Hyeon,

I’m slowly starting to see why.

I wonder if you had only been so brave to run, so limitless, the night you headed back to the bridge where we first crossed paths instead of coming back to me while I waited for you — was simply because you’ve grown too tired, too angry, too choked up from the emptiness that the murkiness of my feelings had cultured every time you looked at me.

Somehow, I knew you were running empty when you tried to enter my world. But when you found me, got too close, I started filling you up. With hope? False promises? Only measly halves of what you had needed?

You got confused when I turned out different from the person you thought I was, the person you wished for. You got tired. Tired of trying to romanticize the person you thought I could still be.

I wonder if I had always been this thickheaded and insensible around you. If you have always felt this way — unimportant, insignificant — next to me. If I only made you lonelier than you were before we crossed paths. If I was just lying to myself when I believed you accepted me for who I was.

You knew how I felt. You waited for me to deem these feelings important enough to proclaim them on my own for you to hear.

But by the time I finally did, you already reached a point where you wouldn’t have been able to believe a word — let alone hear it through the shame I felt when I said it out loud for the first time.

Because how can someone like me, be able to prove them?

I know I should have opened myself up for you, and told you what I’m confessing right now rather than write it here for nobody to read.

So that you could at least know that my heart felt like it was getting carved out of my chest whenever you’d meet my gaze and I’d notice the unending loneliness that ghosted over your face, feel the way my skin ignited when you’d touch me to ground yourself back, hear these unsaid feelings that had bloomed within me, witness yourself in my eyes, despite how numb you’ve grown around me. The realization that you never reflected the same emotion. Any emotion.

And I understand, that by the point of our collision, you’ve already burnt yourself out. Nothing but an empty shell, desperate and looking for a place to reside in. Someone else’s chest, maybe.

And you did. You started living in mine, and I never really realized how you built yourself a place here but never really felt at home.

I wish I lived up to what you needed. I wish I was better company. I wish I talked to you more, about the things that kept you up next to me, about the weight that you had been carrying. I wish I communicated better, I wish I told you more about how significant you are to me, and I wish you could read this — and maybe it is my desperate prayer to change your mind. To move you like you moved me.

I wish you would’ve realized that it’s okay. To be empty. To feel whole again even though it may just be fleeting. To feel broken, and be broken and find refuge in people who want you here. I want you here. I want to tell you that you did your best, and I do see you. You’ve done so well, Hyeon. It isn’t your fault. It was never your fault.

I’ll still welcome you. Always. Despite your efforts to keep me in the dark. Despite being broken beyond what I can offer. Despite the fact that you won’t love me back — that you will never love me back. 

And your never is enough for me, Hyeon.

As long as you’re here.

But I guess that’s quite selfish of me to just assume on my own. Because what about you? Am I enough for you to stay? Is my quiet presence enough to fill the emptiness? Will my efforts be enough to keep you from running? Can my love wash the weight off as miraculously and easily as much as I fool myself to pretend that it will?

As I write this, you’ve already left and I’m stuck here to pick up the remaining pieces.

I’m trying. I’m still trying to keep myself together even without you here.

But — how do I fill this gaping gnash in my chest, in my being, when I know you still have parts of me with you? Curled tight in between your palms, refusing to come back to me even after you’ve left.

How can I take back what’s mine?

How do I forget you? The boy who talked about the universe with supernovae for eyes? A boy who gravitated the world right at his feet, laughing like the milky way’s ricocheting out of trajectory, whispering into the void like he’s trying to reach for your heart and then make another world out of it. How do I forget the boy who fought with his demons by smiling back at them?

Tell me, how do I forget someone like you?

How can I forget even the thought of you?

Yours,
Jun

(—who can’t seem
to decipher the answers.)

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© Rizu Lu

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