alegria y tristeza

Renz | 18 | PH

[ofjoysandwoes]

april twenty-nine ‘17;

​This was supposed to set me free. I wanted nothing more than to stand unabashed, with arms outstretched and inhibitions released, and scream until my core trembles. You were supposed to love me in the way I do you, because that was how our odds were supposed to go.

The odds have deceived me, because all I have had in the past months are scars. They have kept me awake all this time: a whip of pain slashing across my body, a flash of white hitting me on the face. Your memory has slithered and coiled around my neck, constricting tighter and tighter until my head turned blue and numb. My wrists have been wounded by your shackles and it will take long before the bleeding stops.

This is not freedom. This isn't love.

I do not have to draw any line. The border has drawn itself, telling me to stop, ordering me not to take any step further. For so long I have been disobedient, and I went stubbornly in pursuit of acceptance, of love. I should have known that there was none to be had. Not from you.

I hate to admit that all you have done is sink deeper through my flesh, though I realize that scars can never be healed by a knife. Absence, I learn now, does not mix well with desire, and I shall not dare take another risk with you. Thank you for the late night talks, the brief moments of joy, and most of all, this valuable lesson. You will never read this, but I hope you understand that I deserve better.

Goodbye, A. Do well in all your endeavors and continue serving the people from over there.

[ofjoysandwoes]

april twenty-six ‘17;

​The rain shows no plan of stopping. I hope to god it doesn't. Let it rain, I whisper under my breath. Let the storm rage through the night in torrents of mist and desire. My knees are pulled to my chin at the front seat of your car, and your fingers are drawing x's on my thighs, marking treasures yet to be unearthened. The rain has never poured harder. It can only go worse.

How did we end up here? I try to recall the days leading to this moment, from the instance we met to the first time our lips touched. Those were a series of unadulterated craving. That night, nothing else made more sense in the world than to kiss your lips, already beckoning me to come closer, promising me more than lust among other things. It was a better climax than any, and I played my role as told by my instincts.

The climax plays again tonight, with our eyes locked in a stalemate that I cannot pull back from. The fog on the windows are thick, blurring the world outside your car. I stifle the urge to cover my eyes and instead wait for the events to unfold, like a grenade that cannot wait to be unpinned. Just do it, I summon you in my head. Kiss me, killl me, take your hands off the steering wheel and do whatever you want to my body. I am all yours for the taking.

The raindrops on the window cast shadows on your face. I cannot help but watch how each one falls down like a teardrop along your cheeks. The curtains are slowly rolling, and our show begins in a few. At this point, we are on the limelight and the world is our audience. The silence rings around the car, save for the soft rumbling of the engine, and I swear I can hear every one draw their breaths at once. The fourth wall breaks. I let go of my inhibitions and lean closer.

Your tongue feels like home in my mouth. I dig deeper for the savory taste of warmth, of heat I haven't felt in so long. My elbows have locked your nape close to me as I try to find the sweet taste of deception, probably tucked in the corners of your teeth. My glasses are fogged by your breath, and I dig deeper, too deep, dangerously deep, in and in your mouth. Your hands slither down my spine before resting on my back, giving me flushes that are too strong to be ignored. We have the entire world at the edge of their seats, but we hardly care. This show is for all to see.

I pull back to laugh at how silly this has been, only to stare at the eyes of another.

[horaex]

[ofjoysandwoes]

april twenty-five ‘17;

I am sorry.

-

The word sorry comes from the Old English word sārig, meaning pained or distressed; like the placidity that follows after another tumultuous rift, like how the curses I hurled at myself have left bruises that demand to be seen.

-

I doubt it takes a lot of effort to form words. To say "sorry" would require quite a small number of facial muscles and a little work from the vocal flaps to form audible pulses. To frown, however, would need around forty muscles to produce, as well as tiresome nights spent weighing the pros and cons in an infinitesimal attempt to move on and let go.

