Merry Christmas Michael
By : Osiris
Snow
fall is beautiful Michael. You told me that I’d never like it. But I do. Soft, feather-like
things, falling to the ground, they look like angel feathers, and just as soft.
Soft and cool actually. You told me I’d freeze here in
Mom helped me get a loan
to buy an actual car. I bought what we always dreamed about, a little blue
Volkswagen. It’s adorable and is actually behaving. Very little maintenance
since it was really in mint condition when I got it. The lady said that it
suited me. I agree, though not wholly. I think it would’ve suited you more.
Anyway, I’d ride it on the way to work, just me in my little love bug, hair in
a tight little bun.
You’re
right anyway; I do look older when I do that. My hair in a tight grandmotherly
bun and my old fashioned eye glasses that I don’t really like wearing anyway.
If I were with you I’d be wearing those cat eye lenses, the ones like Lisa
Loeb’s. Never mind that I really look like weirdo. When I was with you I never
cared if I looked like a weirdo. You liked my being a weirdo.
I
listened to Alanis’ song again. Lanna was a great person to let me listen to
that song, listen and copy. Superstar Wonderful Weirdos, that was what we
were.
I dreamed
about you again last night. I dream you and I were under that tree again, with
me singing “Smooth” again and again. You laughed your head off, just like you
did back then, and told me to get voice lessons as soon as possible. And then
it rained, just like it did then, it drenched the both of us in a single
shower. But right then and there it changed. I knew it the moment I realized
that you weren’t taking my wrist in a painful grip to drag me to the nearest
shelter, just like then. You stood there, in the pouring rain, looking down at
me. I just sat there, feeling oddly detached from the big fat drops of rain
that soaked me to the skin. You stood there, saying the words I never heard you
say in real life.
“Goodbye
Maria. I’ll be waiting”
I woke
up crying again.
You
told me once that waking up crying meant that you were crying even before you
woke up. In my sleep, was I crying? I knew I tossed and turned, but did I cry?
If I
did, it would be the first time I cried about you.
Why
weren’t you there in the airport Michael? I was waiting there for you? All of
them were there, teary-eyed, but they waved me goodbye. Why didn’t you go there
and say goodbye to me? Why weren’t you there to let me go?
And
now, thousands of miles away from home, I feel like I left a great part of me
still there. Still there, with you. Couldn’t you let
me go?
Can’t
you please let me go?
It’s
been eight months, five days and 17 hours since I left the territory of the
Instead
of sending anything to me, will you give me the gift of my freedom? Let me go?
I’m
standing here, feeling the feathery touch of the snow on my shoulder, seeing
the soft, white tendrils of the steam from the nearby manhole, brushing away
snowflakes from this laptop of mine. Shouldn’t be out right now, the weather
man said that it was negative ten out and was expected to drop. But I can’t
write this inside my apartment so I walked to this favorite coffee shop of
mine. They serve non-dairy coffee here you know.
I can’t
write in a place where I feel so enclosed. Enclosed because
you haven’t let go of me yet.
Do you
think I want to forget our private conversations? Those
little things that no one will ever know? Do you think I want to forget
the happiness I felt in your company? The joy and relief that
someone does care about me? Do you think I want to forget the fact that
amongst all, you are one of the very few who know almost half of who I am? The
few people who never gave up chasing after me when I ended up running too far
and too fast?
How
can I when…when I hold fast to them as well.
But
that’s all I can leave you now. Memories of happy days and not-so-happy days.
Let me
go Michael. So I can let go of you as well.
Take
care dear friend, email me one of these days? I miss your letters.
And Merry Christmas.
The End