Life has rarely gone the way I have wished it to. Even though I am painfully aware of the fact that most of my choices and actions have led me to where I am. Even the choice of inaction, yes, that too has inched my feet toward this place in time. Perhaps another me exists in a parallel universe, or there are several other mes bobbing up and down on timelines that I can never get a taste of.

What if I hadn't eaten grapes after lunch on a March afternoon in 1989, if I hadn't allowed myself to be kissed on a May night the same year, if I had cried out loud over a heartbreak on a December evening in 1992, if I had never returned home on an August night in 1994, if I had left home on an April evening in 1995, if I had not gotten on an airplane on a September morning in 1996, if I had woken up early on a Saturday in April 1999, if I had continued sleeping on Christmas morning in 2007, if I had not woken up at all on any given day in 2012.... Where would I have been now and would I have been the same person that I am today? Would I have still been aching for you inside this gaping wound that I find myself floating around in? Or would you have come to me earlier, just the way it should have been?

I have wanted you even before I knew who or what you were. I have needed you even when the cup seemed full and I thought that I had successfully side-stepped the inevitable sorrow. You remain buried inside my chest like a stray bullet caught in a crossfire. And each time I am reminded of the wide chasm between the thought of you and its translation into reality, into the flesh and blood that I could bear and breathe into life, I feel you become dislodged and move inside my rib cage with fresh lashings of pain. It's just another opportunity to tear through my existence and kill me one day at a time. But redemption can never be mine, not as long as my brain continues to make the connection between you and love, you and longing, you and joy, you and me, or even me and me - the me that's really you.

I choose this yearning over every single chance at contentment, the kind that comes from resignation to one's fate. It's the only way I know how to breathe. If I woke up one morning and could no longer feel you inside, it would not be me waking up. Yet, you are the one thing I have been denied. I know for sure that I never want to leave this plane of existence without experiencing you and the life I have always dreamed of. If only I could will you into existence. If only all it took was a single-minded desire to manifest you into the perfect vision that I have of you. If only I could do this on my own. If only you could read this someday, long after I'm gone, long after we've played out our time together, our time of flesh and blood and belonging. If only this could be your legacy.