a couple of days ago we visited a land inhabited by deceivingly accurate portrayals of life. we grew so entranced by everything we saw. we spotted a very strange looking crustacean flanked by a really thin looking squid positioned upright. she quipped about how it looked just like a pen, and when we went to the store we made it our life's only mission to find it and buy a replica so that every time we confessed to our journals we'd remember the day. but it wasn't there. i think about it now and i laugh because what kind of a mentality is that? to just be so sure that something will be there, will work out in our favors, will come back despite all odds. i can't afford to think with such ironclad naivety. people are not infallible. funny as it is, i can't expect to find a squid pen, and no amount of determination can make tangible something that doesn't exist.

but the whale, above our heads, floated as lifeless and seemingly ordinary as a chandelier. a half idyllic half menacing scene at the bottom of the ocean. we laid underneath it and felt so small. our worries and problems themselves seemed even more infinitesimal. i pretended i was submerged underwater, letting all of my troubles disappear and become one with nature, and she was the only person who could listen to my thoughts.

The shirt you’re wearing as I sit next to you in one of the few pictures we have together that I kept. We’re smiling as though there is nothing to fear, and if there is, then we know we will be there for each other to stave off from such a feeling. I never saw you wear that shirt again. The shade of my ceiling when I wake up in the middle of the night, stirring from a sad dream. The color of the bow I wore in my hair a couple of times at school. The way you felt when you couldn’t remember the words to one of our favorite songs. The way I felt when you couldn’t remember the words, because I could tell it was the beginning of you forgetting me. The small waves gently milling about in the pond in the park we’d walk through every week together. A bright feather on one of the birds you tried to feed bread crumbs to during a walk in said park. Her eyes, a piercing hue that demanded your attention like a performer at a circus. The blanket that preserved our warmth during brisk mornings waking up beside each other. The mug you drank simmering tea from soon after getting out of bed. The ink from the pen I used to write you letters. The box you put the letters in underneath your bed, obscured by shadows and necessary secrecy. Your gemstone, because in dire need of amusement, I looked it up once. The sky just before it becomes truly nightfall.
The color you shirked off in favor of a “real” blue.

athymia:
1. the absence of emotion; morbid impassivity.

exhibit A.
she passes through tunnels of silken sheets and wind chambers with gusts that leave trails of kisses. she lives in a dream. when their lips met for the first time, she looked into his eyes with a question and he didn't say yes to take a crash course on the beating of her heart. he took advantage of the moment, unwary of the precarious nature of his words and actions. but wide-eyed and naive she said yes, because it is a word the vulnerable mutter all too frequently with uncommon ease. they are still an entity, but unbeknownst to her lies a world of secrets she has yet to discover about him. lies. he doesn't love her, he is still confused. yet he keeps the charade going like a mastermind. if you can't have the one you love, love the one you’re with. she continues to paint daisies on the walls and on her wrists. everything is perfect.

exhibit B.
physics says that force times distance is equal to work. she's more of a science ****** than anything, and i am not talking about breaking bad in the slightest. no one wants to do anything in the dead of winter because it is as frigid as the underbelly of a monarch penguin, but she moves as fast as a monarch butterfly on her quest for his heart. she's fallen victim to one of the most powerful spells of levitation, and we wait until the efficacy of gravity strikes. we wait so she can learn her lesson, that science cannot teach you the ways of the heart, that you can have as many late night conversations, warm embraces, and clandestine glances as possible, and it could still predict naught of the future. she has yet to learn this, and she also has yet to say "i'm sorry." and this, i wait for, but i will not hold my breath.

exhibit C.
stung. she has been stung by the harbinger of indecision. she dreams of a beautiful world that carries with it the love she needs, but it is by vicious nature for her to reject others and feel dejected. she does not stare at happiness at first, but she stares at potential. pretty little potential with a ribbon on top, glimmering in the dusk. she does nothing but question it ceaselessly until it shrinks away like the wrap used to encase it. he is potential. so was that guy, and the guy before, and so on and so forth until we reach the factorial of four. she was never good at math, but she could count up all her insecurities like simple addition and simply subtracted people in her life thereafter if they made her feel the slightest of some way she thought she shouldn't. but at the end of the night she is on the cusps of complacency, twining fingers with memories that dance with her until the sun stretches awake. cheating apathy with reflection.

