Twilight approaches with silence as its only witness. The strong, black brew gently coats my insides and the memory of menthol still lingers in the air. I will remember this day as the one in which I finally confronted my demons. A journey of 41 months isn’t long when compared to the one that runs into thousands more. But brevity has always been my weakness, especially when accompanied by intensity. I play it out inside my head, reel after reel like a magnificent cinematic experience. Have I ever told you how much I enjoy watching movies in a cinema hall by myself? Sitting there in the dark with just the screen lit up, enveloped in surround sound and the soft murmurs of all the unlived lives inside my being, I begin to unravel. There’s that dream I could never give up, the desire I will always satiate, the frayed threads that hold me together, the tight stitches that suppress a raw wound, anesthetized flesh and brittle bones, a hundred million worlds inside between the lines I have yet to write.

The story of us is just like that. It’s a pity you don’t see it the way I do. It’s beauty and pain and heartache and deception and intoxication and warm blood trickling through the gaps we left open. It’s the first time you touched me across the screen from a million miles away and the last time you spewed out a denial. It’s the first time I laid eyes on you dressed in black and grey as you held me in your mesmerizing gaze. It’s the unpalatable plates we had to contend with and the heady glasses we clinked together. It’s my tongue on your skin and your slaps across my face, if only metaphorical. It’s the time you held me close and the time you tore me to shreds. It’s all the love you first poured and then siphoned out drop by drop. It’s all of the me I gave to you and all of the you that I kept yearning for. It’s the us that still exists in a universe far away and no, it’s not the one that runs parallel.     

Perhaps we will forget it soon enough and perhaps it was never meant to be. But we will remain, floating in this same orbit just as we have for centuries. We are masters of the craft and so we continue to reinvent and chip away, sandpaper those decrepit walls and slap on a fresh coat of paint. 

It’s time for Take 23.