Does it ever stop?
I didn’t open any windows, did I? The wind was strong, even though I was inside my own house. It was so hard, it felt like my skin bled just by bumping into it. It’s cold—freezing—piercing through my lungs. What more to close if everything is already sealed tight? So instead, I closed my eyes—hoping for some ease—but it only made it worse.
Remind me of your name again, sir? Ask the calendar hanging at the house, old and dusty. As he lives on in the back of my head, never once have I greeted him so that he could be buried peacefully there. June already, and all I wish for you to fade wholly. See the trees in the yard, decayed, just like the days I wasted, watching him run as if chased by ghosts.
And for once, just for once, I want to be you, running a distance. Left around something you once hung from. And I wanted to be you, to feel how it is to say things you never had any intent to. To grow what you would later outgrow. The roots you rooted just to let them rot. And then you run, run far, like it was your fate. Just these days, while standing still beside a train that left long ago, I realized how awful it is to stay still and haunted by one question: Will I see that gaze again in the future?
So I buried that question along with the rotten roots—for decades—just to answer with a single yes.
Well, yes. And do you want to know how long I paused just to think it was you, that it was real, that you were alive?
In your view, seeing me in where I stand right now, do you consider me as a lucky person or otherwise? Because every cold morning waking up from a dream where you appeared I burned like a hell. But that cold night, after I closed your car door behind me, I rewound the day a thousand times, pretending it was mine to relive. She despised him a hundred times, and wished she had sent papers she wrote decades ago. Now tell me how do I live with the fact that I finally renewed this memory with a long, aching gap in between?
Every place I’ve been has seen both my best and my worst. Will it ever end? Asks a bird, perched on a brittle twig. While the leaves remain green, it doesn't know—the roots have long begun to rot. I shook my head, unsure. Because years later, I am still searching for him in countries he never set foot in. Even if I climb to the top of a mountain, the hole I carry will still be a hole. None of it could ever fill the hole to make me a whole, again.
And see where you are now. In the middle of the sea. Almost drowned. Weighed down by the memories you left for ages. Or was it just my wish?
And dear, was it casual for you to say you’re a great reminder when for a blink of an eye you forget someone ever existed in a yard full of rotten trees? Or did I never exist?
The question never left my lips, were you running from ghosts, or just afraid of your own shadow you left behind?
And just for a second, you ran—like you always did. So I said, go ahead. Tell the world you’re blooming roses now—and leave something to wither in someone else’s yard. But if one day, if you ever see that rotten yard again, please—just please—uproot the tree to its roots, and face it the way you should have. I’ve closed many doors, yet none gave me the closure I needed. Say anything bitter, if it could somehow please me. I never begged you to stay — so now, I beg you to run.
