WAKE

Contemplation on the Destinies of Love and Dream

            The dawn spread its arms along the horizon.  Rays of light were spilling onto the landscape.  Dew was materializing and the smell of the morning came to be. 

            Curled up on her bed, Destiny stirred under her covers.  She opened her eyes.  Light filled her senses.  The smudged mascara hindered her wake for a while, and she felt like going back to sleep.  Back to that place where no one can hurt her, to that little corner that felt like warm comforting sheets on a well-made bed of soft velvet.  For in sleep she could not hear her sobs, feel her shoulders send series of convulsions through her body, feel the trail of warm tears sweeping through her face, and she could ignore the taste of salt they brought when they ran through the corners of her mouth.  There’s that moment called Dream where you forget that the arms that try to wrap around you in comfort are not from the man you love, but are your own.

            Despite this, she pulled up the sheets and circled her arms around herself in a desperate refuge for consolation.  And sobbing a song of more melancholy than dispirited cries from a heart in despair.

            “Get over it”

            Although she tried to, although there might be some hope amidst the bottomless fathoms of the darkest sadness, there’s still that second where you just wish that everything was purely dream, a pure distraction.  But it wasn’t.

            But then there’s no harm in hoping.  And forgetting didn’t really require dreaming.

            “Forget him already”

            She had lost hope in Love and in finding it again.  Love was just a tragedy.  It dies, just like Life.

            She climbed out of her bed, stripped her stained dress, and dragged herself into the shower.  The cold water hit her like knives.  It did little to wake her up, it just made her want to cry again.  A sob threatened to escape her throat.  She remembered pain.   She hated pain.

            After a while, she had dressed herself in black and was seated at the edge of her bed, bent over, picking up her scattered things on the floor.  She had her backpack held open in one hand, while the other was groping around for anything she missed. 

            She caught sight of her side table.  There were empty, half-empty and full pill bottles.  Her pillbox was strewn to one side and the lid had dropped probably somewhere under her bed. 

            “Fuck,” she muttered as she groped around for the lid.  “Wish.  It’s only in dreams when I’m gratefully dead.  How we wish.  That dreams may come true.”

            Death.  She always thought of dying.  She tried so many times.  She glanced at her side table.  She wanted to know if taking too much pills would kill, and she wondered what would happen if she didn’t take any. She decided to try both options. 

            Too much of those pills didn’t really do anything.  She took a daily overdose for a week a few months back and all she got was a bunch of erratic highs and lows.  She was hoping for something more like stop, drop, and die. Well, there goes option one.

            Time for option two. This month she hoped to answer her wonders on pill depravity.  Sure she felt weak, she felt like dying even more, but sadly, she wasn’t dead. 

            On that morning of seeking and wondering, Destiny sighed at the hopelessness of finding that dying peace amidst the reluctance of life.  Then she surrendered to the will of day.

            “Damn day.”

            Torture never ceases to follow her.  She hated the fact that whichever way she feels, she feels sadness.  A hole that seemed to grow larger was inside her, and it was eating her whole.  It was making her empty.  She loathed torture.  It was painful.

            The whole day at school was a test.  She wanted to break, but she didn’t want to cry.  She didn’t want others to know her pain.  A façade always seemed to work well.  But school did little to serve as sanctuary through out the days.

            She gathered herself, slung her bag on her shoulder and stood up.  Feeling a breeze tapping on her side, she turned around.  Her gaze swept over the maze of people leaving the room.  And it, for some unknown reason, rested and met with another.  Two gazing meeting in one second.  How time plays.

            The coincidence overwhelmed her.

Why is this happening?  They knew each other, and saw each other, but in no way like this.  They met again like two strangers hunted by circumstance.

The air grew heavier, and she felt unseen hands running down her nape to her arms, feeling around her sides and her waist.  This can’t be happening.  It was a prickly tingle that seemed to seep into her skin, and for a moment she feared that her joints would abandon their tasks.  Moreover, she dreaded the moment when that force would break.  Why?  Her heart sighed when it didn’t.  Why the relief?

            He moved towards her, and she wondered if his senses were in turmoil as well.  And when she saw his lips move, her ears were unaware.  Her eyes were focused on his face, and everything else was just a shadow, a blur, that circled around him.  It engulfed her.  And she was seeking in his soulful stare his core…and well, his soul.  And she felt whole.

            She breathed him in.  It was completing. 

This can’t be.  Is there such a feeling left in me?  Why now?  Such pain, such longing.  It is such pain to think, of what may be but may not. 

She tried to turn away.  It seemed that her whole body was made still by a stronger force.  She wanted to move, but she could barely shift a limb.

            When he reached to aid with her books, a tyrannous tremor conquered her being as his arm grazed hers.  It was like a seething fire.

            “Let me help you with that.”

