As I grew older, and as I grow older still, there is one thing I have taught myself to do the least of: hope. A pessimistic notion perhaps, but I felt it proved useful as life progressed for me, as I found newer ways to disappoint myself and the people around me. As more suns set, and as bleak days went bleaker, carrying with them the fiery blaze of expectations unfulfilled, this very notion, this idea, this concept which seemed nothing more than a fleeting thought at first, bloomed, and echoed, inside the walls which encompassed my mind.

Lighthearted and cowardly, I trained myself, wisely, to cling to the ground. I did not like the fall that came as a consequence of being let down, the soaring which ended up with the eventual drop. The temporary feeling of vigor and optimism, of glee and joy, maybe even happiness, just did not seem worth it.

That is why, with this, this thing which I cannot yet define, and cannot yet comprehend, its grip like that of an iron fist on my heart, when it happened, I could not understand. I could not understand, why, and how, when I have taught myself throughout my life, through experience and perseverance, to not hope and wish for better things to happen, I did.

Fool! Idiot! Who knows what other derogatory term I called myself to convince my heart with my brain otherwise? It didn't work. I was intentionally, and yet, somehow, with a certain loss of control, headed straight for a train wreck I could see was coming. And I cursed my memory the most. Or rather, my inability to forget certain details.

When we had our fingers interlaced, clasped together in moments of passion, I would see my fingers settle over traces of someone else's imprint, left some time ago, in the midst of a past not unforgotten. And when I would swoop in, I'd see the indentation of lips which were not mine reflected off of hers. And how as I heard the words of her love escape her mouth, I'd imagine them, once, being said and meant for someone else.

I remember the silent thunder which discharged through me when she told me about the tiniest, yet most significant, lapse in what seemed to be an unblemished past. And I observed her, as she spoke of it, as her lips moved, her eyes intermittently twitched, and she ruffled her hair. I watched her, I watched her constantly; I observed each diminutive detail that fleeted across her face, each infinitesimal tick that shuddered across her body. I saw how, with eyes watering and a wry smile, a smile which resonated sorrow at happiness lost, unwillingly, and a hidden want for it, she told the tale of her dream. Her breaths got shorter and her eyes watered. Her tone carried a sense of nostalgia, and it also carried, of all things, hope. It was obvious from the way her mouth moved to the flow of those words, each a misaimed perforating arrow through my now fervently beating heart, and how her hands slithered through her waist-long hair, in tiny acts of bittersweet reminiscence.

And the smile. A smile so heavy with meaning, that it told me everything. So, even when she told me about it, about how outrageous and foolish and lunatic she had felt with him, and how liberating she had felt, it galloped towards me and collided with me as though I had been expecting it. I started heading towards the train right about then. I could see how magical it had been for her; I could see the sparkles in her eyes, the twinkling that left behind the remnants of a love earned and let go.



What about me?

That's what I wanted to ask her. That's what I wanted to know. I wanted to know if I had the same effect on her. If I drove her wild. Or if I ever could. The way he had done. But I found myself more selfish than that; I didn't want it to be the way it had been with him. I wanted more. I wanted to be the most in everything.

I could see memories of him charcoaled in every pore spread across her body. And every word she uttered became stained with love that did not belong to me. Every atom of her skin seemed to sizzle with the memories of his touch, and echoed his every breath. And all of it, combined, recollected, with the soft hand of time, burned like acid on my skin.

And these little things: how they screamed. They screamed of a better life, of better memories, of a better love. They screamed of him. Oh, how they screamed.

This is when that old foe returned, when hope smeared itself on my heart. I wished for myself to be what he was to her, and what he had been. I hoped for even more than that.



Does he drive you wild? Or just mildly free?

What about me?