-

It is funny how a word as pure as "sorry" can be tarnished to rhetoric once it becomes overused. I have long since tossed that word to you—to unsuspecting, unwelcoming you who in return has steered clear of the blame. I am tired of being apologetic when there is no reason to be sorry. I am done trying to magnify every detail in search of the odd thing out when I already know what's wrong. My hands have been washed off the blood from our mess. It is probably time for you to clean yours.

-

I am sorry. I hope you are, too.

[ofjoysandwoes]

april nineteen ‘17;

​The coin is twirling. There is still time to shift my bet.

This has been the dilemma for months: to take the leap of faith or to stand still, to bet away all my chips or to rake them back while I still can. We are gambling here, my dear, and I cannot make out our odds from the blur of the lights and the hype. Now the coin spins on the table and we wait with breaths drawn in.

It is only a matter of split-seconds before our fates are sealed. Should I change my mind or not?

A part of me says that I should. Better pack up whatever I have left and go home. It says that I must not risk everything I have gambled for nothing, or if the odds permit, for scraps. The bigger part, however, tells me to give it all. There is nothing better than to release all inhibitions and take the plunge of fate. Perhaps, only maybe, the risk is better than the outcome itself. And if the stars do align in my favor, the prize will be one for the books. It will be a hallmark embedded in history: the moment the dreamer struck gold and won.

The coin still twirls and I am almost out of breath. The anticipation claws itself out from inside my chest, stubborn enough to be felt. To lose it or to win it all, that remains a question until the coin flips to either side. I hope it does, if not now then soon. I cannot wait to reap whatever I can from this trick.

But here's the catch: the coin is spinning, and only you can make it stop. My cards have been on the table for far too long, waiting to be read. Either side it falls, whether heads or tails, whether you like me or you don't, only you can tell. For now, it remains twirling, and twirling it shall remain. I still wait for an answer.

[ofjoysandwoes]

april eighteen ‘17;

​It was not supposed to go this way. I should not have taken the unexpected turn along the road. All I knew then was I liked you. What was there not to like about you? It used to be easy, to pretend as though you don't matter, like your memory does not flood my dreams and overflow to the mornings. Then you found your way into my every vision: a glimpse of you in the middle of a crowd, a snapshot of your smile in a fleeting thought, and eventually, your name scribbled all over the back page of my notes. I knew right then and there that I was threading through rocky paths, but I did not care. I should've had. I wish I knew that this road would take me in the middle of god-knows-where, with blistering soles and numb legs and a heart brimming with regret. The end remains out of sight and I doubt it will ever appear.

All I ask of you now is to do what I had done: pretend. Pretend as though I am not pretending; like all the hopeful thinking I have done has its merits, like the fantasies I have conjured from thin air are material and can be felt. Make me feel the warmth that I have craved in nights when the longing becomes tough and unbearable. Convince me that I am on the right path, that on the other side of the horizon is you with open arms.

I ask you now to love me, to rid me of the regret that has weighed me down like a baggage. The road I have travelled has been treacherous, but I am reckless enough to brave through it. I hope you can take a step with me.

[ofjoysandwoes]

april fifteen ‘17;

​One day, in the near future, I will see you again. I will be in a coffee shop, and you will be sipping tea from the table across mine. I will be riding a north-bound train, and you will be by the window of one travelling south. I will be taking pictures at the park, and you will be caught in the corner of the frame.

It does not matter where I will be, or what I will be doing. I will see you again, the seed of a plant that has long been uprooted and thrown. You will still be you: youthful, brimming to the edges with life. And when your eyes meet mine, you will see me, and you will smile that one-sided smirk you know I love.

I will meet you again one day; and when that day comes, the heart will come with it. It will be a matchstick struck on sandpaper, the way your eyes shine over a reflection of the past. You will have forgotten my name, but the memories we have shared shall remain vibrant and clear. You will remember that there was a heart somewhere, at some point. You simply will not be keen enough to remember where.

But I will be. I will recall all of our moments, both the good ones and the bad, the joys and the woes. They will play inside my head like a split-second montage: from how our first kiss burned inside me until the last icy taste of your mouth. You will not see it through the grin but I will feel it, the frostbite that has left my lips numb, the pain of remembering how we fell apart. Even in the future, I will still be denying the truth.

