There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

I've always imagined a story of us. We'd be pretty much the way we are right now. Masses of sin, moving in sync with the rhythms of the rain beating up the soils of night. Neglects the world, abandons reality, waiting for the time to incur the wrath of adulthood and responsibilities.

In this story we'd be pulled by a gravity stronger than the chemistry that binds our time in each other. I will drift away, and you will let me.

It will be a year or so till we care to hear each others' voices again. To breathe in each others' necks again. To leave soft lingering kisses in each others' skins again. To pull and tug each others' beings into existence again. To lie in a standstill breathing in the scant scent of sex in the dewy morning breeze again.

You'd be with another person. I'd be a careful hunter. One day you'd be lying in a haze, lining the surfaces that make her a woman, and nothing else crosses your mind but me.

The laughs that was annoying became endearing. The lazy eyes you once thought was empty now came with a glint you'd wish you can capture, like a battery-operated soul was injected into it. The gasps and pants that you find hard to resist. The lips you wish you could dismember for you to keep.

You'd have grown wiser by then. The discerning bone in your body had grown. The man in you wanted to abandon the boy that was. Nevertheless, bringing along the youthful soul that longed for the girl you once alternately trod and cared for deeply from yesteryear.

Trace us back, take us back

Does your hand still remembers mine? You'd ask.

We barely hold hands, beyond the dizzying nights in your bed.

Maybe that's what was missing.

And proceeded to pull my battered, tattered hands, curled it up in a soft fist, inhaled the scent of time and tire, and you kissed it, not with malice nor with chagrin, not with lust nor with desire. But just with warmth, longing for the same soft skin that once stroked your hair, soothed your face till you sleep.

And you hold it longer than you would have had. This time the fear of letting go as imminent as the fear of falling.

But of course, my imagination reeks of euphemisms. With life taking its due course, and books being better only when it leaves a long trail of lost hopes, failed dreams and numbing pain behind, I'm left to pick up the pieces of my eyes. Gradually forgotten, with traces lost forever, nowhere to be found.

People have lost track of me before.

Red Ruby
5/12/09
Sober

Happy birthday.

May you get what your heart desires.