exhibit D.
he remembers the teasing lilt in her voice and blue ribbon she set in the back of her hair ("it's more of a cerulean, don't you think?"), and conjuring the images of her within his clouded mind is elementary biology. he places the vinyl in the record player, and plays "no surprises." not his favorite, but when he knows it was hers. he sits on his bed and the each note hits him in a different part of his body, and he keeps withdrawing from the memory bank. they're slow dancing in his room, her gentle laugh at his missteps is glitter cascading to the floor, and soon their bodies are shifting in a foreign way and he later wakes feeling the weight of starlight nestled upon his chest. then the sky turns red. not maroon or soft sunset but a flash of pure red. the hands of the clock twist to form sequences of circles, the calendar pages turn like a bestseller. he says things he doesn't mean to girls who yearn to hear them, and his hands guide their way through jungles with quicksand and a sahara with no oasis. needless to say, everything has changed. he recalls the careful penmanship on the letter she wrote, and they are standing face to face at the bus stop issuing quiet goodbyes. the record ends but the images are bright and vivid. funny how piano keys, though simply black and white, bleed thousands of audible colors. he mulls this over until he enters slumber.

i’m afraid of affection, afraid of touching lips
so instead i pull away, and just keep sharing quips
a lot of times i’m lost, and don’t know how to feel
men ask for my hand, but i don’t let ‘em take the wheel
other girls sing songs of sweet things, how love’s the greater joy
but i’m too busy plucking petals, and warding off the boys
i spend my time adventuring, and writing lots of poetry
because i cannot find the one who feels so right for me
we all have our obsessions, and little pots of greed
and sometimes cannot tell the difference between want and need
i’d like to love another, and want to cast a spell
but staying in one place seems synonymous to hell
there’s a city in the distance, a city not too far
a sanctuary i can flee to when hearts come to war
sometimes i think of traveling there with my pocket change
cause again, the thought of staying here fills me up with rage
maybe he will come soon one day and i won’t even have to think
but in the mean time i’ve got lingering thoughts, paper, and ink.

little feet dashing across the playground with light-up shoes and arms raised and poised to hold our weaponry. swift movements mark the territory with memories of traipsing through our makeshift castles. when we’re children we gallantly save princesses with long tresses who cry from the tops of towers, fearing uproarious dragons and the darkness of the sky. we protect the princesses from terror, and some of us grow up to become them and learn to protect ourselves. the tall dragons shed their prismatic scales and flinch as they feel the girth of our swords. after much opposition, we face our fears and instantaneously make the final strike and become victorious. we turn and look through the binoculars of our hands and spot nimble thieves stealing the shimmering scales in exchange for their own greed. they climb medieval walls and we try to catch them. impulse clutters our line of vision and we go because there is no time to waste, we don’t want to lose them. sometimes they return the stolen treasure and sometimes its a lost cause. we learn the latter later, through long sighs at lonely 2 ams after seemingly infinite words have spilled out on paper and out loud out to those who can’t come back and those who can but won’t. but the former fleshes itself out when we experience moments of kismet. these days where we share conversations with people who satiate the hollow corners of our hearts and walk outside and breathe in the petrichor just as the sun has wriggled its way into the sky. we learn life is as vivid as any story we become momentarily enchanted by. people come and go as fast as the pages that inspired our childhood adventures turn, and everything happens at once. we face demons as beastly as our dragons but we have our warpaint on no matter how hastily drawn it is, and we convince ourselves of our strength until it’s real to us.
we were the heroes of the story then, light-up shoes running across the playground, and we are the heroes of the story now, playing and living in the light-up world.

the sounds dance as we are, the music like a waterfall right by our ears, and we are a part of the landscape. the photographer zooms in closer and he sees us. he snaps a photo as if to trap the ephemeral nature in a bottle. we drink from said bottle the liquid of opulence we are basking in. as lush as everything around us seems, with one too many chandeliers and dresses and tuxedos that cost a fortune, we exist as fireflies in the night, our identities remaining letters in sealed envelopes locked in drawers. we flutter and sway, chortle and whisper sweet nothings, somethings, anythings to whoever charms us for a moment’s dance.

