j. belisario

12-0702, 0811.

I’m at the Starbucks by your old condo waiting for the ferry and I’m wishing you were here with me.

The weather is overcast, mild. I’m wearing my khaki casual blazer over a chunky cream cableknit sweater and white tee, breaking the softness of neutrality by the adornment of a thin blue scarf.

Excessive, I know, but I can’t help but dress sharp- it’s in my blood, this compulsive desire to present myself in the best light possible.

Plus I’m traveling on feet and air conditioning is not a luxury I have access to at the moment.

The coffeeshop is filling up with random morning travelers. I’m hiding in the corner, aviator shades on, sipping my coffee tentatively as I people watch.

But mostly I wish you were here with me.

The thrill of holding your hand discretely amidst this crowd of families, teenagers with nothing better to do, and foreign tourists stirs in me a sense of life, a jolt of excitement that runs through my body and makes me come to life.

That shiver down my spine I get when I feel I’m purposefully breaking the rules I’m expected to follow…

Never have I felt more awakened when I’m reminded I’m no longer the goody-two-shoes I thought myself to be, always following the rules, memorizing the standard operating procedures, obeying the policies with which I willingly comply.

But mostly, it’s the thrill of just being near you, the expectation of our physical contact that fills me with such joy, such exhilaration, such contentment.

However, due to our present circumstances, these sentiments de la vie are nothing but sans résultats.

They are fruitless. Sterile.

These fervent desires to be with you, to touch you, to stroke your arm, to hold you, to be held, to caress your face, to kiss you…

No good can come from wanting these things anymore. They are all but unreasonable expectations, pipe dreams, unfulfilled wishes.

The anticipation builds up inside of me with no release. The light at the end of this tunnel of desperate longing has burnt out, for I know you will not be there on the other side waiting.

I miss you terribly.

There’s no other way to put it.

I chose to give you up because our distant exchanges through time and space brought me nothing but heartache, a constant reminder of what I had found and lost all at once.

But even without our exchanges, I still feel your absence all around me.

I move through my days without hope, without expectation. The brief, fleeting glimpse of joy you bestowed upon my existence is now gone, and I am only filled with an aching void in its absence, with not even the slightest idea of how to mend it.

I’ve no idea how to move on with my life apart from you.

I thought distancing myself from you would bring me closure, help me to readjust back into the life I had before you came into it.

But it’s no use.

I feel as if I’m grasping at straws, trying vainly but valliantly to hold onto the grains of sand that is my sanity in my cupped palms, only to lose them with every shift in the breeze, with every thought of you that passes through my train my thought.

If only you knew how torn I really am over this.

I want to speak with you, let you know I’m still doing fine- broken, but stubbornly refusing help as I try and piece myself back together.

You said you worried for me. I wish to God I can help you ease your concerns, help you to move on with your life without me, because God only knows I’m trying like hell to do the same with my life.

At the same time, I relish in your attention, as vain as it sounds. It has been a very long time since someone has cared for me the way you’ve shown me in our regretfully brief time together.

I’ve always seen myself as a throwaway, a fleeting, passing, insignificant event in the lives of others.

A shooting star, brilliant in its spectacle and occurrence. But it comes and goes, and it’s forgotten as quickly as it came as it fades into the night.

But unlike others to whom I shot past, you stopped me from fading into the sea of stars.

You made me feel not as if my existence was fleeting, but that it was a sight to behold and not to be forgotten in favor of the next star to cross your field of vision.

And that is why I can’t get you out of my system.

You made me want to burn brighter, more brilliantly than all the other stars in the galaxy.

You made this shooting star want to become the sun of your universe.

But now that universe is gone, lost to the black hole that is the life designed by the hands of Fate, and this shooting star has no one else for whom to burn.

So forgive me for this painful embargo I’ve cast myself in.

I know not what I do anymore, this lost little star, except that I only know it hurts to speak to you, to be reminded of the lost world for which I wanted to shine, and it hurts to drift across the sky without knowing what’s to become of me, without having someone for whom to shine.

So I can only leave you with these abstract letters I will never send you. It hurts too much to press the SEND button and await your reply, but it hurts just as much to leave these feelings trapped inside me.

These vague, abstract modes of self-expression, lost to an anonymous audience, serve as the perfect outlet to my grief.

Maybe someday, if ever, I regain the sense of self-contentment without the painful ache for you, I’ll show these to you and we can laugh at the poor lost boy who once fell in love with a universe.

But for now, I can only leave you with these unsent letters, drifting in a galaxy without an audience.

Still burning for you,
J.