"You're here."
I say this to myself as though declaring my presence to a stranger for the first time. I barely recognize the man I have become, and I have returned — like the disappeared resurfacing after plunging headfirst into the depths — to this uncharted pocket of the universe where the collective humdrum of words echo like a war song playing from a time long forgotten, and where social approval, not even acceptance, carry absolute nullity by way of value, because in here, right where I am and where I probably belong, solitude is the only currency accepted. That is a long sentence, and rightly so, because this may well be my life sentence.
And this is possibly my prison as well, the kind where I find freedom in captivity.
The years have an uncanny way of compelling one to revisit a rabbit hole long abandoned after wandering about on the surface of the earth, like a traveler being reeled back in by a force so treacherous it demands complete isolation. I fear I might just have dragged myself by the foot into this point of no return. In astrophysics, they call it the event horizon.
Sometimes it behooves me to take a second look, because this fascination with black holes oftentimes bleed into what I write. Maybe because that is where everything could ultimately end — a slow but sure osmosis into the void, a place where the sum of your hopes and dreams shrivel en masse, a decay where rebirth is implausible. Everything retreats into the center of cold insignificance. Truth be told, there is nothing magical about this. It’s just the way things are.
*** *** ***
A typhoon rages far beyond the eastern shores, dragging the southwest monsoon creeping from the other side ever closer. People on the roofdeck bask in the fading light of the summer afternoon as the wind swoops down to tackle and drop whatever is in its way, turning animate anything not firmly rooted. The rainy season is beginning to rear its head as droplets trickle once in a while. But the sun and the skies remain unforgiving, refusing to give way to the dark clouds looming. Such is the nature of things nearing their end, because oftentimes the struggle peaks at the point where opposite forces collide and tug at each other.
When I told her to take care always, I meant it. Kindness has always been the language I’ve taken to heart ever since I was a kid. I was raised under normal circumstances, although I was born by the belly split open. The knife must have cut quite deep, flesh and metal in full contact, the skin resisting but only to fail, and with it a scar never to heal. I came to this earth through an unnatural wound, like an appendage cut loose so that it can become whole on its own, and it would be equally poetic if I exit the same way. I’ve known and seen kindness since my innocence, and even after life took it away.
I leave the roofdeck with the smell of cigarette smoke wafting behind. I don’t smoke, not anymore, but somewhere I know there’s fire — perhaps from the sun that’s blazing at the heart of the solar system, the intensity of its heat slicing through the vast emptiness of space as it sears through the last stretch of solstice. Or maybe it’s what I mistake for an inferno crackling from this humble spot in my chest, when in truth it’s nothing more than an ember burning faintly from the residues of a past not too long ago.
But the clouds are beginning to roll in and I need to be home. Soon, the sky will be overcast, and what little flames there are left will find themselves eclipsed by one drop after another. And it’s not going to come from the rain.
*** *** ***
People say the rain cleanses. It dampens. It gives the kind of rest that a sunny day in the tropics can hardly offer. At night, it extends the kind of peace that washes away the clutter induced by weeks and months of anxieties that wrench and wrestle the heart. Others prefer to shower in the rain, and maybe that’s how children preserve their innocence.
The breeze gushes through the open door, and I stare at the lamppost exposed to the drizzle. Slowly it intensifies, the droplets crashing on the roof like rocks. I sit by the door and wonder if this guarded reticence that has been consuming me will ever be rinsed, and so I move closer, just a little beyond the awning, to let my skin feel the birth of the monsoon, to test the waters in its most literal sense, to leave sparkling fragments of evidence on my arms if only to prove that when summer is finally over, so too are my misgivings.
A forensic scientist that goes by the name of Edmond Locard said it best — every contact leaves a trace. The thought sits on my chest as I wet my hands, water dripping from my fingers. To the emotionally infirm, it’s a truth often ignored, like a surface nuisance that needs to be tucked away, hidden, truncated like a whisper the way fears often become, exposed only after it can no longer be renounced by every level of insanity, until everything finally adds up. Specks fall to the ground as I wring my hands again and again, but they never dry.
Inside, I rummage through a pile of random things collecting dust in the box, my hands slowly feeling warmer. I reach the bottom and take out what I have called through the years, reluctantly at first, as the black hole. And so I open the notebook that hasn’t seen the light in three years, and turn to an empty page.
“We meet again,” I write, somehow expecting a response. After all, I like intelligent conversations.