Memorabilia

Freedom tasted like lemon water in scorching sun. It felt like breeze caressing my face while airy wings lifted me higher. I liked to be alone. World quiets down, when you do and nature speaks up when you leave her space to. It’s all so different, standing at the edge of a rock cliff and looking down at the translucent waves, washing away everything that feels out of place in my head. I let it take my name again. That’s the only time I look down.

Being nameless means being seen without the fear of being known. Every time the edges of a box around me start to appear, I run here and let the landscape take over, to make me forget. There’s no label that’s justified in my eyes, things should just be what they are. People are just who they are.

But at times, the world gets too quiet, air feels too cold and there’s no place like home for loneliness than in my soul. She always leaves so she could always come back. Sun and moon danced in a circle for a while before I went up the cliff again. These cycles don’t always sync, and though emptiness holds my heart now, I still try to feel. Standing still, constantly looking for anything that’s real. So I stand in my usual place, with shoes kicked away somewhere near. Grass tickles my feet and it’s freezing but that’s exactly what I need. My name is still in the fog with waves pushing it further away, the sky breathes timidly with a purple haze. Does nothing ever change except for me, or does everything change but I stay the same?

There’s a bleeding girl on the rocks and for a moment, I forget that I was on my way to giving my name away, something instantly draws me to her. I can go around the hill, walk down the slow pathway or I can take a shortcut through the rocks instead. It isn’t steep enough for me to merge with red like her, buI think she’ll like the brightness of my white button up shirt. And when she sees me, maybe it will turn her dark cloud into a relief, something resembling situational joy. I storm down and swear along the way when some edges graze my ankles but it stops to matter as I reach her. She’s sunk in the sand with one foot lying straight and the other bent, leaning over the crimson painting on her knee. I step into her sight and without pointless words hand her a torn piece of my shirt. She looks up, frowning, but when she looks at my extended hand, her face insantly softens, storm now swept away with vulnerability. The daisy before me hesitates but ends up accepting the help anyway. And then we just sit there in silence and in the silence I feel heard. Her scent envelopes me like a hug and I disregard anything inside that reminds me of the hurt, while keeping to my habits of storming down the rocks. Her petals make me forget my name and in the memory, I keep it.

It seems soothing, two strangers sharing warmth of the sun and being understood without explaning why. But it isn’t about the connection that forms, what matters is the cliff.

Sometimes, when morning tears fill up my eyes, I force them to fall. Pretend they mean something. In this solitude, each drop weighs the same and they all taste like nothing, even though they used to strike all the taste buds, including the ones I didn’t have.

I remember when it meant something, to be sad on a bench while sun sets behind the horizon. Now there’s just blue that feels like a cold kiss of death on my lips and a hole eating up my insides. This time, I’m really alone.

There was before, during and after. You can never return to the person you were before someone crucial entered your life. They alter it so much, your memory doesn’t feel like yours. It’s always a risk, and at first it’s all you see. The potentional pain on your tongue, the imaginary tears. But then she smiles at you and you swear you’ve never felt more seen.

The way she smiled erased all cruelty I faced and the world went silent. Red wasn't the color of blood, it was just red. Not even a catastrophe unfolding around would make us stop to look at anything else but each other. Nothing else mattered, just those pink lips on mine and a million stars above swirling in waves like they do when a kiss feels like the first truth that isn’t hard to hear. A truth that’s enlightening. When it feels like a hug after centuries apart. When it’s a reunion- one of a kind.

Me and my friends, like most teenagers, used to get drunk everyday and each time, there was a point where I’d disappear from sight, joining the trees to cry. Someone always followed and tried to talk me out of the episode but it didn’t help, it never helped. Only the silence of the night could ever soothe the havoc in my shredded heart after my brother died. But when she came, in between suffocating, I remembered how to breathe again after a long time. She didn’t pity me, she listened. She didn’t have to say it but I knew she understood me in a way people are lucky not to. And the torturous routine was slowly coming to an end.

Maybe I fell in love because when I read her my poems, she didn’t shut me up with a kiss but asked to see more. That’s when my winter recognized her as spring. My metaphors didn’t confuse her, she was mesmerised when I said I liked how the leaves danced with the summer breeze above our heads. Half the time she was staring at the contents of my tank top and I stared at the sky and laughed, because I knew.

I actually knew her from middle school but we never talked, just knew that the other existed. But one time I saw her walking her cat outside and since back then, the world hadn’t gotten to me yet, I approached her. Back then, I was fearless in expressing myself, because people haven’t stepped on my tail enough for me to crawl into the lair. The lair I later went in and I’m in it to this day. (I’m still trying to convince myself it’s safe to come out.)

I asked if she wanted to hang out with me and she agreed, she just had to change first. I waited for her in their hallway and watched as her mom combed her hair to make a ponytail. Though it seemed like a casual moment at first glance, I noticed how tight the ponytail was. How there was something more behind pulling the hair. There had to be more behind her mothers stone cold stare. But I let it be. We took a walk down the forrest but she was scared to go further, so she left and I continued by myself. We didn’t talk after that day and I never got to know, for years, if her ponytail got at least a bit looser.