            Her reasoning stalled.  “Thank you.”

            In that moment, Destiny found Love, and Soul was sought.  She did not will it or know it, but that instance made Spirit whole.

            His look burns her.  It makes her skin want to turn inside out.  It sears.  It sires emotion.  It sired in her Hope.

            Though she found Hope, there was some kind of hesitance.  Dreams never come true.  That’s why they call them dreams.

            Somehow regret was finding its way before her grievous realizations came to be; that it will all be lost.  That this love was a mere tragedy that imposed on her a celestial desire.  And this searing heat actually hunted her flesh, and her Spirit forced her to receive Hope. 

            Thus in that time, the Spirit of Hope and the Tragedy of Love restored Fate.

            And Fate ran the day’s course.  It made Destiny hold Love by the hand, and it caused the pair to glow amidst the drenched grayness of the everyday blur.

            “This can’t be happening,” she said.

            He looked at her strangely.  “Why not?”

            “Not to me,” she murmured.

            His brows furrowed, and she felt his fingers strain against hers.  With a more concerned tone he repeated, “Why not?”

            Her eyes drew away from his inquiring stare.  She was trying to think of a logical reason, but then, rationality was frail and emotions were overpowering.  “I can’t really say.”

            She wanted to say that he was too good for her.  Love will die, and she will die.  The thing was, she did not will to escape life now.  She was unsure.  Not now when she held Love by the hand, and Hope was flowing through them both.  In that paradox she wanted to dwell, but by that paradox she was longing to escape.

            “Are you thinking that you’re not good enough?”

            She was taken aback.  Her blood paused.  Was this just a dream?  He read her thoughts.  In return, she stared back blankly.

            “Don’t worry, I know how it feels.  I’m still hoping that being with you isn’t just a dream.”

            A rebellious stream of electricity ran through her.  It’s not that she did not like it, but it made the immediate space around her condensed.  It felt eerie, and it made her weaker.

            “Forgive me for the cliché, but this is just too good to be true.”

            He hummed nonchalantly, but she could feel his beating as his fingers laced through hers.

            “I was at the bottom…I was on the bridge of death…I was crossing death,” she stammered.  “Now I’m here.  And I didn’t even know how I got here.  I don’t know why it was you.”

            “Neither did I.”

            “I don’t know how it was you.”

            “Nor did I.”

            And for the next words it seemed that she did not attempt to think at all.  “All I know is that I found a Love that heals me.”

            He stopped walking, and was silent.

            “In you.” 

            She gasped.  She felt like she was going to faint.  And she tried to hold on to her last ring of strength.  Not now, not now.

            “Are you alright?”

            “Pills”

            He shook with panic.  “Where are they?”

            Her head swooned.  She tried to stay calm; tried to sooth his anxiety as well.  Drawing a deep breath, she said, “I’m alright.  It’s no problem.  It happens all the time.”

            “Are you sure?”

            “Yes.”

            He wrapped his arms around.  “I feared that I might lose you.  Not now.”

            She thought the same.  Not now.

            But it could be now.

            Because never in her life has she found completeness like this.  Music has never sung its way into her Soul.  It has always been a toneless melody, full of dark woe and lost compassion.

            “I’m happy,” she whispered.

            “So am I.”

            She looked up and dove into the deepness of his eyes.  It only took one breath to find his soul, and hers.  And Solitude found company.

            Turning around, she felt the wind sweep through her.  She could sense it.  And she did not yield to to worry, nor did she resort to regret.  Instead, she held him.  And in that brief exchange of air, she felt that he knew, and he allowed it.  They were content, entire.

            A sanctuary of souls, love was.  And the Tragedy closes its will.  A spear of pain befell her and impaled her to gasp in a soundless cry.  The air cast off all weight, and her last draw was easy and soft.  While her body still held Love close, she felt the rain pouring within her soul in tears.

            And in that embrace, Destiny died.  She did not know what happened.  She did not know Memory, she did not know Love.  She did not know where Hope went, nor when all these would meet again in Fate.  But she knew that Soul stayed, and that though Spirit was restless, Solitude was patient.  And in that irony she found a tearful peace.  Then she found sleep, closed her mind, and soared into dream.

            Dream.

            The death of one corner brings wake to another.  Sun opened her eyes and light filled her senses.  For a moment she was reluctant to live another day, but in a while she ached, and moved.  Sleep was inviting her back to a world separate again, and she fought to resist.

            For that place is forgetting, for imagining, and for creating a life that can be ended in but a second, for changing a second for another life.  Where one can be wallowing in the black space of sadness but still find time to have that grain of joy that makes you ready…to die or to live.  There’s that place where you forget that life is just a matter of waking.

            She yearned to fall back into that place.  But despite this she circled her arms around her cold body, sighed a hearts full, and woke.

August 2, 2000

Dezphaire