I make out from the void of nights that follow, a truth: everything is passing. But while there is a calmness in a still heart, a still heart is also a symptom to dying.

Why is it, I wonder, that I am drawn by the fleeting? Seduced by the enigmatic pull of anything that stays, if only to leave a little later. Seemingly pleased to the brim by momentary elation. And yet with one eye constantly open, fearing the shadows in the alley, the skeletons in the closet, the dreams tucked away in boxes, the vale of bottomless truths waiting to jump in and cut off this temporary, right down in the middle, where it seems to hurt the most.

But is it really too grave a crime to find life in the passing?

They say it’s always greener on this side of the universe. They forgot to tell you about the beast that kills dreams living under the fake grass. They didn’t tell you anything about hanging out inside your closet for silence, to muffle your cries between the clothes you have folded and refolded countless times for lack of better things to do. No, nobody said anything about the hollowness in your chest, like a scene from Death Becomes Her, except more real, and less funny. Like something has been ripped apart from your body. Your heart, was it? Your soul? Something. And you always feel like talking to someone, but there is often no one to talk to. And when there is, you find that the voice inside you had shrunk to the size of your heartbeat: close to nothing.

The second you locate the specific emotion amongst the terrible medley of melancholy, you find that none of your fingertips can feel and you wonder whether this is the only consolation of sadness: the chill in the wind that turns you numb.   

wake up to the sound of your fleeting heart

I’ve been having the strangest dreams of late. I’ve been dreaming that I was home, and everyone was throwing me a despedida. Twasn’t at all that strange if I dreamt of it but once; however, it has been 6 days in a row today.

Sometimes, I wake completely at a loss, wondering where I am and whose bed I am sleeping in. And then the truth registers: I am no longer home.  

Absolution

Was organizing my documents at the office today, and found this collecting cobwebs in one of the folders months after Given Grace's death:

You will fall in love. Almost inevitably, as the heat of summer gives way to monsoon. He will not be tall, dark and handsome, like you were made to believe. But you will love him anyway – he who you shall never meet.

You will bleed, and be happy you did. A stain of pride in white sheets on your wedding night. You will bleed – that, which in a parallel universe, that which is true, you never did out of love.

You will cry, almost indefinitely. Moved by the bundle of flesh from your own blood and tissue, pale and burgundy, on your arms. You will call her Grace, too – she, who you shall never bear.

In the confines of these pages, torn and taped together in anger and regret, is your life – that which you shall never wake up to live as you lie in a dream under dirt and soil thrown at you after a bullet through the back.

for Given Grace.

Gosh, what I'd do if I accidentally liked a tagged photo of you from a year ago? Die seems to me like the best answer.

I'm blushing just from thinking about it. And I haven't blushed (if not from heat) in a while, so it's almost new, you see.

I should seriously stop stalking you.

'Cause if this isn't grazing a healing scar, it's almost like making new ones.

You nonexistent ghost of ideals: Toru, Romeo, Ren and Ted, all rolled into one that never came. Never will.

I am reminded by how close you are to the real thing. When out of longing, I trod your timeline like I would a bad dream. But here we are, farther than we were before we knew each other's existence.

I'd say I wish I'd never met you but I can't. Because truth is, I wish I'd known you more.