Starlightning

May 14, 2024

In an alternate universe, we’ve been together for seven years. I still feel that familiar tenderness curling deep beneath my gut when you’d wrap your arm around my shoulders – how you’d simper cockily as if you didn’t crumble at the thought of losing me. How my right hand stung, almost like it felt how I slapped you across the face in an unknown distant place and time, and you’d feel the weight of yourself as you stood there, foolishly juvenile, unmoving, while I walked away.

I sometimes still feel you linger, a far away whisper that makes me laugh under my breath. I can feel how you think of me randomly, because in those moments I might be thinking of you too. How you now have what you’ve always wanted, said you wanted, but then you’d think about me with my unruly hair, and how you’d always pat it down—let yourself, for a moment, brush your long fingers through the strands as if you’re touching a prayer—and the way I’d ignore you, let you, hate you, and then you’d start hating yourself too.

And then you’d find yourself wondering if what happened in December hadn’t happened. If you didn’t regret and detest yourself at the thought of stumbling after someone like me — who’s apathetic to your chase, to your arms wrapped around my waist, to your hands always finding themselves entangled in mine as they trace the lines of my palm. Indifferent to your tone when you’d lean in to tease my scowl, to your lips curling into a roguish smirk when you placed a chaste kiss onto my knuckles, to your magnetic presence that sparkled, and caught the eye of the crowd wherever you drifted off to. Stoic to your bittersweet attention that followed me like a shadow for years.

You hated it. You didn’t want to accept it—someone like me who didn’t as much as bat an eye when you started talking to a new girl every other week all while you had your fingers clasped possessively around my arm. Flirting and sauntering around all while you religiously wore my bracelet that you stubbornly took from my wrist despite my protests, sporting it like a dog tag, like some abstruse badge of honor. It spoiled your amusement—someone like me who wordlessly watched how you enticed and strung along any girl that pursued you into your tricks and games while your coy whispers bounced against my cheek as you stalked over my steps, your eyes locked on me as you rambled about how your heart fluttered from the rush of your fleeting infatuations. I hated it. How you loudly contradicted yourself and how much I let you pretend. Despite knowing your nature and silently understanding the reason why no girl has stuck around long enough, I allowed you to drone close to me, let you shamelessly test the limits of how far you can push, how low and cruel you’ll keep teasing and jabbing my buttons until one of us admits that we can’t stand what you’ve been doing.

And because I didn’t want to assume, to shatter the fog of your delusion, I became someone who readily received the attention and contempt from every fling you discarded with no hesitation. I let myself become the curious topic of dissection, learned to stomp down any emotion that began to creep up to me whenever you shifted back into the person I grew fond of before the smug persona you wore like a second skin. I would rather die than admit it, than let you win with your arbitrary tactics. I morphed into someone that, regardless of how blatant you were moving out of pettiness rather than genuine interest for anyone else, played along as the girl you simply beelined to, clung to. The unbothered little thing you’re stuck in this unknown bond with just because. As if I didn’t notice your frustration, the way you were leaving your claw marks on me even though your presence liked to present itself as gentle. The way you snaked yourself around me, again and again, for years, even when you tried acting like there was nothing more behind the proximity.

I became someone who always took a step back the moment you’ve finally braced yourself enough to move forward. Someone who you can never catch up to, regardless of how much you thought you had closed in on me, cornered me by acting the way you did.

I sometimes wonder if walking home together would’ve been enough, if your constant invitations didn’t get brushed off, if the conversations didn’t turn cutthroat, sporadic. If the expectations didn’t pressure a crack to form—if your words and actions eased me back to you rather than attack me for slipping away. If sitting next to each other and sharing quiet laughter when no one was watching would’ve been enough to be the bridge that brought us back. To be the string that held me back from running away completely. If it could’ve slowed me down at least.

An old friend once advised that I should probably move on when I bristled the moment I found out you tasked him to reach out to me, years later after the string has frayed, forcibly cut—and I got understandably angry at the way you emerged to obscure my path again, how you assertively tried worming your way back in. He told me I should just forget the past for the sake of what’s left of our connection, and in the same breath told me you wanted to reconnect because you needed to. My mind reeled. Needed what? Needed something from me? Needed an excuse? Needed to feel the helpless frustration of being unable to actually hold fire without melting yourself once again?

I had to laugh. You wanted me to meet you again even after the fact that we’ve left the animosity to fester and fill the inevitable distance. As if I didn’t literally slap some sense back into you the last time we faced each other—because you did succeed in pushing me to my limit. Because for the first time, I actually showed you how much you’ve upset me. You easily scheduled a day, a place, a time, as if I didn’t hate you just as much as you hated me.

People who know our history warned me that holding onto the bitterness isn’t serving either of us. That I should’ve just let you light my world up in flames again, welcomed you back in. You’re desirable after all. Wanted. You’re a catch that keeps crawling back.

It’s often said that too much heat on sugar burns more than fire. Hurts more than hell. And maybe that’s true, because the sweetest memories are often the ones that char the most.

Which is why I couldn’t bring myself to rekindle our connection even after you tried luring me in again with promises.

Because a part of me blames you for the way I hardened, but then again, that would be unfair. I’m well aware I played my part.

But maybe if things didn’t happen the way they did, and you were honest enough to catch after me then—apologized for the way you reacted to my lack of agitation and sensibility, maybe then, you could sit here too. Proudly say it’s been seven years, and I would still hate your cheekiness despite my grin, like your fire despite the burn – and you’d find yourself still falling into step with me nonetheless. As would I in return, because I wouldn’t be able to help it too.

Because I still write about you even years later. Your existence inspires romance into my words, blooms warmth where it’s cold, grounds my perception of how easy sparks can erupt from a brush of a hand, from a gaze that refuses to look away, from a tall tail that constantly looms over me. Sets me up to run and watch if anyone else would follow after me like you’ve been known to do, like a loyal dog, magnetized by an invisible force that dragged you back into my peripheral, despite the fact that it’s been years and I’ve almost forgotten how the contours of your face looked when you’d crook down to level my glare.

In an alternate universe, you say it’s been seven years, and you’d smile, because you know me, and you know somewhere out here, you haven’t seen or heard from me in ten.

And in that same distant world, I understand that our probability is and has always been slim, that I would’ve walked away one way or another, and I would instinctively hold you even closer.

But now the thought of us is just a thought. A weight on your left cheek. The echoes of angry footsteps leaving the room. The lost prolonged glances, the secretly intertwined fingers, the silhouette your waiting legs beg to chase after wherever it goes. The unsaid words. Unaligned schedules. Canceled plans. Four grueling years of constant dead ends. The stray could be wafting in your memory if you sit too still. Just as you did that day.

(You once asked me why I’m mean to you, and I say I show you my core. You nod, and say I like that about you too.

I also want to ask you why you’re mean to me, but I know you well enough to guess that you wouldn’t say a thing because your answer would be a confession in on itself.)

My mom sometimes asks about you, and I always tell her I don’t know, because I don’t.

Because the thought of you is nothing more than a stray thought now. A ghost behind the words I write when nostalgia happens to knock on my door. A memory that through the years has grown to taste sour instead of bitter.

I catch myself smiling sometimes, in the instances I happen to recall. After all, behind the tartness of that lost time lies the sweetness of youth I’ll always find myself yearning for.

(I’m sorry for slapping you, by the way. You deserved it though.)

Starlightning

2024

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