the longest prognosis

no one told me that some diseases would just show up unannounced.

this is not me being poetic. this is just me telling the truth.

it’s 2:00 am and i’m writing about the longest prognosis that i had

what i felt wasn’t loud. it was unexpected. it started as emotional necrosis within me; the slowly dying death of tissues because it has been quietly cut off from supply.

and people won’t notice it the way you can notice an infarction. believe me, there is no chest pain radiating within me. just my organs trying their very best to have patience because they’re slowly dying and can’t even complain.

that day, something inside me stopped receiving blood.

trying my very best to survive and act like nothing was wrong.

on spencer street, there’s a corner there, and whenever we pass by, i always smell the cold rain and someone’s burnt coffee.

i know you hated cold weather, with ur hands buried in your gray jacket, you asked me, “what happened to people who loved each other too much?”

i should have understood the question.

i fucking should have understood the question.

whenever a car’s pulling out of the bay behind us, you always turn to look at it. you don’t know how many times i memorised the side of your face, like how a studious person memorizes mnemonics that they will anticipate appearing on the exam.

but, i did not know yet that the test had already started.

i wanted you so bad; in a way that scared me.

and not in a way that is loud nor violent; but i could burn rome to the ground just to have u.

let me reiterate that, i wanted u the way an organ wants oxygen; this doesn’t need to be asked. it will fail without it.

ischemia, if a soul could be deprived of perfusion.

ischemia, if devotion could deprive itself of everything else and even call the starving holy.

i did master the inside of ur sentences. i did master all of your silences if you’re tired or they meant elsewhere. i always make room for u, quietly shrinking.

is this even generosity?

is this even generosity, or was it hunger pretending to be generosity?

on watton street, when werribee had gone quiet enough, i held ur hand and told u i didn’t need anyone but u.

u said, “don’t say that”

it’s funny because u said it the way a doctor would caution a patient about a medication that they’re contraindicated with. but it’s already too late.

i don’t know if i heard it or chose not to.

i kept taking the dose more than my ursodiol for my liver cirrhosis.

we had a cafe in spring street, u said they had terrible service but this was the only good ube latte i had ever tasted.

i brought you to my favorite coffee shop in carlton, u would complain, every single time, that the nutmeg wasn’t enough on top of the latte. and when u do, it feels like the barista had wronged u personally. u always complain. i always be in my quiet defense.

and the cup? the cup placed between us like evidence.

u never asked me what i thought of it.

but that was my favorite coffee.

i did not tell u that day, i always let u complain over the only cup of coffee in the city that tasted like home. watching u criticise one thing i had quietly chosen for myself and i did say nothing.

before returning to ur place or helping u to study, we always stopped at coles. u would walk three steps ahead of me every aisles.

u would pick things and drop them into the basket. but they were never things i liked. a flavor that i had told you i didn’t eat. a brand i would never have chosen.

u handed them to me with being certain that you were being thoughtful.

i thanked u every time.

i ate them anyway. i ate them in the car. i ate them at ur desk while u study. i swallowed each one like evidence i was trying not to look at.

i was thinking if i would refuse these snacks, i would have been admitting one huge thing; that after all, after learning the inside of u, u had not learned the inside of me.

i kept eating. i kept letting u believe u knew me.

it was a sad and strange grief, being misknown by someone u loved and memorized.

i don’t know if i hate to listen to the song salvatore but it gives me a glimpse of u.

everytime you’re taking me home, lana’s voice would unspool into the cabin and u would tap the wheel softly with ur thumb, watching the streetlights and cars pass across ur face in a very slow and long strokes.

frame after frame.

i used to think the song belonged to us.

i was wrong again. it belonged to u.

now, i don’t know if i can still listen to the song without my chest performing its small treason. heart rate up. shallow breathing. autonomic response, the textbook would say.

the body can’t fathom if it’s a memory or recurrence.

everytime salvatore finds me, in a cafe, in someone else’s playlist, in a random algorithm, i am back in the passenger seat, watching ur hand on the gear stick, waiting for that perfect chorus that i’m still being driven home by someone who intends to keep me.

then the song ends.

“soft ice cream”

i am still fucking alone.

during my college years, i learned that there’s a condition where the brain refuses to update. it is where the body keeps sending signals from a part of itself that has been amputated.

phantom limb syndrome.

the limb is gone. the signals aren’t.

this fucking brain of mine keeps drawing the picture from memory because no one has taught it how to imagine the picture without.

can u believe that? every single night.

i still reach for u in my sleep.

my hand still expects urs at the small of my back.

i hate these neurons. they keep on firing. they have not been told. they will not be told.

they are so fucking stubborn.

neurons remember people they were supposed to forget.

i still question and challenge the heaven sometimes.

i know god is god of small mercies.

but i played every card correctly.

i was patient. i was fucking honest. i fucking loved u the way John Bowlby describes secure attachment.

he said responsive. attuned. and it will always be regulated.

i didn’t run. i didn’t ration my softness.

god of small mercies,

why did u let me lose the only game where the stakes mattered?

heaven did not answer.

i used to think losing u was the wound.

but in pathology, when the manifestations started showing up, the disease has already been running for a long time. cells have gone through apoptosis; the slow programmed unmaking they were quietly performing while the rest of the body went about its day. tissue has already died. function has already changed.

when the moment u notice is not about the moment of beginning, it’s just when the body became loud enough to be heard.

i didn’t know.

omniscient god, this body has been failing for years.

the autopsy will say i died of loving.

but it will be wrong.

the truth is, i died of being the only one who showed up to the surgery.