To My Dear Departed...

I woke in my pyjamas, few minutes after midnight tonight. I cursed the hot stuffy air, empty boxes of cigarettes, my menstrual cramp, and him. One bastard who still lingered in my mind. Freely, absentmindedly. Only God knows how I wanted to shake him up and fished the answers from his mouth, from his mind, from his heart. The answers I desperately seek for the past few months, fruitlessly.

Yes, I bore this wrath, the fury that soon will be unleashed, demolishing everything in its path like a wounded beast with red eyes and blurry sight. I wanted revenge. I wanted blood. Him or mine.

This insatiable thirst was first took its shape after one quick, full-contact combat between an angel and a demon within me. No one lost, as nothing was won. They both went to their corners with head hung low, shoulders down, and eyes casted on the ground, counting the steps as a red herring from their bleeding injuries.

I watched them with anguish that I did not know why. Perhaps—just a little maybe that slightly whispering from the remotest, God-forsaken part of myself—I wanted the angel to triumph like the stories my mother once told me before drifting to sleep when I was a child. Or it might be the demon I longed as a victor because I had enough with ‘happily ever after’.

I woke in my pyjamas, few minutes after midnight tonight. Alone, abandoned, hurt. Red blood oozed from the fresh cut I made with my own knife. After so long, it felt relieving. I greeted that long lost friend from the past. He was and is still my closest friend. People called him Misery. I named him Buddy.

I asked him to sit by me, to have nostalgic conversations over two cups of coffee right on the porch, enjoying the breeze and formless voices that sometimes heard hours before dawn.

He used to pat my head, embraced me into his brotherly bear-hug yet deadly. He wanted the same now, as we silently sipped the coffee filled with memories and grieves. He looked me in the eyes, trying to persuade me in his hypnotizing glare from a pair of fathomless black seas on his face. I just smiled. I reached for his left cheek and gently stroke the cold, ragged skin under my palm. I asked him to wait a little longer before he crushed me peacefully. It will come soon before you finish saying ‘fuck’, said I. He closed his eyes and disappeared, leaving me bleeding solitarily.

I woke in my pyjamas, few minutes after midnight tonight. And I felt naked to the core. I was exposed, used, beaten, and neglected after all I had done. To myself, for the most part. I pasted the gentlest feathers onto the frame of one pair of wings I made. I pressed them hard, using the stickiest Superglue I had ever found in a convenience store. I wanted to fly against the moon tomorrow night when she appeared in full throttle, lurking phototactic animals to bathe in her light and turned them into helpless prey for their predators.

I shackled the moon, brought her down and put her into seclusion. I made her starve; I made her cry for help to the wolves as the wolves were once howling at her without response. Smarter than Icarus I was. I left at sunset. Yet, there was gravity. A jealous act of a mother that kept everything she loved to be close to her heavy bosom. An act of love, they said. And here I was: broken.

I woke in my pyjamas, few minutes after midnight tonight. I felt myself weightless. Light as the mist roved ashore from the ancient ports of England. Bodiless as the smoke rose from a fireplace in one cold winter night. Tired of my journey, I greeted the first dewdrops on the tip of every leaf. I was unable to see my own reflection, blinded by their crystal clarity. Humbly, they offered me to take the ride, sliding down the bamboo trees together and up again under the wings of a dragonfly.

I wanted to pick up the pieces of broken mother pearl, said I to one of the dewdrops. They were shouting ‘no’ in unison with face full of fright. I wanted to row the boat after I get the shreds. Again, they were shouting their refusal with more ashes on their face. I never knew why, because the sun abruptly took them away. I guess I did not have to know the answers either.

I woke in my pyjamas, few minutes after midnight. I got up and went outside my room only to see the blue sky shared the same color with my pants. I saw two moons swarmed with starlight. A confused wolf was howling from afar, neither to both. There were Andromeda and Milky Way in this tropical azimuth, while Sagittarius and Cancer constellations shone brightly in August hours of darkness. And I heard myself asking, “What the fuck is ‘awaking’, after all? Is it reality?”

Since then, I never sleep.

[ah, damn! I haven’t lost my touch!]