a wandering eye

It’s warm and it’s sunny. The dry kind of sunny. You know, the kind that’s light, golden yellow? Like feathers and the wind. The kind of sunny that makes your skin crinkle a bit. Makes cold orange juice taste brighter, taste fuller. Makes flower petals droop and wilt, but just enough to still be pretty. He kneels down and picks one out of the ground. She watches as he uproots it. Can’t help but notice how the petals match the sunlight. How thoughtful. Like saying, my love for you is warm and yellow. Cool as honey, my dearest bumblebee. He puts it in her hair, nesting it safely behind her ear. Always gentle as can be. No wonder it’s his legacy.

She tilts her head a bit to the right. Half-smiling, eyes glistening. A classy neckline, an ivory broach, a strand of pearls, a simple heart. He can’t seem to take his eyes off of her today.

I’ve always wanted to roam an old, empty house on a day with that kind of sunshine. A house with fewer walls than windows, fewer closings than openings. One with tall, tall ceilings, kind of like what you see in Victorian-inspired movies, the ballroom floors and crystal chandeliers. Porcelain vases and royal crown molding. Women wearing small, white gloves and their lips reading elegance. I imagine it to have no furniture at all. Just big, empty rooms. And every room would have windows spanning the height of the walls, sunlight pouring through. Endless rays of sunlight, so strong and so much that you could see all the dust floating in the air. And the wood panels on the floor, those too. Aged and rustic, but glowing. Basking in the sunlight, bringing out every shade and hue of brown never known to exist.

You and your wandering eye. How could you ever understand why I’d love such a moment? And to think, to fathom, to ever spend it with me.

But even if you did, I doubt that you could see it the way I do, with my eyes …

flashback

There is time for everything under the sun. Time for work, time for play, time for anything but rest. There is never time for silence, for stillness, for sleep. The pace of the world is faster than you and life is a frantic race, a time bomb waiting to explode. Ticking forever, a relentless battle.

You will feel swept up by the waves, the constant surge forward, and somewhere along the way you will lose yourself to the tides. The speed of fatigue is numbing; you simply allow yourself to be dragged along. A limp, lifeless body trailing the pavement, flanking wooden wheels and stones. Curse the clocks, try as you may, but nothing can slow down the pace of each day.

in a nutshell

I’m scared to death of what will happen. I can already fast forward to the pivotal moment; a thin, crystal clear sheet of glass that will separate us. Like the prisoner and his visitor seated in the chamber, divided by something so transparent, yet so impossibly dense. Shackled by his crime, but brought to forgiveness by her love. Brought to redemption, another chance against reason, a blind benefit of the doubt. That’s what I gave him, and so far he’s done nothing but make me infinitely glad that I took the chance. But come June days and graduation, come the splintering of a million threads in the string of life, the scattering and uprooting of childhood to Lord knows where, what then?

In already knowing an end, is there a point? The worth of the journey relative to destination. Distance or farewell, all or nothing, blind trust or another abandoned what-if. I’m really struggling, and every passing moment I stay, I know I’m falling deeper and deeper. Flowing in unison with what feels like an irreversible current of what I never want to end. Won’t this just make it hurt more when goodbye comes? The longer I stay, the more potential pain I’m racking away in the warehouse of my heart. Filling every last corner, flooding every square foot put to optimal use, such are the charming days and moments spent with you in the trade-off.

I admit I’m young and all too far from understanding the true meaning of waiting. I don’t know what it takes to wait with all my heart, to trust with eyes sealed shut, but I do know what it feels like to miss. Missing, waiting, wishing - a league of three either strong enough to bridge the enemy of time or collapse under its slow torture.

And on your side, in your thoughts, I wonder if you think the same way. If you were to tell me that you would choose distance over farewell, I would surrender myself and commit in a heartbeat; it takes two to trek the distance. But my fear is that you’d only choose so because it’s what you think I want to hear. And that is, by far, the ultimate misunderstanding nightmare, a manifesto of self-sacrifice at the hand of self-preservation. I’ve never felt this way before, been put in a situation like this, or even felt compelled to contemplate in such lengths at so early a time. But you make me feel this way, you put me in this situation, and you compel me to contemplate lengths translating to the future.

Such foreign a feeling goes not well with first times. Then again, there never were any easy first times. Tick tock, so goes the clock. The rush of love, the approach of the countdown. Brace yourself, Tiffany, for in 3, 2, 1 …