Thread by @pamzena

Do you have stars in your mouth? ✨✨

(A thread)
.........................

Someday, a story will be told and it will begin like this:

Do you have....?

SCRAP that!

It will begin with reality.

I can't walk. Right now, I cannot walk.

But I'm happy and content.

If one should ask me, life hasn't been too bad. Really.

I've enjoyed the gift of cheer and laughter, learned much through tests and trials, shared many joys and sorrows. I've lived a rich and full life, one I shall mourn when it is over.

Having tended to the aging and dying, and watched newborns kick with life, I'm not a stranger to life and death, especially how slowly and gradually they unfurl their missions.

It's been a long road down here and I still can't believe I'm almost Home due to reasons beyond my control.

I once stopped to wonder if there was anything absent or missing from my little and short experience of life and...

I realized that there were a couple of things I'd have loved to experience but couldn't, for one reason or the other, and I can only laugh at how life makes fun of us all, how time sits to watch and giggle in careless mockery. Our infinity is really small, isn't it?

I know I wanted to swim in the sun, paint for hours, learn how to dance, fall in love and build a family. I still don't know how to swim or paint or even dance to save my soul, and all these I can't start now. I somehow missed out on romantic love, too, and now it feels too late

And so, I pick my pen and bleed a little of the cancer in my bones.

This was how I started:
"It's been forever since we said our usual goodbye-without-words. Just like Neruda, tonight I can write the saddest lines.

"The last time before we parted ways for the umpteenth time, I craved your voice, so I wrote my way back to you. It was one of my favorite poems. You remembered, as did I. It's a question that really lacks an answer, talk more of any reality: Do you have stars in your mouth?

"All I ever wanted was to feel your love and genuine interest. But I think you made it your duty to make me feel so unsure. How well you act like you don't even have my contact saved on your phone. Would it make you feel less of a man if you admitted your desire?

"You always reached out, strangely, I must add. Yet, I've tried but have failed to feel your heartbeat for me and that always convinced me to walk away each time. It was always a walk away from things that scared me about you but which I couldn't find words for.

"After my last visit to the doctor, I waltzed back into your space hoping to find some closure, or a walk to remember. I'd be grateful for either one but see how I've got none. Did you ever love me or everything was, and had always been, a joke to you? I guess I may never know.

"Funny that Je te manque means 'I miss you' but it is really 'you are missing from me'.
So, if I said it to you, what I mean is that I can't find you. There were times it felt like we had found each other. Nevertheless, we both were mostly missing from each other. Again and again

"Soon, our back and forth would be over and I'd be missing from you. This time, for a very long time. Truthfully, for an endless time, for forever. And whatever it was between us would permanently be laid to rest.

"When I'm gone, I hope that your memories of me would be more of pleasant ones than unpleasant ones. Kindly, don't remember me only by the quiet frictions we always had. Don't blame me from protecting myself from the unknown, the uncertain.

"It was always me reacting to something you did or didn't do, and always you saying sorry, and always us trying to move on from it. Until the next time it happens, again. Because we had chosen cowardice and our undefined relationship spewed tension and confusion.

"I clearly am no big deal if it takes five days to respond to my text. Yet, you never just walk away from me. Tell me, why do you stay? I always had these tough questions in my head. Why do you always reach out knowing you are not ready to love me? What do your words really mean?

"You made me doubt your care and blurred your intentions in my sight by how lightly you seem to esteem me and things that mattered to me. I can't explain how much it hurts to watch you forget. Forget me. Forget things about me...and not feel too sorry

"One day, we are on phone for hours like high school kids in love. The next, you can't even remember where I am from. You do stuff that I can't hold you accountable to, or let you know how they make me feel. I don't even know who I am to you but I sure know you love your freedom

"You who tried to woo me with Tatiana Manois, unprovoked, why ask me if it was a clip from Eminem you sent? Perhaps too many you were sending out. Or selective amnesia leading yourself into ships headed nowhere. Whatever it was, that tells me you didn't mean any of those words

"Did you expect me to lay my all before you and not hold back, then? How do I trust you, pray tell? I can make excuses for us both: we are protecting ourselves from getting hurt by not surrendering to the love we are capable of. But our excuses built for us a fancy hell.

"I clearly suck at communicating with you because of my struggle with being vulnerable in friendships like the one we have going—one that is somewhat complicated, undefined, embattled yet enduring through the years...

"I have tried to keep to my lane, stayed far away enough from you lest I get myself emotionally trapped where I didn't belong. I'm aware that playing head games is a real thing in today's world. Not being a fool of my emotions is, however, a tribute I owe the Universe.

"I wasn't trained to deal with entanglements; I'd rather be here or be there, and not somewhere lost in the middle. Hold on to your freedom, I'd hold on to my dignity. This had been my rest. But I couldn't stop wondering if I was being too difficult for leaning towards clarity.

"A week after my chemo stopped working was when we had that call. Indirectly, you clarified what you wanted. I wasn't the one for the role and had felt that'd relax me into a neutral, uncomplicated interaction with you. A gift of closure which I could manage alongside my opoids.

"You really liked me, you had said (and oh! Thank you, all my cells are very grateful for your kind consideration). But you were not ready for a relationship yet. And so, I loved and won. Finally, I could stop wondering what you ever wanted with me, because I am no longer unsure.

"And I knew I'd be fine. I'm not going to be here for too long anyways. Plus, I've got love in other places, too. With family. With friends. With the Universe. I'd probably have the chance to do romance in another lifetime. It would be beautiful. Absolutely."

..................

Can you help me adjust my bed, please?" I beckoned to my hospice nurse, very grateful for her presence.

She smiled as she came closer. "What have you been writing about today?"

Nothing much, I replied in my head, smiling. Just that no one's got stars in their mouth.

#fiction

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