Filed under fiction, in the hopes that all this will never happen, if it hasn't just yet.
A love song is not something you will want to remember as you revisit this page five years or maybe decades into the future, which will be an excursion into a territory once so familiar you could stare it in the face without flinching, because here is a place where only your brave and daring self is willing to venture, confusing fact for fiction, and so is the other way around. But you tell yourself, "That was then," to which you respond, "Perhaps," because you will barely recognize that there was a time in your life when you were someone a little different, still borderline timid, heart precarious at times, but far more deliberate with your intentions, although this you will have to debate with yourself time and again, for which a resolution you shall barely reach. You can't even tell what a love song is not, but you will still belabor the point. And for good measure.
Maybe a love song is something that you will want to forget, to squeeze out of the pulp of your sanity, leaving you stale as a proper consequence, a price that must be paid at the cost of your memory of the girl floating away with such finality that the point of no return is all that will ever be. Beyond that, you will never go back, and so will she. All the rules of goodbye will have to be obeyed, because at least for once you were happy, and that is more than what life will allow.
Time is of minor consequence, because a love song is not what you hear on the radio first thing in the morning before you sleep, or late in the evening after you wakeup. It's the one that plays at the back of your mind whenever you remember her, without warning, and at any given hour, like the time many years from now when you will recall seeing her waiting for you for the very first time, seated calmly, her dress black as the night, your knees melting like butter with each step you take towards her, fingers fidgety, knowing fully well that someone so beautiful inside and out you do not deserve, not in this lifetime or the next, because her heart is not one to be trifled with, not even to be looked after, for she has learned not to give it away without mounting the strongest resistance, whether by force or by old age, for which she might lose her teeth first before she will ever lose her heart, herself being way ahead of her age precisely because time is on her side.
And so that night you approach her, and as you do there is a tune playing at the back of your mind, although you know that it is what a love song should not be. Many years from now you will try to reach into this past juncture in your life, your hands barely holding themselves together, the song you can barely remember as you struggle to give it its rightful place in your recollection, but that same night, the one in your reverie, will hold a space so special in your memory you can hardly replace it. You are forgetful, but that evening you will never forget, her embrace most of all, which came all too sudden, brief as it was, before both of you parted ways and you went home. You walked the short distance, and it felt as though you had to anchor your feet on the ground lest you become airborne, your heart ballooning with what Milan Kundera properly called as the unbearable lightness of being.
Then again, a love song is not the one that played over the car's stereo that same night when you were on your way home, thinking how in the world you ever found someone like her, which should have been next to impossible, because she likes to play hide and seek if only to test you of how conscious you are of her world, of what she allows others to see, and those that she decides to leave out, stored somewhere only she knows until someone else finds out, kept almost like a closely guarded secret but not quite, which is why she says she has nothing to hide, especially from you, an observer, almost an intruder, that she must likewise observe, because she blips in and out. One moment she is there, the next moment she is not, and for this she had you on your toes, and still has, to which you must perpetually take caution because you have everything on the line. But you have been reckless since day one, and you soldier on with all the bullets you can fire. In the end, you have always known that there can only be one casualty, and between the two of you it will not be her.
You will be as dead as an exploded ventricle, death by heart shot, by which time you are still yet to figure out what a love song is not.
A love song is not something you will want to remember as you revisit this page five years or maybe decades into the future, which will be an excursion into a territory once so familiar you could stare it in the face without flinching, because here is a place where only your brave and daring self is willing to venture, confusing fact for fiction, and so is the other way around. But you tell yourself, "That was then," to which you respond, "Perhaps," because you will barely recognize that there was a time in your life when you were someone a little different, still borderline timid, heart precarious at times, but far more deliberate with your intentions, although this you will have to debate with yourself time and again, for which a resolution you shall barely reach. You can't even tell what a love song is not, but you will still belabor the point. And for good measure.
Maybe a love song is something that you will want to forget, to squeeze out of the pulp of your sanity, leaving you stale as a proper consequence, a price that must be paid at the cost of your memory of the girl floating away with such finality that the point of no return is all that will ever be. Beyond that, you will never go back, and so will she. All the rules of goodbye will have to be obeyed, because at least for once you were happy, and that is more than what life will allow.
Time is of minor consequence, because a love song is not what you hear on the radio first thing in the morning before you sleep, or late in the evening after you wakeup. It's the one that plays at the back of your mind whenever you remember her, without warning, and at any given hour, like the time many years from now when you will recall seeing her waiting for you for the very first time, seated calmly, her dress black as the night, your knees melting like butter with each step you take towards her, fingers fidgety, knowing fully well that someone so beautiful inside and out you do not deserve, not in this lifetime or the next, because her heart is not one to be trifled with, not even to be looked after, for she has learned not to give it away without mounting the strongest resistance, whether by force or by old age, for which she might lose her teeth first before she will ever lose her heart, herself being way ahead of her age precisely because time is on her side.
And so that night you approach her, and as you do there is a tune playing at the back of your mind, although you know that it is what a love song should not be. Many years from now you will try to reach into this past juncture in your life, your hands barely holding themselves together, the song you can barely remember as you struggle to give it its rightful place in your recollection, but that same night, the one in your reverie, will hold a space so special in your memory you can hardly replace it. You are forgetful, but that evening you will never forget, her embrace most of all, which came all too sudden, brief as it was, before both of you parted ways and you went home. You walked the short distance, and it felt as though you had to anchor your feet on the ground lest you become airborne, your heart ballooning with what Milan Kundera properly called as the unbearable lightness of being.
Then again, a love song is not the one that played over the car's stereo that same night when you were on your way home, thinking how in the world you ever found someone like her, which should have been next to impossible, because she likes to play hide and seek if only to test you of how conscious you are of her world, of what she allows others to see, and those that she decides to leave out, stored somewhere only she knows until someone else finds out, kept almost like a closely guarded secret but not quite, which is why she says she has nothing to hide, especially from you, an observer, almost an intruder, that she must likewise observe, because she blips in and out. One moment she is there, the next moment she is not, and for this she had you on your toes, and still has, to which you must perpetually take caution because you have everything on the line. But you have been reckless since day one, and you soldier on with all the bullets you can fire. In the end, you have always known that there can only be one casualty, and between the two of you it will not be her.
You will be as dead as an exploded ventricle, death by heart shot, by which time you are still yet to figure out what a love song is not.
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