she observes and picks at the seams of her maroon dress as if she’s entranced by a thriller novel. it’s so easy to feel tuckered out sometimes, she muses. she is an escapist by nature. she’s taken up running as a recreational activity, and she doesn’t run to feel the adrenaline rush. she runs to be alone. she hears their voices and their sheepish laughs behind their hands. these girls that are too scared to be themselves even under a silly mask. a physical facade to make poetic the abstract one.

she’s about to leave when he bumps into her. he is intoxicated by the late night energy and he’s decided she is going to dance with him. his hands aren’t awkward and sweaty but they’re soft and seem to know what they’re doing as they glide down the small of her back and poise themselves for a rhythmic rumble. she chooses not to be a rhythmic renegade and she accepts after it’s started that it’s going to continue because he has this coy grin that she doesn’t feel like resisting. a grin that tells her to trust him and to take a ******* chance.

they rotate like they’re a part of the solar system, and afterward share a couple of drinks. they talk about the vastness of the universe and share the same incredulity that they will never be able to touch a star or ever fully adjust their eyes to the intensity and immensity of sunlight. it saddens them both to the same degree. he shares his love of languages and his eagerness to learn about the world in which we were born as infinitesimal shapes. she talks to him about how she loves hearing a good story as much as she loves telling one, and how without words and the capability of expression she would feel paralyzed. they shift under the same wavelengths, twin fire signs. they drink up each others demons until their glasses feel half empty and save the other half for another meeting or twelve. and half past twelve, they remove their masks and the cages around their hearts.

the universe was toothache, the stars were giant cavities. “but it’s been far too long since i’ve had sugar,” cried the sun, the concerned star. “don’t lie to me,” said ever so smart mercury, “when we are right by the milky way.” the other planets jeered and the sun shed a tear and on the earth was rain, peeking through the clouds. you see, the sun was always body conscious. the planetary publication "zodiac almanac" always had an unruly comment or three to share, and after copious poring, the sun felt a little dimmer every time. but every night when the stars twinkled in all of their saccharine glory, they had the sun to thank. the sun, who boldly held itself up in the sky for the little specks on the planet earth, from the people taking walks in the park to the plants preparing to soak up their daily delight. they engaged in photosynthesis while the sun never felt too photogenic at all. the sun mused while listening to the twinkling music of the rotating planets and stars that kissed each other as they formed constellations, faint but audible nonetheless. the sun mused that it wasn’t shining brightly enough. it cried and wept and the people on earth mirrored its melancholy, for a day without the sun morphed into a day of rain-induced laziness.

mercury, who had since apologized, urged the sun to read a book to reinvigorate her intricate mind. jupiter and uranus suggested a workout for empowerment. mars recommended her to write an angry diatribe or five, she was so very fond of venting. venus reminded her again and again that she was beautiful. neptune sang her a lullaby every night. and saturn offered her a ring to lean on. pluto was on sabbatical, but sent her a postcard. all of these gestures were warm and lovely, but the sun still felt trapped and unworthy.

she felt too enormous, too blinding, and too far from earth, where she’d heard many wonderful stories about. the other planets had grown complacent with their distance from earth, but the sun always wanted more, and that was why it was so sunny sometimes, because she wanted to stretch out her wispy arms and embrace the world she knew she could never touch. so she never felt good enough.

but one day the earth seemed to have had enough, and the people were growing dreary of the absence of their beloved sunlight. the moon was especially privy to this information, as she’d watched over earth night after night (except in her first phases when she would rest), and witnessed many a complaint as the clouds would clock off from their shifts and heave sighs of resignation. they knew their golden friend was still weeping.

the moon decided to take a stand. she floated towards the sun even though they were so far away and told her softly: "darling, i know it’s sad that every day you can give so much to people who will never be able to give you anything back. i know it’s hard to peer over, having to watch their countless stories unfold and not ever being able to be one of them. but every time you shine down on that tiny planet over there, you change things. you are bigger because you are so full of light, gently cascading onto those lucky tiny specks down there. and i know you’ll never know what it feels to be fed rays of sunlight, but you can take all the moonlight you want from me and it won’t bother me at all."

and the sun cried more but this time, the tears were out of happiness, and the moon assuaged her again that it would all be fine. she knew she didn’t need to have her own sun, feeding her light, because she knew the light was within her, and her ***** friend, the moon. millenniums later the two would laugh about this.

"what was wrong with me?" inquired the sun.

"everything happens in phases," replied the moon.