It will be bittersweet, I have to admit, but it will come. I am almost too certain it will. Perhaps when it does, we can start all over again. Sweep away the charred heap and the rubble, and start building a new shelter. Find in me the destinations we have set and begin mapping out a new path. Love me again in the way I love you now.

When tomorrow's dawn turns into morning, I will be out trying to find what we have lost along the road. I hope I meet you out there doing the same.

[ofjoysandwoes]

april twelve ‘17;

​It's easy enough to remember: green light means go, red light means stop. When I see you and the way the lights cast little shadows of your eyelashes upon your cheeks, all I see is yellow. Yellow, which means to slow down, start pressing the brakes, and brace for the halt.

Let's be honest here: no one follows the rules. In the few seconds between the yellow and the red, we often go in full throttle. Yellow, for most of us, means to rev the engines and speed up the pace.

We are law breakers. We know when and how to defy the rules. When people tell me to go slow on you, I retort by swinging full speed. To shift my gears for you is to waste time and effort. Go means go means go.

Perhaps the only thing that can change this thinking is the trainwreck that awaits the risk. It is bound to happen: the glass windows flying like glitters in the night sky, the car crushed like a tin can, and on the asphalt, my blood pooling around my body. I can already imagine the spectators gathering around the mess with shaking heads and raised eyebrows, whispering how they have warned me, telling me how I never learn.

As for me, my foot is still pressed hard on the pedal, and the adrenaline in my chest tells me to only go faster, muffling the warnings thrown at me. Quit the delusions, they say, and stop the ride. There is no stopping now, not when I have you locked in my sight: the finish line to my own race.

I caught a foresight of the inevitable tragedy when I looked into your irises of pure, fiery red.

[ofjoysandwoes]

april ten ‘17;

​Quick question: would you have stayed if I told you how much I loved you?

I like to believe that you wouldn't; that in the game of probability there isn't the slightest chance of our odds being realigned. Our enemy here is time, and it is difficult to combat the irreversible. One wrong punch and you're out. Three words stifled and I'm left thinking about it months later.

There is nothing that I would take back, that's for sure; but to say that there is nothing I regret is far-fetched. I cannot convince anyone, not even myself, that I have fully recovered from the damage. The problem with lost chances is that they are coercive: they are keen on forcing themselves through the narrowest crevices and rattling the senses out of your mind. The regret then splays out like a movie that goes on for hours, then days; through breakfasts and dinners, through dusks and dawns. Blinking is not allowed.

The montage plays on the silver screen and I see you, a character straight from a daydream, acting out our first meeting. I see how I tried to avert your eyes while rehearsing in whispers how to say hello, which I never got to say. Then I see the two of us in one of the rare occasions where we had met. The lights from the concert cannot conceal the worn-out look in your eyes, and I fought back the spasms in my arms from letting out a hug, which I never got to give.

This movie does nothing but make me dwell in the "what's gone" and the "what if"; but try as I may, I cannot look away. My senses have been rattled, crevices entered, and I am brimming with lost chances and regrets. Time ceases to be the enemy: I realize that I only have myself to blame.

So now I ask you, would you have stayed if I told you how much I loved you? And what will be your reply if I ask you, would you stay now if I tell you I still do?

[ofjoysandwoes]

april nine ‘17;

​I thought the rain would stop soon, but it still pours now. The skies have unleashed its wrath in the fullest, streaming water in torrents from the clouds that never seem to go away. I thought the water would be strong enough to erase your picture imprinted in my head, but all it has done is somehow color it more vividly. Through the mist, I can see you: the tiny crook of your teeth, the wrinkles between your brows, those eyes.

I miss the sun. It was not always unpleasant here. Those were the days when your warmth clothes me, warding off wet spells and storms like a raincoat. They seem too distant now to recall, how your company was enough to get me out of bed, and how your words drive in me a cog that has rusted through time. I was functioning then. Now I am huddled at the window, catatonic if it weren't for the pelts of rain on the roof to keep me awake, silently begging the skies to shed some light.

