Today, I learnt that you are the only source of your happiness -
Image: Keaton Henson
A Letter to Love
Dear Love,
I haven’t seen you in a very long while so
I’m thinking I might send you a little letter. I hope you are doing well wherever you
are. I could not stop thinking about you. I have missed you terribly. We both
know I cannot help to stay far as I would always put you on the
pedestal. I always speak highly of you – that you are the best kind and everybody has to meet you, at least once because I don’t think they have
lived if they haven’t met you yet, even if someone has ever been hurt, I would still insist to tell them to try again and say the only thing
that can heal them is you, and only you.
You have the charm of every opposites, always different –
sometimes you can be very warm like the spring sunshine that melts
on my skin, but you can be as sharp as shards of glass that cause one to bleed.
That is why sometimes I am terrified of you,
because I know that you have the capability to expose me bare to the very core
of my vulnerability, as if I was a vampire and you were the sun that agonisingly burns me through
my skin onto my bones, unlike the cosmic objects that burn bright
and beautifully. You could easily undress me, putting my armour into bed,
asleep. That soon I would feel defenceless, helpless and dependent. I am no longer in
control nor a whole, to perhaps as if I am a half or a part of something else, a great inexplicable phenomenon – a natural disaster.
Another time, you’d make me feel
bulletproof. You can make me come clean with my biggest fear and be the best version of myself. When you're around, I am in peace, content. I don't want to ever leave. You're all everything I wanted to believe in. With your touch,
you can turn foolish actions into the only thing that makes sense. You can be incredibly beautiful, too. Have you seen yourself? Your
presence enchants the fairest charm as you breathe hope to the melted snow and
wilted flowers. You have the scent of the ocean just before the dawn, embodies
everyone’s favourite dream.
You can be dangerous – a thief of
fragile hearts, addictive as drugs, a spell. You are always a home to the losts, the
place where everyone’s keep running back to even if they are trying to run
away. You can be a strength and weakness. You can build and you can break. You
can grow wings to fly and an anchor to sink. You are
blinding, binding – you are everything all at once. To me, you are compass, without you, I would have been lost, perhaps like I am now, turning everything into dust. You are everything I ever talk about.
I’d write a prose of poems, an
album of songs about you. I’d put you in the centre of my universe and circle my
life around you – but even though I know you can be all the above, I don’t think
I know you enough. I would like to know you more, I would like to know you
better. Maybe I would be able to figure you out soon, your mysterious,
tangled webs of self, and maybe just a little maybe, from there I can let go of the
fear that I can’t always have you.
Yours truly,
Your Petite Friend
Even After What Had Happened
I want you to walk in to this restaurant right now, where I am having a meal with few of my friends on a rainy Thursday noon. I know this is the place where you like to order Chinese food from when we were together and being lazy under the warm dolphin-patterned blanket that you got from your mum two Christmas ago.
And when you walk in, I would avert my face away, pretending not to see you while my heart raced so fast it almost fall from my ribcage.
I will hold on for five minutes, pep-talking myself to be harsh. "Fiya, be mean. You can do this." It wasn't a tough break up but I have to be more assertive unlike jellyfish without spine. Over the past months, I have been trying to build this fortress to keep me away from you. Just because I needed to, just because you are still ever so inviting even after what had happened.
But soon I couldn't help to look at you and as our eyes accidentally met, I would melt like lava that slurred down the curves of an exploded mountain to your feet.
And then, I would have to say hi - with the utmost nervous, shivering voice. Right there, with all the failing plans of being stern, I would find myself back to ground zero. And I have to start to forget you all over again.
That's what's going to happen if you walk in to this restaurant now.
I would be a mess but I do still want to see you.
Like Everything is Alright
I love the way you make me feel — like I was in love. Like this is how I want love to feel like. Tomorrow does not seem so scary, the past does not feel as bad and now is good. Like I don't need more. Everything is enough. The sound of your voice is the safest haven, where all my worries are flushed, melt to the ground, non-existent. My sins are forgiven and all the bad choices are amendable. Like lone wolf that has finally found its home. Like the night for fireflies. Like,
everything is alright.
Loneliness is a Dangerous Thing
Oh dear, I have been trying to write you a story but nothing seems to be good enough. Unfortunately, I have not been able to send you good news. I have just gotten out from a long high and dry relationship and I was caught in a hazy state for quite some time. I merely exist from day to day, places to places. But something happened two Saturdays ago.
