Heroine

Some people meet the way tangent lines do; despite all the complexities—all the ups and downs—they compromise, and true they go.

Maybe we all do.
A girl on departure.
A boy on the waiting place.

She’s not going to see him again.

And maybe he still does, in a place intersected between tiny possibilities.

The truth was this: she left before he could.
And unlike the way they do in the movies, he didn’t chase her to the last minute before the plane could take off. He wasn’t even stranded on the way to the airport and rummage through the security with blood shot eyes. He didn’t run all the way to possibly save the day. No race. No goodbyes, just a chain message left unread on their phones, and the possible replies sat on the drafts with their words stuck behind their lips.

Perhaps, if he chased her, he could save the things in between. But it was also a possibility that even if he did, nothing might happen. Perhaps if she chose to stay, she would pull him back. But then, even if she did, everything might be late.

After all, it’s the same sky for our eyes; we’re just too busy catching everyone’s eyes in a fleeting intersection.

We forget past everything around us. We forget to look up at the sky.

We take a lot of things for granted, too. Well, not that we choose to, we just do. 

We’re too in-love to a picture—a heartbeat of a moment, rather than we could actually be. We cry to simple pictures that remind us how time buried memories. We reread conversations we can never reply to anymore. We're drunk on their existence and the hangover left us trying to reconnect to them again. We make love to the pictures that kept their existence frozen. Maybe this is why we leave when people change. But we don’t really change—we just grow, even if it requires destruction. Butterflies abandon their cocoon and fly and perhaps see the world the way we do, too.

Come to think of it, perfection isn’t beautiful. This is why we can’t even picture perfection—we don’t even know what it’s like or what it's supposed to be. We stick to the closer idea of perfection.
But in the end, even if you drink too much vodka, you still tell yourself you're sober. And with blurry eyes, you  just see the dim vision of the person you wanted the most on strangers.

We've been tying to filter reality.

And on the waiting place, he stopped. He succumbed to silence as the noise of his thoughts kept him on the beat, playing on repeat. He was baffled to the idea of betrayal and rejection and the complexities. But don’t you think: we only take people for granted when they don't matter anymore, and eventually, we leave. But don’t we leave because we don’t matter to them anymore?

She was his heroine, but least he did know that she was trying save herself, too. And when in fact, she gave up on the idea the second she realized her possible hero took her for granted.

He had blood shot eyes; tears trickled down his cheeks, teeth gritted and clenched fists. Maybe he was stranded on his own thoughts. Maybe there was an unread note, too, and a ticket in his hand aboard a train to free himself and never return.

So he did.
Yet nobody chased him, only their eyes ran as fast as his departure took place.

He was a wanderer, and so is she.

She didn't take the plane, because leaving him meant that distance doesn’t matter. He didn't take the train, too. But they were time zones apart even when they lived on the same town. Somehow, distance isn’t always just a measurement; it’s so much more.

She held the idea that departure was only temporary that it took her long enough it became a mistake.

He was a wanderer; he knew he would find his heroine.

She wanders, too, trying to save someone in hopes to save herself in the process.

She never saw him again.

Perhaps, she was late.

Perhaps, he was just early.