Always And Never: A Study of You

On weekday afternoons, you are the first to breach my wakefulness, because in my dreams you have always eluded me; you never stayed. You are gone the moment I turn elsewhere, for which I would fault myself without fail. Eyes shut or open, the difference is the same — you are nowhere. And as a gesture to compensate for losing you too fast and too soon, I would close my eyes in the hopes of finding you, feigning sleep if I must, the bed becoming my raft to coast the turbulent waters where you might be, my sudden desolation blowing frail wind to push my sail forward by the inch. Adrift in this dreamland, I chase you with my heart in my hand, not knowing exactly what to do with it, though the weight it carries is enough to anchor me for the rest of my days should I cast it to the open waters. And yet I continue to have my eyes fixed on this temporary blindness for here in this dream there is nothing and no one to see.

But all this would be in vain, for then I would be dreaming another dream where faceless people crowd in silence, where I would call out your name but yours would struggle to crawl out of my lips pressed tight, three letters seeking both freedom and refuge in the open space, always, but never to succeed. For the rest of my dream they would just hang there, like a promise unfulfilled still waiting at the edge of a precipice.



"They're just dreams. You have me in reality."







The world is a special place but only because she is there. Take her out of the picture and you could just as well be living in another planet. Being where she is may look like a difficult place to be in, but that is what makes it worth the while, warts and all.

How does it feel then?

Like this: it feels like having to carve a path through a dense forest using only a spoon, or having to pluck massive trees off the earth with nothing but tweezers on hand. It feels like having to elbow your way through a horde with your hands tied, and God knows how the rope digs deep into your skin, but you press on, because that is where men are born.

That is also where they die.

It, too, feels like being stuck in the middle of a dessert with only a drop of water in the bucket to quench the thirst of everyone else, but you stand your ground despite the sand shifting quickly beneath your feet, scorching as it is for being exposed to the sun for far too long. You hold the line because the quicksand will be there to give you that sinking feeling, for better if not for worse, and before you know it you are burried halfway through — head underneath or otherwise, it does not matter — but you stay because there is nothing else you can do. This is the choice you made, and so you must endure the consequences.

That is how impossibly beautiful she is, and how you are way behind the line. There is a popular term for it.

Queueing.







One day you think she has always been there. The next day you find out she probably never was. This is, perhaps, the reality where you have her, which is, really, just another dream.