For You, Forever Ago

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I think loving you has become a habit. I have you programmed in my brain, that I have to love you, you the one with thick glasses and husky voice. Even though I do not have any sensible reason to, I cannot stop. It is non-negotiable. A done deal. It almost sounds like I loved you in a manner of science — my brain cells conspire in the most selfish way to only recognise you as love and associates with nothing else but since the day I fell in love with you three summers ago.

The world was still in a box when I met you, but the feelings I had was larger than life as I loved you with everything I had and able to give. I loved genuinely and unconditionally. I loved you alone, unselfishly without involving me. And I loved you for so long, I thought I did not know how to stop.

I have loved you closely as close as sitting next to you, and through the distance as far as twelve hours flight and time difference. I have loved you more and I have loved you less. I loved you even in between the awake and the sleep. I have loved you everywhere and in every way. I have loved you everyday — but not today. Because just like the death of snow, I am melting away to the equator line, farther from the Northern Hemisphere, and you. Today, I learned that the older the brain gets, it loses its cells but continue to grow and make new ones; I think I have lost some parts of you. And also today, is the day I decided to stop loving you.

A piece by : Fiya Muiz
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I Should Have Told You

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I hate to see you go. I should have not let you go. I should have told you that I want you longer than the summer. Hell, I want you longer than forever. I did not want you just over the coffee break that ended when the melted ice leaving traces by the bottle like the morning dew. I should have told you to stay, not to go on that plane that take you back to your life. Just stay — with me. We could count the stars, watch the sun rise, filmed the world, go on arguing which row is the best seating on IMAX theatre or we could just talk under the moonlit sky. I’d tell you how much I loved the sea side yet how scared I was of the ocean. I’d tell you stories I would not share with anyone else, like my mum’s habit. I'd tell you this not just because you know her, but because talking to you gives me the sense of belonging and being acknowledged, though in the least bit, in the way I have always wanted. Then I’d listen to you too, as this would be my favourite part of the day — I get to listen to what’s in your mind. I loved the part when you told me that you have just visited the place where you grew up last weekend and how surprised you were because it had not change a bit, unlike this metropolitan city with vast growth of construction and traffic. You'd rolled your eyes trying to remember the sound of cricket at night, and then you'd smiled. You'd smile over the fact that you used to collect stones and buried it under the mango tree when you were seven. You’d smile, like it was the best day in your life, as if you have just won the world at the carnival and you disclose happiness. Across the table, I’d smile too, for you and with you, noticing I have found the best version of you. And over dinner, you'd say everything starting to matter in your last night before your flight calls in the morning. Even though we were just having small bites of fried chicken in one of the overrated American fast food chain at this newly-built mall on the Southern part of Jakarta, you said, it matters. Right there was where I should have told I want you to stay in this this city and grow old on the road with me. We’d speak the same language and continue to love and hate this place at the same time by mocking the laws, economy and politicians in between the empty seconds before the red light turns green.

I should have told you I want you to stay.

I should have told you that I want you.

A piece by : Fiya Muiz
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So Close

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Have you ever felt so close, like the border line between two states, so precise and absolute, to fall in love with someone? You met this person with the least expectation you have got as you only prepared a notebook and a pen for yourself. You figured the rest would find its own way. Maybe this person was someone from the past; a childhood friend that you had a secret crush on. The first time you have seen this person's face again after years, everything suddenly escalated so quickly into a firm existence of realness. You did not know you were about to get caught off guard.

He sat before you, looking as exceptional as he was expected to grow up to be since you were playing swinging rope together in his backyard twelve years ago. His hair was still as dark as dark as raven's wings, matched with his thick eyebrows. Whilst his eyes utters the coldest yet brightest impression in shades of caramel-coloured iris. He did not smile so often, this scares you because you were dying to read his mind, but when he did, that was the kind of smile that lights up the room.

You hid your shaky nerves in between the sips of your caramel latte as the conversation began. It started off quietly, like calm pool with steady surface till he jumped right in and create this magnified wave of perfect curls. In a glimpse, you thought, if this carries on, something big could happen. Maybe like the second big bang, where both of you would explode into million bits of micro-particles, dissolve into the air and create this new universe that you were bound to exist forever.

