Friday, July 31, 2009

black and red

i have been sitting on the same spot for the past four hours, if my next door neighbor didn't know what has been happening with my life he would've thought that i was a burglar or some one who has gone insane, not that i can say for sure that I'm not the latter.

you indeed have driven me insane.

for the past four hours, and eight long years, you have designed my life the way it was suppose to be, but now that you're gone it just seem, i seem to be lost.

for the past four hours i have been trying to convince myself that entering this door would not drive me to the edge. if it does, i have too much to loose, my life, our memories, our child's future, my promise. the thought of loosing you before was somehow bearable, because i knew that when i wake up from the nightmare i'll realize that it was all a dream, that this was my reality, you beside me, holding you within my arms, fragile, but there, weak but existing. now this nightmare is like an insomnia i wish to wake up from. it's like a room without windows or doors and with an orchestra of unbearable silence.

so for the past four hours, i have built a courage that would probably blow mountains into hills, but somehow it was not enough to surpass the lingering loneliness without you. somehow it was easier to breath but still hard to see. somehow, without you, it feels like life would crumble into ashes and dust and be washed away by the wind.

that was my life without you, without a trace, without you.

as hard as anyone would try to imagine i needed to enter our life when we were still together. slowly, i stood up from sitting crossed leg on the floor and opened the door to the home we built, dream t to complete. it was exactly the same way i remembered it to be, glass windows, fancy comfortable couch, clean kitchen, even though you spent every waking moment within its four walls. i climbed the spiral stairs, located between the kitchen and "our area",to the top floor. wooden floors sounded like spring insects under the soles of my shoes. i quickly took off my shoes knowing that you would not like shoes on your clean wooden floor. you were more Japanese than i was in every way. the whole top area was bare and seen. you wanted it that way. you always say that our bedroom should be open since its the only room on the top floor.it was your understanding of interior design, i never questioned it, 'till now.the bed was facing the western window, it was glass same with every other window in the house. it was shadowed by light white curtains you chose. i never understood your description of things. when you don't know the right name of anything you name it your own scientific name. it was your own way of admitting your sometimes stupid.

thinking of you weakened my knees. i walked towards the bed knowing that my knees would soon bail on me and my tears would start to fall.i did not want to cry but my eyes could not stop the rain from falling. rain was falling in chorus with my eyes outside the glass windows. i did not reach the bed.i fell on my knees, i fell on the edge of the bed, my face would've hit the wooden floor if the bed was not there. my arms laid on top of the sheets we last slept in,your smell lingered on them.i know that my heart would stop beating any minute, so i let the tears fall.

i slowly lifted my head up and memorized everything that surrounded me. it was my final farewell. i saw the wall you made, the lamp that we never used, the door to our closet, the bed.on the bed were two things; something known and something unknown. one blue and the other red. i recognized the blue journal on the right, it was my college journal.it was something known. i thought i lost it on my last year at Yale. i tried to find it but i gave up. what was unknown to me was the red journal on the left. I've never seen it before. i climbed the bed and lifted the blue journal. i flipped the pages randomly and concluded that it was indeed mine. i lifted the second journal. it was a little thicker than mine, it looked like a novel rather than a journal. i opened the first page, it was blank. i flipped it to the second page. a hand written "thank you" was written in the middle. the next page said "i love you", the next said:


"the story of my life"

Saturday, July 25, 2009

akai-ito---the end of innocence

the very first time i laid eyes on her was before the summer we met...



----------------------
it was an ordinary summer that year. my family went to the sea the day after school ended. it was our tradition. it felt ordinary. me, my sister, my parents, or at least we thought so.
a week before leaving the beach, to go back to our busy lives in the city, my parents dropped the bombed. although i wasn't born yet when the nuclear bomb fell on the sands of japan, it must have felt like this. a total shock. a wave of uncertainty. a mist of hurt. a death to happiness and a birth to death.

apparently my parents have decided to get a divorce. why?

a couple or reasons.

one. my dad was having an affair. with his best man. two. my mom was pregnant. with my first year algebra teacher, i guess he got all the x and Y's. three. they have never loved each other. ever.

how did all this happen without our knowledge?how did we end up blinded by hate?
one. my parents were really good at keeping secrets. apparently they've known each other's secret for a while now. about ten years while. two. we never bothered to look and every time we accidentally saw we turned our head to the other direction.why?because it didn't fit. three. it didn't fit. it didn't fit the life we knew. it wasn't right.

so where did this left us all. my parents, happy, singularly, in the arms of their rightful life partner, and us, band to see them until we're old enough to hate them. at least that was what our grandparents wanted.

the day my grandparents, from both sides, decided that we live in Tokyo with my father's parents was the hardest part of being in that situation. it wasn't the scandal or the talk. it was the thought that from this time until we are of legal age my sister needed to depend on me while i need to depend on what was left of me.

i walked the beach after the "big talk". i looked at the pain waiting for me somewhere in the horizon and walked straight to it.
i was near the horizon itself when i saw the most beautiful smile. it was in a red dress but i never saw the face only the smile it gave me in return as i lent it my pain.