Grace

Dear Grace,

You look so much like Kay. She was a Cedarian too. How could you both look so similar?

I couldn't stop looking at you, opposite me. Your face, the shape of it; your eyes, the depth of it; your nose and your mouth. Every part of your face looks just like my ex girlfriend. I went on to look at your limbs. You are tanned, Grace. Just like her. And your built is just like her too.

While you were meddling with your mp3 player, I looked at your fingers. They were shorter than mine. And less slim. She used to say she liked my slim fingers. Your fingers are just like hers, Grace. And I will bet that your feet are little too. And cute. Just like hers.

You kept looking sideways, deep in whatever was playing through the earphones. You were lightly tapping your feet too. That's why I could look at you for so long without you detecting that you were being scrutinized.

Then, you rubbed your eyes. She rubbed her eyes a lot too. The way you rubbed your eyes was just like the way she used to. I kept telling her not to. 'Cos she rubbed it so hard, sometimes, I was afraid that she would just hurt her cornea. And you yawned too. The way you ended your yawn, it was not that different from Kay too.

Grace, looking at you, one tear slid down from the corner of my right eye.

How much you reminded me of her.

I thought, this must be the way it would feel if Kay and I meet each other on the streets now. Like strangers. And it pained me a lot. It's like you were her and you couldn’t recognize me at all. As for me, I was still gazing at you, wishing time could go back to who we were and not who we are.

I thought of telling you, when we alighted together at the same bus stop, that you look like her. And looking at you made me cry. But I didn't. After all, you are not her. You are Grace. Not my ex girlfriend. Not Kay.

But, that 20 minutes bus ride was like falling in love, and then, falling out again. Almost. And when we alighted at that same bus stop, you followed by me, it felt like how I braved myself and turned away on that afternoon when she said that was all to us.

Have a good dinner, Grace. Good bye, Grace.

With misplaced love,
Me.

From the marrow of unease

There's a kind of getting used to that is getting easy to get used to.

The kind that switches you from a participating member at a dinner with many, possibly even the spark whom others follow for a lack of decisiveness, to a figure in pure solitude, as the foreign voices try to drown through the ears.

Goodbyes are always kept short and swift. As if there's no keenness in the reunion that just ended; as if there's no anticipation in the next reunion, wherever that might take us. Short, swift and almost without any emotions if not for the detection by the sharp-eyed who must also hate such partings.

Time always takes us by the shortest route when joys are most simple. And always brings detours when the path is most bumpy. As if she has a plan, a sort of revelation we can't object to. Yet, one experiences it again and again, and never did manage to find some appreciation for it. For how much faith one must be endowed with in order to appreciate the cruelty of it all. All the time fighting loneliness, disguising it as a healthy need for solitude.

We born alone, we die alone. And we all contend with our greatest yet sweetest downfall.

xxx

My current read is Dead Poets Society, based on the film same-titled. I thought to give it a finger's effort at writing something like poetry, too. And I texted the above on my way home from a very lovely dinner with never-expiring friends.

I guess it's not so much poetry. I never studied poetry. But, an attempt nevertheless.