Zero Hour

Sadness is nothing to be trifled with. It offers no comic relief, no consolation, for humor does not grow where the seeds of sorrow are planted. Nor does sadness diminish when called out, as though grief is a sin that must be exposed under the sun, with the anticipation that it will, with little effort, disappear. No, it is not what happens to sadness, but it is what happens to people who, with no one left to turn to, are left with no choice but to vanish.

*** *** ***

I sprawl myself on the bed, trying to think about nothing, the faint afternoon sunlight barging against the rain before sweeping into the room as if begging my body to whisk itself up and break the monotony of the day. I pause and stare at the cats, a few huddled in a corner of the room, others on the floor, most of them sleeping gently with their furry bodies brushing against my chest. Wherever their dreams have taken flight, I may never find out. But out of all the things that I know to be true, do they ever dream about me too?

Like her. I think about her all the time, wondering about the many things I wish I could know, but could only siphon out whatever it is that I am allowed to discover. Her sleep is a guarded sanctuary, a fortress that walls itself from the rest of the wakeful world, and in that temporary peace where her eyes close themselves so that nothing can get in the way of a rest too short to be wasted, her world must be completely different, one where the invitation to enter comes only once.

Does she ever dream about me too? Because I do. Not that she should. It’s a question fished out of curiosity, and each time I cast the net far and wide, all in the hopes that I might find the answer, for it is in dreams where repressed desires take shape. Or at least that’s what Freud says in his psychoanalysis as far back as the 1890s, and it is probably not entirely wrong.

*** *** ***

Some people will start to shy away from seeking clarity, from asking questions, for constant fear of having the tables turned against them, their backs firm against the wall, of being questioned why they even ask, of being chastised, of bearing the brunt of unnecessary actions done unto them as if the raging fire is worth the burn, of being handed guilt to their conscience instead of being given tender reassurance, of being met with loaded silence as if everything has been said in the nothingness that soon follows, as though the blind is to assume what one cannot read, eclipsing the light in pursuit of darkness, or of placing conclusions well before the end of the sentence, the narrative turning accusatory, if not derogatory in the blink of an eye, when all they ever wanted was to know, because often it takes a lifetime to learn someone. A simple yes, or a simple no, would have sufficed for the time being.

But some things are belabored, stretched as far as the imagination will allow, fault being found where there is none. The gravity of this can hardly be scaled, and it takes unbridled patience to bear the weight it heaps on the heart, one that can never be demanded, only freely given, as it is the nature of true forbearance. These people, they carry their crosses no one will ever see, for they live through it as penance for the anxieties that they have been nursing long before. Their sense of insufficiency sustains that which slowly kills them.

And then the days go by, months soon after. To stir nothing, complacency settles in. No questions are ever asked. No responses are taken because none is given. The tides turn countless, and the seasons shift, until the time comes when, on the brink of despair and the ultimatum of where things stand, the people who have muffled their questions out of fear will find themselves on the verge of losing the one they love, wondering what happened, only to be met with the one act that they earnestly, ever so dearly, treated with much precariousness, knowing that it destroys as much as it saves:

If only they asked.

***

The most salient battles in life are won neither by fist nor by fire. This wisdom comes with age, like a blade that sharpens the more it brushes itself against steel. We are born as creatures of emotions, and it is in the stillness of things, like an ocean in the full absence of the waves, where the struggle glares with impunity, even feeds on it. That is why the heart is a war ground; it screams the loudest when it is muffled. It injures the most when it does nothing. But up to what point the heart wages this silence is a question most often left unanswered in the interim, for it is nothing less than a protracted war that demands the kind of madness that flirts with danger, and by the time the heart does speak, the walls are yet to grow ears.

And so, for those who have lost so much, anxieties grip their heart by the day. Fear is the language that has become native to their tongue, every word dragging their heart along the way, which is why those who have yet to lose the ones they genuinely love, slipping like water on their fingers, have yet to learn the vernacular. As though born out of sheer necessity, those at the cusps of solitude have come to terms with the simple truth that whatever they have, they can lose. And so they live by the hours, not wasting any, spending as much time as they can with the people they hold dear, because nothing in life is certain, especially in the absence of consistent assurance in places where it should thrive.

***

I stare at the door, expecting a knock that will never come. My cats are with me, and everything should be fine, except that it is not. The wind pummels the roof, shaking everything beneath it for a moment, a reminder that there was a distant storm that left without ever truly arriving. I stand from the bed, restless from the sleep that never was, my head dizzy, ready to fall off from my neck with the slightest of tug, almost but not quite, like a stone teetering on the edge of a cliff, my wakefulness on the brink of fizzling out, as if my spirit is ready to part ways with my body. I walk to the door, open it slightly, and peer at the outside world — nothing more than a busy intersection of small alleys nesting foot traffic day in and out. I leave a heavy sigh trailing the air, then prepare for work six hours ahead of time.