By the time the blended ice melted under the arch of plastic bottle lid, you were reminded that he had changed from the person that you held impulsively when you were nine, and fell into foolish monkey-love with. But somehow you liked him even better, the darker-and-more-real version of him, in a way you could not explain, in a way you could never be able to shake off the idea of him that was so persistent and impeccable, no matter how fucked up he was.

Right before you had to say goodbye, your eyes met his. It was not the first time throughout conversation that you just happen to caught in a crossfire of glances, but this time you saw the sunset of your childhood dream disappearing at the end of the horizon of his eyelid, shifting into clusters of stars where you look up to. There you noticed, you had been longing for him without even knowing. That he could be your muse and you were so close to fall in love with him. Even closer than the length between your pointy nose and your soft lips.

Have you ever felt so close to fall in love with someone, for his mistakes, achievements, his words and past, you were just one blink away to fall head over heels towards him? But you couldn't. It was not because a moment of hesitation or sprinkles of doubts. But because your fear of falling, failing and getting hurt once again was too much. You just couldn't, so you let this one go.

A piece by : Fiya Muiz
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Good Enough

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I am so tired, I'm so tired I cannot feel anything but. As if those three days had consumed the entire supply of joy for the next three waking weeks. It is tiring, it is bloody tiring. Not being able to get ahold of myself, and everything seems to be not good enough. It's never good enough but you were more than good enough. And I want more than good enough. It gets harder to breathe, almost literally, when a little too often the memories of you strikes back, follows with a clotted blood stream right in the middle of your chest; even though it lasts only for two good seconds, but I can feel it - right there. It is real, it is not myth or a made-up story. I want to make it go away but instead every corner of this city reminds me of you, then it hit again. What bugs me the most, is you are more than good enough. I thought you weren't. Hence nothing, no one, can be just good or good enough because now I want more than good enough. Not even the Atlantic ocean by the New York skyline, it has lost its appeal once you stand near. And how can you expect me to swim when your current is too strong? At least you could have warned me. And now I am drowned and tired to fight back. I have been staying up most of the nights, counting the stars just because I can get busy thinking what comes after 771, and eventually I can close my eyes without wondering all the what ifs of us that has dissolve into oxygen. I just want to take a rest for wanting everything to be good enough. It's confusing. Gravity is starting to revolve around you - and I am falling. And I'm falling alone.

A piece by : Fiya Muiz
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Find Me

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Listen what I have got to say: Find me now. Not tomorrow or the day after. Do not wait. I have waited long enough. Although I am not lost, I want you to find me. Find me between the trees, above the ground, dirt and pebbles. You do not need to leave traces of bread in case if you get lost, I'll get lost with you. But find me first — when the daffodils bloom in the midst of cold spring, when the wave clashes to the shore, when bubbles of salt and water seeps into the sand. Find me in the least familiar place; like a tourist finding their way in a crowded traditional market of a strange city, when they bump into sweats of strangers, bizarre local language; I may be somewhere in the long process of understanding the broken English and funny accent. Or in the aghast of discovering blatant beauty far from home. I may be somewhere in between the spaces of your fingers, or your sentence. I am not lost, I am right here; building the bridge that I have burned, for you to cross once again. Find me in between your hope and regret. Find me before the sun rise, in between unguarded conversations about the future and ashes of wasted cigarette with your car's window half opened. Find me in a verse of a song that catch you in weird mood that makes you sing along or dance to it when no one is around. Find me between the time difference across the Atlantic. Find me in between the announcement of departing flight or at the arrival gate. Better yet, find me at the airport — because I can't stay. You can't stay. We can't stay. We are not here to stay. But still, find me, look for me. Find me before someone else does.

A piece by : Fiya Muiz
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Please, Stop Looking At Me

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There is something different from the way you look at me. Maybe if I can see myself when I look at you, probably I would see you differently, too. But I can feel it brushes my bones, there is something different from the way you look at me. Maybe it's because we have not seen each other in flesh for more than two good years. You are off collecting possibilities in Uncle Sam's land while I am busy having afternoon tea with the Queen. There is something different when you try to catch my face from the driver's seat. Although I do not time it, it feels like we are on freeze. It's not like you have seen me for the first time and you need to take some time to programme me all over again, it's more like you are being very cautious, as if you are afraid to make mistake in front of me; you are afraid to make me fall in love with you. There is something safe from the way you look at me. It seems like you are finally acknowledging me after all this time, though we had spent the entire senior year of high school sitting next to each other. I almost ask you to stop looking at me because I can feel the mild intensity of your eyes, quietly, seeing through me as if I was an ice cube under the spotlight of Summer's burning sun and you would like to melt, or break, me.