I also wish it would rain harder. Hard enough to bore a hole through the ceiling and enter the room. I want nothing more than a flash flood to wash away the ashes of your burnt pictures, the cigarette stains on your memory, the knives I have thrown on your promises, this mess. I am a mess, a weathering monument worn away by idleness; a once mighty statue now waiting to be thrown. Let the world be clean of this garbage. Let the rain in.

All this has done is render me vulnerable: your good-bye has left me weak and helpless and fuck I don't know what else. You are a disaster, a hurricane disguised as spring time, and I am drowning. The Earth I stand on may be dry but I am running out of breath, out of ways to curse your name, out of tears to wring every drop of you out of my body. Air is running low in this place and I can only do so much to stay alive.

I have lost all faith in being restored back to my glory. I cannot be built back better, bolder, as I had once dared to be. I am spiraling down the retrograde, back in the muck where you found me. If I should die by you, let it be. It will be an honor to have you flood me, my airways, my veins. Kill me if it means the end of the disaster. Drown me if it will bring me back to the light of day. I will embrace your storm clouds once they get here.

[ofjoysandwoes]

april two ‘17;

​Once upon a time, the lover was also a beloved.

It spanned too short to be noteworthy, yet it went down in history as a hallmark. Then, none existed in the world but joy in its most unadulterated form: the idea of company through highs and lows, to love and be loved with no reservations, there was nothing else to be asked for. He felt free for once, and he was brave, knowing that no storm could faze him and no tragedy could befall his way. In that moment, brief as it was, he was with no doubt alive.

As with most brave men of history, he is now dead. He found out too little, too late, that death succeeds the letting go. He orchestrated his own burial: he wanted no hymns sung and no tears of lament shed. He wore his hope like a garb and carried it with him into his casket, and he dug a grave too deep for escape. No one came to watch the momentous performance except for all of his beloved, who lined up and mounded dirt upon him shovel after shovel. He did not speak a word. No one did.

The world is still muted, but in the silence I hear cries I have heard before. Then he looms before me like an apparition. It was a mirror, only that his eyes have a glint too familiar for me to ignore. I do not recognize him, the lover I have grown fond of, a relic of the past bound to be forgotten. I think he might be me, I can never tell. All I am certain of is that my hope is buried beneath my feet, too deep to be unearthened, rotting away with his corpse.

His soul rests in peace. May mine do as well.

[ofjoysandwoes]

march thirty-one ‘17;

​These will be my last words for you.

The words have formed inside my lungs, filling them with too much liquid that I almost cannot breathe. There will be no room for air once these words have been wrung out from every cavity it fills. I will dry myself of the poison that kills me. Tonight.

Yes, these words are liquid. Toxic waves of a toxic sea, pushing and pulling me to and from the jagged rocks onshore before drowning me. I never got the chance to scream, to cry for help, for mercy. But now I will drain your oceans until every single drop of you is gone. And I will feel relieved.

Why mustn't I let go of these words? Why do I deprive myself of freedom? For too long I have let the poison seep into my neurons and paralyze my synapses. I have allowed myself to be part of the sea, to the point where I have become poison myself; all in the hopes of being one of you, dreaming that I can be you.

But tonight is when I draw the line. I will stay afloat, even if it means waddling through the waters and seeing through the murk. My hair is singed and my fingers burnt, but nonetheless I am alive. I live, and there are still parts of me that I can save from the poison before it's too late.

These will be my last words for you. Never mind the nights, the infinities, that we have spent in each other's company; never mind the promises, both uttered and assumed. I will rest my case tonight, and I will be whole again. For good. No more swimming in someone else's sea. No more drowning. No more deaths.

My last words will haunt you some day, in the rare nights when my memory will fleet from thin air. "Look at what we have become," they will tell you, "and look at what could have been." By the time the regret has sunk in, it will be too late. I will be happy, and not in the way you promised I will be.

