when i run into you

or so i imagine

a/n: wrote this sometime last year and found it in the drafts. was playing around with some dialogue when practicing writing fiction

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i didn’t expect to see you here

i didn’t either, what a surprise, how have you been?

i’ve been okay! you know, the same old

same old? are you scavenging for antiques in an era where we seldom see precedented times?

i suppose you can say that. how are you? how is your mom?

i'm doing great, been busy, but the kind of busy that’s fulfilling. my mom’s doing well too. just getting older. she asks about you sometimes.

i think about her whenever i make those cookies she used to like so much.

yes! i remember that. i would never end up getting any because she would keep them all to herself. good to know that you still make them. are you still writing?

am i still breathing?

i remember when your eyes would hollow, yet simultaneously glisten, in the fervor of the friction that kept your pen burning all night. you’d tread through the days dangling on a thread of consciousness just to feel enough fuel to bring you to next morning.

cold were the sleepless nights i’d spill tears and candle wax when praying for you.

tell me this then, are you still a believer given those prayers were never answered?

i wasn’t praying for your companionship. i loved you, not like a canary in a cage, but like a melodious songbird picking grains off my windowsill. i prayed for clear skies and and gentle winds on your journey ahead.

you loved me?

or perhaps i really wished i could’ve. was that surprising?

i am surprised by your candor, not your confession. i suppose your prayers were answered. my travels have been quite beautiful.

the performance of seeing you and pretending it means nothing to me would’ve been rather insipid. through those freezing nights i’ve found a love that holds me warmer than the any beloved’s embrace. must wax combust for its scent to be freed? tell me this, if there was a light in your eye how would you live?

you mean to say there isn’t a light in my eye?

not a light from your eye that glistens like polished obsidian orbs. i mean’t a light in your eye that is visible to you and only you.

i am confused. what light can i see if it doesn’t already exist.

have you ever driven east at sunrise? have you ever tried to raise your gaze to the horizon only to find the golden sun blinding you? how its presence robs you of the clairvoyance one has only in daytime.

i drive east at sunset. driving headfirst into the darkness only to find a blinding reflection in the rearview. when the sky bleeds hues that quickly vanish and the eyes find solace in the soft glow of the moon.

we can’t live without the sun yet we never find it in ourselves to face it. we gaze at the moon only for moments before dreaming beneath it.

seeing you is like approaching the last streetlight when driving to my hometown

what color is it?

yellow. i never know if it is better to speed up or to delay my arrival. but your presence brings back all those happy memories again.

not all of them were happy.

they were mostly all happy for me.

but it takes you back, not forward.

i hit rewind and suffer through the record scratch before the melody soothes me.

seeing you is like passing by a welcome sign at a city i am visiting. i wish i were returning home.

you can always just stay. you can always make it home.

it would be a home i would wish to escape from. the way humid coastal summers make me yearn for winter. that to be cold would be better than to be constantly aware of how you don’t belong. i can curate walls surrounding me with panels of my life. but how can i ever filter the air to be more gentle inside my chest or coax the trees to extend their branches over my head?

and for me, it is the home i’ve worked so hard to grow out of. crossing bridges over merciless torrents and searching for the north star amongst the light polluted city. i've traded nights of rest to never sleep in that house again. i’ve trained my legs to hurdle over these white picket fences. to never be bound my footsteps to the cemented foundation.

and i wish to belong. to search for beauty in every corner of the world and have a place to bring it back to. now do you see why i can sit down, but only theoretically. that it is you, in prospect, that is beautiful.

and i wish to walk with you, but only retrospectively. you’re radiant only in my memories.

this is the only time we’ve landed on the same page. our out of sync clockwork mechanisms that, with a stroke of luck, are aligned. if only, momentarily.

why don’t you sit with me?

why won’t you stand up?

if i did, then maybe i’d walk towards you

it is easier to walk away if i’m already standing up

maybe next time then. when we see each other again we’ll be headed in the same direction. maybe we’ll be eye to eye once we’ve reached the destination. or maybe, our paths intertwine like vines climbing the same tree. we’ll reach the top together. maybe we can face the sun together.

or maybe you’re a vine that seeks to climb to touch the sun and i’m the vine that crawls through the forest floor. no matter the number of times we twist over each other, have you seen an architect build a home out of rope? no matter the strength of love, what use does it have with no structure.

have you never seen birds that weave their nests year after year with fragments of what seems dead and broken. they warm them with their own bodies, protect it with their lives, and build a sanctuary safe enough for more life to spring. how could you claim that a vine has no strength when it has all the might to grow where there seems like no space?

don’t you see. the stark different of the love that drives the vine to keep crawling until it breaks through to morning light and the love that an insect has for a flower in spring. the former has no other while the latter seeks others like it but never the same one again.

i must thank you then, for leaving this seat empty.

i hope the next time i return, it won’t remain so.