“Good morning, love,” you whisper.

It has always been the sweetest sound I always hear before I formally open my eyes for the new morning. I could not imagine, waking up one day not to hear your voice beside me. It is like a melody of hope and love that even my imperfect days become brighter and sunnier. A chilly morning always lulls me with your mint breath that puffs like a cloud of smoke in my face every day.

How I could forget, the way you undress me with my favorite red Elmo shirt and teases me for my unsymmetrical body. I hate it when you laugh at me, comparing me to the human body systems you have studied in your Science class. I hate myself being half-naked and shivers in front of you but you always pull me in your chest and incubate me like a baby. That makes me feel safe and enough.

Your fingers then begin to wander around my body starting from my head down to the end like a thin map, locating the bones you have not known. You have memorized the number of ribs, the hiding-place of my moles, the width of my waist, the length of my thighs, and the weight of my brain when I lose myself in the fantasy you make. I know you will kiss me after that. A warm, obsessive kiss as if I belong to you. Like I am only made for you. You own every little thing about me as you sealed every edge of my body with your lips and hands.  

In this room, you always play your favorite Taylor Swift’s song on your phone and sing it to me foolishly, in out of tune while looking me in the eye. You would ask me to sing it with you the best line of the song: you are the best thing that’s ever been mine. This makes me laugh, blush, and even makes me cry in such unfathomable bliss I feel every time we do this. I forget the things that make me scared and worry. I want to hold you forever like what you did whenever I fall head over heels for you.

You are not actually my type. I never dreamt of loving the exact opposite of me. You hate the smells of books and will never pull me in a bookstore just to read George Orwell’s or Harper Lee’s. You have never been to art galleries or even museums to look for paintings and sculptures. Mostly, you never read my paper-scented poems and short stories peppered with similes and metaphors. Those things make you fall asleep. But, you always show up and try to understand my world.  

Our story is nothing but a cliché.

Sometimes, we both sail through the angriest storms that left us unguarded. There were days that our rooms were jam-packed with simple misunderstandings that ended up with spicy arguments. Those nights, when we sleep against our backs with wet pillows and separate blankets. We fixed things, though, before the sunlight peeks through our curtains. We entwined our hands again. New and fresh like there is no scar at all. In the next months it’s been always benn the same. We usually run in circles – a cycle that we never break.

The room succumbed into the silence that was once smeared with laughter and dreams. The heavy tension surrounding us, expanding more each day. From our bed to tables. The distance between our hearts stretched to a distance beyond our reach. I do not recognize you anymore as you have metamorphosed into another being. A different stranger.

As much as I want to save you from drowning, you were already trapped in whirlpools. I firmly hold the thin string of hope to battle it out against the current. I pulled myself together and swam harder, as fast as I can do. I can already feel fatigued. Without a word, you unlatched your hand and let yourself adrift farther away from me.  

I was lost. I traveled all alone in the cold sea, looking at the sky. That made me realized that I was already defeated in this battle before it had started.
____________

My head spins like hell. All things are blurry and indistinct. I am staring at my phone waiting for a text message to pop up. I notice the dried red rose on the vase. The books on my shelf are dismantled and seem like some are missing or misplaced. The printed shirts and my pants are scattered on the dusty carpet. I caress my much-loved red Elmo shirt as if I am searching for a lost memory. I drink the last glass of beer, staring blankly at my phone.

Funny how all these stuff occupy every space in my room yet it still feels so empty without you in it. I forced myself to stand on the floor and decided to open another bottle of beer.

“Good morning, my love,” I regretfully whisper to your absence.

The summer sun spikes at noon and makes people uneasy and uncomfortable for the next three hours. As I start my long vacation for the unexpected pandemic, I feel the sweltering heat of the angry sun that shines like a glowing ball of butter. I usually spend my lazy afternoon underneath the shade of our little coconut tree. Still, a shaft of light passes through the small openings of the leaves, illuminating some portions of my body.

Out of nowhere, in the middle of my lazy summer, a cool wind blew, in the seemingly dehydrated atmosphere. But, it quietly faded away.