I will be happy, but tonight I grieve my good-bye. There will be no more you, and no more of the me that I have grown to know. I might be fooling myself, but I like to think this is for the best. I will take a plunge in the antidote of self-love and wash myself clean of the pain, of the loathing, of you. Even if I still believe that only you can cure this poison.

My last words for you are "I love you."

[ofjoysandwoes]

march twenty-eight ‘17;

​There are words that can be distilled to their purest definitions by their antonyms: for example, darkness is simply the absence of light, as to war is the absence of peace.

There is no easier way to express these words, complex as they are. I can go on talking about physics and warfare and still cannot fully grasp what "darkness" and "war" are about. Often, things are best defined with what their absences bring forth.

Like you. I have long since given up trying to figure out your puzzle, yet I know you. I have grown to know you, in times when the waiting becomes unbearable and the absence becomes coercive. I have studied you in how the minutes between your messages transform into hours, then days. I have mastered how you sleep through my 'good nights' and find ways to ignore my 'good mornings'. I know you, all your details, over and back; and still I want to know more about you.

But I also know this: love is the absence of hate, and my pursuit of knowing you has given birth to self-loathing so pure it coils inside my deepest recesses. If loving myself means letting go of what little and what grand I know about you, then I am more than willing to loosen my grip until there is nothing left to grasp onto. Not even myself. I'll let my absence define who I am. 

[ofjoysandwoes]

march twenty-four ‘17;

I don't remember when it started: it must have been somewhere between the moment you took a seat beside me and the time you reached out your hand to shake mine. The spark is a difficult point to plot in the long infinity of silence that separated us. There was a wall, sturdy and thick, that cracked every time our shoulders bumped, or knees touched, or gazes met, that day when a stranger became a friend. Then it crumbled when you talked to me, a smile flashed across your face and a thousand promises glowing furtively in your eyes. Yes, what I saw was too lovely to ignore. I liked to believe I saw it wrong, but I did not care. I was too busy skipping through debris and dodging across heaps to know that I was trudging to the wrong direction.

Now I am stuck at a dead end, and I have twisted and turned through the maze too much for me to recall my path home. My instincts tell me I should forget that there was, at one point in my history, a home I could go to before this all began. There has been no home since the spark appeared in your eyes save for the one I thought you could offer. You couldn't, and now I am stuck and helpless and afraid of the next step I'll take.

I don't remember when this mess started, and I doubt I'll know if it will ever end.

[ofjoysandwoes]

march twenty-one ‘17;

I spend nights craving flavors I have never tasted: the sweet, the taste of candy, of fruit, of your tongue swirling around mine and my lips tasting of blood from all the times I have bitten them to wake myself up from dreams of you, your body, the salt of your sweat as it sticks on my chest, the heat, the air heavy with moisture, the drops forming on my glasses by the bed, the bed creaking with the slightest movement, your hand over my mouth to hush me silent, "no one should hear us," you whisper and I obey, the sourness in your fingertips running down my throat like fire, sending sparks down my windpipe until a wildfire ensues in me, and it burns, still burns, I need you to quench this thirst before before it eats me alive, consume me, I command you between gritted teeth, and taste the bitterness before it spoils, the fruit that has ripened centuries ago, years upon years of wanting you, of dreaming about you, of craving flavors that I have never tasted but play tricks on my tongue nonetheless.

[ofjoysandwoes]

march five ‘17;

How do you read a book that does not open? How do you indulge in the joys and woes of an tale that never was upon a time? Where do I begin in understanding you, my dear, and what else can I do but wait? The frustration that used to be but light scratches in my chest has now come to claw its way out from inside me. It kills me, you see, how badly I want to know you. Like an newfound species, I want to study you. I want to know how you move and react and function, and I need to know if you can let me in your habitat. To let me love the things you love and feel the joy that keeps you moving. To allow me to live through your days as if I were you, the main character in a chapter that has yet to be published.

Only your chapter is written in an alphabet that I have never seen before, and yours is a story that refuses to be read. A

[serious]

just like your eyes