The Heart-Shaped City and the Girl Who Never Falls in Love

One tells of how the place was abundant with a kind of tree called luyong, now more commonly known as anahaw (Saribus rotundifolius) from which canes and furniture were made. - Wikipedia


To have that singular shot of winning her over, you will have to cross her territory and play her game, one where she commands full dominion, and where the rules bend to her will. One false move is fatal. Either be cautious or be reckless. You cannot draw both cards because neither does she, for she can strictly be as calculating and as precise in the ways in which she conducts herself, or she can only be as heedless and as playful in the manner in which she will make you move. Some lines she does not cross, completely cutting herself off the very moment the ogre rears its ugly head, figuratively if not literally. Other ones she simply bulldozes her way through as if there is nothing and no one standing in her way if only to kill time, because in a land where she is both king and queen, the only sovereign in the heart-shaped city who wields all the power that will ever be, falling in love is hardly her option.

And no one can demand for her time just as well. It is something that others will need to earn, because in the abundance of what she has to offer, no one can ever come close to claiming all of her. You only get what she is willing to give: all of her body but never her heart and soul, or all of her heart and soul but only a fraction of her body. And then there are the men she has dated at a previous juncture in her life, men who can only mull over in their recollection being surrounded by her presence both body and soul, but not having any of it at the end of the day, like being marooned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean: all this water but none to drink. They remain restless long after the tide has washed their senses over, the undertow dragging their feet so constantly back to the depths of her, and they succumb just as easily, even willingly, because she is a current too strong to swim against, and you will have to drown first long before she will start to fall in love, or even before she begins considering the idea.

As to why she does not fall in love, the reasons may be few and far between, but all the same they could be just as plenty. All the Einsteins in the world can only stitch their guesses together and still find themselves in a mental hemorrhage. Perhaps she does not want to miss the part where you tell her you are home after you have spent a few hours together, or the part where you tell her good morning after waking up, or good night just before sleeping, because time is at her beck and call and you are not the one to control it for her. She can make your sun set or rise as she pleases, in its stead the moon on a clear evening, or a slew of clouds rolling in on a random hour. And so she does not fall in love. Not in summer. Not in any given hour.

Perhaps she has already married herself to the idea with no chance of divorce that she can never be as good as the partner that the men she has went out with has imagined her to be, and in her mind is the outright refusal to live according to the standards they want to shove down her throat. After all, such is not the way of kings and queens, the ones who issue the laws that the serfs will have to abide by, not the other way around. She probably thinks, too, that she is not girlfriend material, although one can only wonder what exactly they are supposed to be made of and to what extent, certainly not some fancy cosmic stardust raining from the sky, or some flower blossoming from the earth with utter haste so that it can relish in the light. Some people say that those who do not fall in love are made of stern stuff, and it is maybe for the same reason why she could never figure herself as being romantically involved with anyone, though time and again she might drop a line or two saying things to the contrary: that she cries easily, a softie through and through.

Maybe she thinks that even when the days get cold and the nights turn lonely, she needs no help. She is fine and she can get by with life. She is her own company, her own fire. And there is truth to it. She has been at peace with her solitude, and her skin is the only blanket she has needed to keep her warm in a world where people can be cold even while their lives burn away. Or maybe she says her flag is redder than the crimson she wears on her lips you can spot it from afar, the danger it invites being far too tempting to ignore when all your scopes are zeroed in on where she is, and who she is about to become, her banner bright as the blood that will boil in your veins before you completely lose them by the drop. She believes no one, owes nobody any explanation, because truth is whatever it is that she decides to qualify as one, and she shapes everything so that they may fit the course of her life in a city that, although shaped like a heart, is not the one to make her fall in love.