now, tell me,
what is the difference between a scar and a wound?
what is the difference between a scar and a wound when they both feel as cruel and atrocious as that one monday in january when i went home after driving back from the airport?
i still remember you walking toward the airport, far from my car, anmd i shouted, “i will watch you walk away and now, take your final bow.” you looked at me, waved from a distance, smiled at me in my car, and then continued walking.
i was writing a long message to bid my goodbye and sent it to you. i know your flight had already been halfway around the world by then, and i had been halfway convinced.
i am accustomed to receiving and bidding goodbyes, but i know that the world’s oceans are simply another name for “you’re not coming back.”
how do i tell you that i am still here?
love—
stuck in that drive,
stuck in that silence,
stuck between remembering and begging myself to forget?
stuck counting moons in the dark, wondering if our paths will ever cross again
i know. we are not a couple nor a lover.
never declared,
never listed in the dictionary of lovers,
but i swear, my hope was fluent in you. you said to wait for me for five years.
5 years?
5 fucking years.
it sounded like time could be folded like paper, like distance could be conditioned to behave like yearning does not decay or become rotten when left unattended.
and yes, my Virgo, I held onto that promise
like a child holding on to a balloon—
too tightly,
too desperate,
until it broke open inside my chest.
let me tell you this slowly,
the way a person who is still breaking tells you,
a wound is what happened to me
on the day you walked toward the departure gate
and didn’t turn back.
and a scar is what i carry now,
i still remember when you were nearly boarding the plane. you got your pen and notebook. you were drawing a caricature of us.
hard strokes. hard lines. big heads. big smiles.
fantasy version of a future you never really meant to keep.
i still feel the scar and the wound while driving my way back home. shot puno by juan karlos labajo is playing on my carplay. hands trembling. my heart is shattering so quietly. traffic lights aren’t considered to be a witness since they refused to notice.
forgive me, my Virgo
i need to complete writing this piece.
forgive me if i use metaphors because i do not know how to hold you without reopening myself.
forgive me for believing you meant to the ends of the world with you and i will forgive you for only meaning “right now. just for fun. no strings attached.”
forgive me for waiting for 1034 days and i will forgive you for leaving and lying.
and i should also forgive myself for always yearning.
too painfully in my januarys
too tenderly in my forlornness
i promise, this would be the last time,
i loved you and i have nothing left to wait for.
The Stillness Archive 