Five Days of Drowning

DAY ONE
Have you ever quenched your thirst with an unfilled cup? Or drenched yourself completely in a heavy rainfall, under a clear azure sky?
Have you ever emotionally moved the heart of a heartless soul? Or became the soul of its bleak shadow, latched unto transience?
She may ask me how’s my day going, but all those lumps in my throat talk in tiny wisps of smoke, telling her that today feels like the first day of drowning.

DAY TWO
Today, I ambled down the loveliest of all streets, one that changed view with my every footfall, and it looked flawless for our chance encounters, for our surrealism to trifle with our realities. But the sunlight was too blinding, and I was pierced by a light coming not from her. The shadows of the barriers leaned upon me, and I was weighed down by their nullity. I wore my half-hearted smile, thinking that maybe it will get me through this second day of drowning.

DAY THREE
I think I saw her yesterday. Or maybe she’s been haunting all the silence that her absence entails, for every face looks fuzzy, and every minute weighs me down like an anchor. I think I saw her wearing the night sky, for it felt like the place was wrapped in moonlight. I reached out for her, but I couldn’t move. My pockets were full of stones. Either I am driven insane, or I just need a break. A break to find my muse and words to gather me from both worlds once more. There are voices in my head screaming out an ancient language long forgotten, reminding me that today is the third day of drowning.

DAY FOUR
Today, I woke up before the break of dawn, her favorite time of day. She always adored this city, this street, at this hour, when it is still sound asleep. She told me that she could hear it breathe, and we were nothing but two actors in one of its endless dreams. She unfolded a landscape so surreal, and today, I never found it this exquisite.

I turn on her favorite jazz tune, I put it on repeat, over and over, trying helplessly to fill all this substantial emptiness with the way she once hummed its tune. I lose sense of time, but somehow, this sense of liberation started to be swiped off by the strident of senseless beings. At first break of light, I saw her hair strewn at the heart of dawn, pressed down to a dew on that Neruda book she forgot on my coffee table, whispering to me what I dreaded of hearing, telling me that today is the fourth day of drowning.

DAY FIVE
She call me right before midnight, asking me to tell her a bedtime story. She tell me that she woke up from a nightmare, one that embodied all her fears, and she were lonely, drenched in tears. She tell me that she need my words, another finest glass of red wine. I read her one, pausing every now and then just to hear her smiling.

She tell me that she always read me, and ask me to write her more, to kiss her by kissing the starry moonlit sky. A syllable of her laughter keeps on repeating in my mind today, reminding me that on the fifth day of drowning, I have been spiraling heavenwards, drowning into where she exist, in that silence that embraces the stars in place.