It is not a serious stare, or the opposite. It is enough to start a mystery. To make me wonder. You look at me as if we are on a stake, as if we have something to gamble for and we are at risk. A good risk. I'd like to shake off these thoughts because I am finally in the same space and time-zone with you and I don't want to think about the past or present — I don't want to think at all, for that matter. I cannot deny, your stare is much comfortable than the last time I saw you, which I hardly remember when. Was it two August ago when you drop me off in my apartment lobby and tried to scare me with your made-up ghost story in the elevator? Was it the time when I was pretending to be afraid just because maybe you would walk me till my front door while I hide behind your back and get closer to you? Maybe it's because I forgot how you look at me for so long; and to finally see and feel it again, raises questions in my head. That's not the look of love nor the look of hatred. Maybe that's the look of almost-love. Or maybe, that's not the look of I'm-afraid-to-make-you-fall-in-love-with-me, but instead that's the look of I'm-afraid-to-love-you-back.

A piece by : Fiya Muiz
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The Curse of First Love

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Coming home always give this certain rush of nostalgia — when things were just things, when love was just love that hit on your nerve like an anaesthetic injection sending you straight to your subconscious within the count of three. Only this took one arranged meeting. I met Charlie a couple days ago. Charlie, the tall, dark haired, good looking guy from that band whom happen to be my first love. His hair seemed longer now, it hid the colour of his eyes which was caramel-brown. And he looked older, not just that he was actually a couple years older, but much older than the last time I saw him. Regardless, he arguably, looked more attractive. That night we met again after years of absence, and I could not wait to show him that I, too, have grown older. I initiated to order a bottle of cold beer on a fervent Saturday night in the midst of crowded bar with poor air conditioning — I did not mind as long as he was there. I could feel his eyes staring at me in mere disbelief as I placed my order; probably because the last time we met I was not even legally allowed to buy an alcohol. I pulled my victory smirk, not that I know I had one, but I felt like I have just won whatever contest I was in. I was one step closer to convince him I was not the little girl that was once following him around the neighbourhood.

The night was young, he ordered another bottle of beer and a snack. I was expecting French Fries or peanuts, but the bar maid handed over a package of Indonesian spicy cheese stick like local elementary school kids used to buy in between their recess at their school canteen. There it started, the (kind of) conversation that had me fall down to the deep abyss of his everlasting charm. Conversation with him was always safe. So subtle and delicate my heart and ego would immediately swollen and sail up above the clouds like a balloon. He would say I looked thinner, he liked the way I dressed or concerned whether or not I was comfortable on my seat just because my eyes looked slightly red because of the smoke from the table next to me. He would even offer to switch place if I wanted to — I could not care less about how I look, let alone how I dressed, but the fact that he paid attention to the details of my boring eyes or my figure, pleased me. Then after an undemanding refusal, I carried on ignoring the entire universe as he filled in the space with his classic jokes, which might just sound funny to my ear. Present and future were starting to lose its matter. Therefore, I was back to square one. By the time I had to leave when the clock showed two hours passed midnight, I knew I was once again that little girl watching him playing his guitar like he was part of the seven wonders of the world.

I walked out of that bar, feeling nothing but nostalgic. He walked me outside, and gave a brief hug before we parted. Honestly, I was afraid of every touch because I was aware of his capability to drag me back to his cold arms in a jiff. I smiled, hiding what was happening in my head. He replied. Holly hell, he was even more attractive. The blue cab that brought me home, locked me in an invisible bullet-proof time vessel, as I stared blankly to the window watching Jakarta's best moment of tranquility passing by. In my head, I watched how it began and died respectively. I remember the reason why I fell in the first place on every blink, smile, joke, hit on the arm and conversation I had with him which got me thinking for a solid two seconds maybe I never stopped loving him. But then again, isn't that the thing about first love, so pure it is cursed to stay beautiful, forever? A millisecond after, I shook my head as I also remember the reason why I got out at the end. My blue cab stopped in front of my apartment lobby marking the end of the trip down memory lane. The present stood before me, softly whispered, 'Hey, you're home.'

A piece by : Fiya Muiz
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