You.
Me.
The
umbrellas and the rain.
We met
two years ago on a rainy midnight at a café people pass by in a daily basis.
Rainy season had just started back then; people brought their umbrellas—some
wouldn’t—few would bravely run past soaked against it, and I was one of them.
You
didn’t catch my attention. I didn’t, too. It wasn’t even a series of seconds
when I first saw you. It was fleeting. We were droplets, unaware the
other one had existed. Maybe we did, the way intersecting lines meet but then
would drift apart. It was just a process of exchanges of hellos and smiles and
fleeting glances. We just happened to exist on the same place along other
strangers.
But
there, we met. We could’ve ignored each other and forget that day. You were
just another engineering student who wanted a computer course—I was just
another frustrated writer who ran away from responsibilities.
Did we
meet at the wrong time?
Our
hellos paraded to countless conversations over dinners to sleepless nights and
mornings until silence would drown us. Isn't it sad they’re all meant to
goodbyes? We did things like first timers, too, the way kids hang out without
calling it a day. We laughed the way like we never did years back, too.
Since
then, I couldn’t do the same.
Remember
when you told me you were jack of all trades? I was afraid I wasn’t even good
at anything. Remember, it didn’t matter.
I love
how I laughed back then. Did you?
Those
were the days and nights that I thought would promise things further.
Did you
feel the same? I’m sorry because I do.
On those
rainy afternoons, I would wait you in spite of the rain plunging over those
umbrellas on a busy horizon.
It was
still clear, just like my feelings. It didn’t fade one bit, but I hope it
would, soon. And I know the truth; for you, those were just ordinary days that
move past to you the way strangers on their umbrellas do. The way we do now.
I didn’t
know; love that string people together could pluck my heart, too, but they’re
breaking.
You
didn’t understand me. You didn’t push me, too, but you didn’t keep me when it
was all I hoped for. I couldn’t stay enough because I valued the friendship
more than how I feel and reject myself before you could, even if it was the
only thing that made me happy. You didn’t know: I was so confused and scared
and soaked between emotions. I let the time over my cloudy horizon. You didn’t
know: I wasted all the time I could use to win you or just forget you when in
truth I would never be able to.
Much has
been said. And for the first time, I was silenced.
What I
would always remember was this; that rainy season when you would fetch me
because I had no umbrella when it seemed you know the truth; I hate umbrellas.
You didn’t realize, the only umbrella I liked was yours—no—with you.
With an
umbrella, you arrived, but I guess it wasn’t an umbrella for two. Maybe, but
not with me. I left and ran those parallel lines from the sky. How far did I
go? Trying to pull and cut that invisible string that had connected me to you.
Do you know it was painful?
We had
our goodbyes unsent. Accepting having no closure is the closure, probably is
more than good bye.
I thought
it was easy as I run away and cut the ties knotted to your nostalgia and
disappear to that vanishing point where the rain would fog up my silhouette. I
thought it would be easy now that you no longer shed me with your umbrella
while we could see the rainfall on different places at the same time. I would
always look back to that one rainy season—I wish would never return—the thunderclaps
along the rainfall playing on repeat in my ears and the petrichor piercing our
nostrils; the nostalgia. Rainy season is already around the corner. I didn’t
realize it moved past me the way it did two years ago. Yes, two years, and the
rain, it never stops.