I listen to the birds chirp melodiously on their nest, feeding their hungry newly hatched ¬babies while some unfamiliar birds with strange colors of feathers pirouette their delicate feet on the dried grass to search some food. A couple of bees races towards their hive chases one after the other. Their stomachs are bags full of sweet nectars and pollens after a busy day collecting them in the row of roses of my Mama’s garden. An occasional growl of my dog and the loud chirrup of my cat, who are fighting over a place to rest and sleep, awakens the solemnity of my afternoon.

From where I settle to relax and comfort myself, I can hear some children who cackle and burst into loud and solid laughter. I can already paint in my head their gleeful faces with wide stretched smiles, exposing their white and yellowish teeth, as their big and round eyes fold into an almond-shape seed.

I scan the sky with the hope that it might rain today. But I am greeted with a vast sea of blue, clear sky with no single clouds dare to float around. As though, the cloud-bearer forgets them to hang like how my sister hangs our dresses on the clothesline. There is no hint of rain to downpour to quench the parched land. With a huge disappointment, I sighed heavily. Not today, I whisper.

Things like these lessen the boredom and mundane moments I used to feel almost every day. The hands of the clock keep on moving but circles itself into the slow-paced motion to which I patiently endure. It seems like I am inside a box – a compartment box controlled by time and space. A train of happy thoughts arrives like a bullet and transports me in my other world.  
The carefree, unbothered wind blows once again and it grazes on my skin.

I rummage the memories of my summer last five years ago. It is still warm and vivid as if I can touch them as though it only happens today. I bask myself to the words that continue to linger in my heart for all these years.
__________________

I remember you sitting on my bed as you carefully watch me sleep overnight. As I open my eyes, you formally utter words I unfathomably understand which allows my spine to shiver. You say the barest and rawest line on earth. It is divine and glorious when those words escape onto your nervous lips. Your words and breath coalesce to blow the dying embers in my heart and set a raging wildfire.

I am never the same person that day. I am walking in the clouds, riding on the lemon-sliced moon, and floating on the universe all at once. Like I come out in my mother’s womb, strip naked and innocent once again. It flutters my heart, throbs my heart back and forth against my chest.

In that split-second of my life, where everything is a blur. It is just you and me. I think that it is time to aflame the love into this deep slumber. I am brave enough to stand tall on the morning light.
“I love you too.” The world becomes silent as it witnesses the first sprout of love growing – full of promise and hope.  And at that moment, it is the briefest yet longest summer of my life.  

_________________­_

But just like the summer wind, carefree and unbothered, offers me a warm invisible hug like my old lover that tickles me for a moment. Then suddenly, in a blink of an eye, it is all gone.

I am a man who always lived behind the shadows. I am so frightened and terrified of what the world could do in my vulnerability. The world seems so dangerous, scary, and confusing. Everyone who always comes in my life had barely tried to pull me out into the sun or push me out into the darkness.

I am not even surprised when people leave me all alone. I am used to it. I have memorized the aching footsteps of every person, bidding their goodbyes to me. It had produced its own sound, a stark melody reverberating through my ears.

I have been misunderstood, bullied, and rejected too many times. It is simply because of the way I speak for myself in the language that had cultured me. It is because how I view the world from an entirely different perspective, always with a new pair of eyes. It is because of how I express what I truly feel through writing, putting my words in a dimension that only I could understand. But I was never sorry for who really I am.

I honestly thought that I would never find real love. Then, you came along, rushing towards me like a leaf twirling gracefully around the wind. It was just too fast. I became a weird disorganized human being as simple things turned too complex. It made me feel dumb just because my brain worked indifferently.

These uncontained feelings and excitements unveiled a glimpse of the future and a bunch of hopes to hold on. And for the first time in my life, I feel so infinite.

Even if someone had told me that, it was not going to work out. No matter how we fight for this love and the struggles we had gone through and all of our hard works would just end in heartaches.

But, I would not care. I would still be here.
I would have said yes. A thousand times, yes.

I would have suffered it all for the little chance to stand up here today. I am working in progress. You did not ask me to come out of the shadows. But you help me to move away from anything that’s blocking the sun, instead.

It is time for both of us, head held high, to walk into the sunshine together.