I met a guy that made me feel everything was not so bad – I suppose if I was terribly miserable I would have not thought of this.
I met him at this postcard-themed pub in town on a charity event in aid for Gaza appeal. We were introduced through a mutual friend that I was working with in a project last summer. You know, it was one of those nights where a simple conversation over a pint of beer caught me off guard.
He radiates the spirit of summer – which I was lack of, as I was definitely a gloomy winter. His presence was so warm and noticeably happy.
He was also infectious, almost like a virus that caught me just in time when my anti-body was asleep. The way he talked and looked at me was full of wonder, as if like he just discovered an alien, and he wanted to know everything about me and my planet. And the weirdest part was I strangely liked it.
He was also infectious, almost like a virus that caught me just in time when my anti-body was asleep. The way he talked and looked at me was full of wonder, as if like he just discovered an alien, and he wanted to know everything about me and my planet. And the weirdest part was I strangely liked it.
I did not quite understand how to explain this strange attraction. He did not strike as someone that I would normally look twice if I walk pass on the street. Not that he was not attractive - he was, in his own way. He was over 6 feet tall, had the hair with the colour of red fox, scruffy beard and a nose ring.
The conversation was okay, too. Nothing burns but there was something about the simplicity of it that I was deeply enjoyed. It might have been just his excellent communication skills, but either way, within the span of less than an hour, I could feel a teeny tiny hope creeps in to the very centre of my rib cage.
However, at the same time, I was not sure whether this illuminating feeling of attraction was real or it was just because I long for a company. Remember when I said I thought hope was a dangerous thing? Now, I am starting to think that loneliness is worse.
Remember to Forget
At the age of twenty-two, Sophia is starting to forget things. She is - or perhaps was now, remarkably good at remembering things. She thought, if she ever been good at something, it is definitely to remember. She remembers where she put last winter's receipt of jumper she bought in Topshop on the second drawer on her beside table. She remembers she put the loose screw from her shoe rack that she unable to put it back in the red tin where she keeps all her small jewellery and spare buttons. She remembers her best friend, Rosie's mother birthday on the 31st of January. She remembers her local bartender's goldfish name. She used to remember all the littlest things. But yesterday, she forgot whether she had turned off the stove after making her scrambled egg or not. She forgot where she put her favourite raincoat when it was actually raining outside. And this morning, Sophia forgot to close her bathroom window after left it wide open to let the steam out, resulting she had to walk back to her house and late for her first morning lecture of the new term. But nevertheless, she realised one thing today: that after a very long while, she finally forgot that Joe was once meant love to her.
Mine
The subway
from Bank smelled like Friday night – a mixture of alcohol, piss and tube engine waste. I was not complaining. I did not care. I loved it. I was with
him. What’s there to be afraid of? Daniel was next to me, with our hands interlock. As we walked
through the faded white porcelain ceramic wall, the other late Thursday commuters were just dots. We reached the end of the
tunnel and ended up in front of the Bank of England. Maybe majestic was the
right word to explain what stood before me. It represented lavish culture and
enunciate wealth, prosperity almost to the sense that it made me sick. The pillar stood tall with the perfect amount
of dimmed lighting on the ceiling and occasional car’s headlights passing by
beaming just about the essence of London, gloriously. Just a little across the street, there was a
statue in front of a posh restaurant that I would not even dared to enter wearing ripped black stocking and knitted cardigan, not to mention wet red
converse from the puddle I accidentally got into next to the sidewalk in Shoreditch. I looked around, then finally at Daniel that seemed rather laid back seeing what’s in front of us.
He took his eyes off the statue and returned to mine, “It’s beautiful.”
I was not trying to whisper, but my voice sounded smitten and probably with slightly hazy eyes. His
thumb stroke the palm of my hand that still in his and replied, “I know.”
He leaned forward and kissed me. I could feel London was immersing in me, in
his soft lips, in the background noise of London’s traffic. I felt like I was
in a love-drunk fiction book. That moment was very intimate almost I feel I did not want to
share it with anybody else. It was mine. It was not even his. Everything was just
mine.
But then if I was part of a book, I
was afraid there might be a plot twist in the next chapter.
I want the story to end here, where
everything is almost perfect.
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