the sun trickling through lace curtains and resting softly on your face. But how can there be waking up when there is no sleeping? I want to know your body at night, how life runs silent underneath your skin and flesh and bones, as your consciousness resigns itself to rest. But how can the night come when you know no rest?

Will you come with me when I get my first tattoo? I’d always feared the regret that will come from its permanency; you said when you’re older, you’d just be some old guy with a tattoo. Inside my body i felt relief and laughter welling from within. I had told you I wanted to get permission from my mother, you dismissed it and told me that these things were the sort of things you don’t ask your mother permission for. I wanted to tell you that I just needed that permission to know it was okay, the decisions i was making for the rest of my life. I’m not sure you’ll ever get what I mean; you were always so sure of yourself, and I was always so unsure.

Will you come with me when I get my first tattoo?

I have words for people. Like one of my bestfriends, my word for her is Joy. The other one is Ambition. The other one is Calm.

I need to find your word so I can put it on my skin. The way the crests and troughs of what is on your back has remained on the skin of my fingers long after I finished running my hand over your skin.

Is it wrong that I never want to forget?

Little things, the folds on the sides of your eyes when you laugh, the way your eyes look coyly to the side when you’re thinking up something silly. Or the way you kiss me with your eyes closed, except that one time when you caught me smiling. You asked me why I was smiling, I pinched your sides with my right hand.

I was smiling because your lips tasted as good as I always thought they’d be.

I have no illusions that you’d ever fall for me, or love me. I’m not in love with you, but I love the side of you that I know and the thoughts that run through your head, the life you’re building for yourself, the way that you’ve changed me since we met. Sometimes, I think I even love how I imagine you’d sound like if you sang.

Will you come with me when I get my first tattoo?

I left a secret on the crests and troughs on the markings on your back.

Come and leave a secret on the ink I will put on my skin.

a smirk was what it was
a half-meant smile
coy and toying
suspended in a moment of wit,
of sarcasm, of play
as though meant to be enjoyed
in the absence of sound
of people
of me.

and in its being denied me
i succumbed, near completely
to finding traces of you
from a long-gone past
that perhaps i will never have
and thus will never miss.

but perhaps that smirk
takes an unexpected turn
to a grin
to a full-blown smile
and the mouthing of words that i might be able to say
are finally mine.

——-

something written from way back in July 2010. tagged, “real people”, although these people are no longer “real” to me.