I woke up in the middle of the night. My head was jumbled by my hectic thoughts as I became suddenly aware of my surroundings.

My thoughts weren’t lucid enough for me to process this infliction in my head. Occupying the front of my mind as I frowned with frustration, I lifted my wrist to check my watch.

It was 4am again.

The ruffled car noises buzzed. The nearby skyscrapers’ lights shimmer. Life goes on. But without the clamors, everything seemed silentious. NYC became quiet.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. I loved New York. The way that the streets just wondrously reek the odor of someone’s excretion, or the billboards would meticulously flaunt some aimless singers that I just unwittingly happen to like, or the mere fact that it glows nonstop. It was gleaming. It was always gleaming.

Times square. Surrounded by rancorous tourists, eccentric cult members, brilliant street performers, and the billboards that always illuminated the most extraordinary and notable hot takes all around the world. New York Times bestsellers. Wallstreet. Even that one single musical chart shop in the corner seemed to be radiating with some enigmatic fulfillment that humanity attempted to pursue all their lives.

“I hate New York.”

“Why?”

“It’s too messy.” I gazed blankly at your visage while you appeared nonchalant, “A city always portraying the white lie of dreams.”

The white lie of dreams? Or is it because you don’t have any?

“But it’s always shining.”

“So? There’s no such thing as the New York glow.”

“I think there is.”

“Whatever. I don’t like it.”

I stayed silent. I didn’t comprehend. I couldn’t understand.

How could you tear such a radiating place down? How is it possible that your darkness could overwhelm the light that shined so bright across the globe?

Maybe New York is overrated like you said. Maybe there is nothing magical about the place but lousy New Yorkers that were consistent enough to crash you with their cars while you cross the street. It was you who uttered unkept promises under the moon. Should’ve marked the signs, should’ve attend my head. Should’ve run.

But this isn’t an accusation. It never will be.

Intoxication is always a dangerous thing. Being accustomed to that stability resulted nothing more than puffy double eyelids or the knifed cardiovascular muscle that was once cut opened by an 007.

When I carved out my heart and made it a petite, exquisite, fragile table piece, it didn’t stop the blood. Let alone pressing my palms and wrapping bandages around it.

It's more like being imprisoned in the purest room with clean white walls and nothing else. I could audit, and possibly sniff the intoxicated gas in the neighboring chamber while listening to the hysterical screams of the victims, and be glad that I, am not one of them today. But I wouldn't realize the experimental scientist's wooden clipboard or your dramatic cacophonous pencil that had traced every corner of your A4 paper outside my chamber.

Once in a while, I gaze at it, of course. You know, when I’m eating, chatting, nonchalantly flirting. Yet at that moment, I couldn’t care less about the darkened shade of my decorative heart and I don’t even remember the quantity of the layers of bandages that I stitched on my own chest. But I didn’t care. Even when hundreds of flashback warnings fling through my mind, even when thousands of despicable glances were shot to make me feel momentarily guilty. But I turned around and stared at my table piece, just like I did before. As if resting there and baking my brain to feel that intoxication could solve world hunger or cure cancer.

And instead, I’ve chose to swallow nothing but the pain itself. Of course, I thought anticipations and expectations could alleviate what had occurred, but it was no use.  No matter how prepared I was for my gaudy exit to escape the white chamber, the gas still permeated.

Sure, you would blame it on the person who coerced you to do all of this. Blackmail, even. Yet the hole is on your chest. Yours, and yours alone. Maybe someday you would smash that table piece in half like you thought you did once upon a time. Tattered pieces of stained glass scattered scarcely between the creak of the squeaky floor. Or I would unwrap the bandages and put it back in. With a broom gently sweeping across the dusty surface, tidying it all up. Or maybe both. Taping up the broken pieces one by one and manipulating yourself into thinking that it was complete. It was always complete. 

One step/closer

Two steps/nearer

Three steps/forward

Four steps/back

But that wouldn’t suffice. The mere act of amendment does not equal grace or forgiveness, but rather, addictions. The tighter that grasp is on my neck, the less oxygen I would inhale…until my throat is full of sticky, metallic liquid that progressively tinted the tip of my tongue. I was coughing. I was coughing blood. Leaving nothing but suffocation, nothing but headaches, nothing but animosity against the city, the government, the society, the globe, the country, the nation, the human race, the planet and the universe.

"I love you." You and I both would murmur.

But none of us meant it.

Irredentism, the 19th century version of being mesmerized by the power of intoxication, that feather-light feeling I once had. It wasn’t perfect, but it would suffice momentarily. I couldn’t let it go, yet I attempted to break the cycle as if the incident itself was not already hanging by a thread since the first day.

But I failed. And you failed too. Miserably. So I stared at myself in the mirror and wondered. That exact spot where velocity and pressure are just a bit necessary. That exact spot where you soaked your senses to be euphoric, to be intoxicated, to be…happy. 

Those promises manifested words' previous emptiness,

but who would've thought that the doctor was once in love?

As I gazed at the window on my right profoundly while you halted your actions and stared back, I wondered what it takes to unlock your heart as if you were about to release your only remaining prisoner.

My infliction magnified as I held your stare. In the end, there wasn’t any anguish, poignancy or hostility as my sympathies towards you perished and your affections towards me vanished. I was right.  

Swiftly, you glanced at my tinted lips, blinked twice, looked down, and marked an X on the top of your clipboard.

“Click” The door unlocked itself.

Instantly, I dropped out of your sight as my eyes and my heart halt to dwell on you.

It was sweet liberation.

I paused to shiver under the 87-degree weather wearing a sweater. There was no bitterness nor dolefulness that continued to reflect off of me. No more jumbled thoughts nor being on the verge of tears in the middle of math.

The frayed table piece that once sat on the top of my table ceased to be jaundiced. The bandages were gone, nor it was dusty on the surface. It was revived. It was glowing. It became gleaming.

I think I felt the New York glow.