No Title

A pulse symbolises a beating heart, breathing life into a body; where our consciousness becomes the wormhole of our ideals and reality, blood coursing through veins as red becomes indistinguishable from ink black, staining the parchment with bold pressure and closing the gaps between two worlds.

Thoughts flow endlessly like a ravine, words weaving themselves into curls, fluidly dancing on paper before solidifying along with its meaning, bearing the weight of continuing the story. Stories that can be found from anywhere, from a grieving young to a content elder, that Walmart employee who just happens to have a bad day, your teacher who perhaps acquired a gun licence but chose to teach instead because it’s their dream job. There are also stories from nowhere, from mismatching and compiling chaos from within our minds, scrunching it up like a piece of paper before smoothing it out. Timeless, as possibilities gave freedom for retelling the past, concluding the present and manifesting the future. Stories are infinite, so when I stop to name the work in front of me, I’ve realised a major flaw within the structures of my assumptions.

I stared at my paper, unable to find the right words to complete, in my very least opinion, my tour de force. I couldn’t find it in my heart to cement a title that is unmatched to the experiences, the stories, the life I had welded into my writing. The world that I had created, the world which everyone exists in an alternate dimension, which consists of you and me, both.

I find myself lost amidst it all, and for once I find myself unable to form a coherent thought, as if I have been struck dumb for drawing a blank. A translucent veil brushes against my arm, and I was momentarily drawn to the open window by my side. The city bustling, noise permeating heavily through the air, and I found myself forcing, with all my willpower to look back onto the paper. Thoughts jumbled, I decided to backtrack a bit and rediscovered my initial thinking as to why I had written the piece the way it is.

Hesitant now, as I grimaced at the idea of rereading my work. Writing can come as naturally as it can be, like talking or singing. It is not embarrassment, like stuttering during a speech, that shies me away, as unlike speaking, you can always delete that draft before publishing it, and no one will ever know. But to look back is to delve into feelings you’ve yet to classify, the emotions you ignored when it fleetingly arises when composing, and to substantially sort it out in order to reach the main purpose, or before it inevitably combusts.

Language, sentences, thoughts and words, they can be powerful when wielded the correct way; like a sword polished and refined, sharpened during battles and prepared for oncoming war. Bravery on the fields as we strike down our opponents with a flick of our wrists, bloody it may be, but there are those who find comfort and beauty with the velvet wounds they inflict on others. Maybe, a sense of security from protecting and defending one’s home from those deemed harmful. Here, our swords are our pens, we write to our hearts content, we express our emotions. The courage it takes to open up your soul to the world, where it is unforgiving and unnecessarily harsh when judging a person. So to pour yourself, your entire being into a calculated risk, just so your words may be heard by one or two, it is a feat most people cannot compare.

However, it also holds a power none can grasp, with how it pushes us into one, morphs us with our similar interests, creates something unique, something only known between us like an inside joke, it makes us one. There was an unnamed tension between us. I hate how it ended before anything concluded.

I shook my thoughts, and started reading.

My dear, It is a language, that we both speak, but we dare not voice, for the moment it reaches past our dry lips, its meaning disperse, and there left no life to rue.

There are things better left unsaid.

There are times where language cannot express an emotion. It is something we can hear, thunderous and hammering incessantly inside us, that we can’t help but strain ourselves to hear, those wordless emotions, entangled into wordless symphonies. Pages and pages of journals you wished you could hear, hope for that tiny timid voice to regain its hold on your thoughts, to harmonise and clash and to rest, before ending it all with a crescendo to a final forte.

It is something we can taste, bitterness finally surfaced from the sugar-laced nicotine, addictively distasteful. Like how we purposefully chased that high, as if we love the pain, like we deserved to be punished, that we deserve to be stabbed in the neck and left to fight for longer, before our final breath. Tanginess of iron cannot dissuade us from the rush of dopamine, from the extent and vastness of this indescribable feeling of being at the top of the world, like a god standing amongst people and mere seconds before dying out. But still, we chased that high, what’s more alive than feeling pain?

I feel like I’m getting off track, I’ve lost some of my senses after all.

I can’t see what’s coming next. I can’t smell nostalgia no longer. I can’t feel warmth and cold on my fingertips like I used to.

And soon enough, I won’t be able to speak.

In the end, the time I borrowed to live this life, must be returned to its owner with a soul of a lifetime.

…I think I have an idea. The sound of the curtains flapping next to me, beckoning me towards the unknown. Still, I would like to share one last paragraph of my writing with you. The rest are a bit personal, but I hope I can find it one day within me, the courage to share it all with you.

She was confined, lost in her own thoughts. And when she saw an opening, she spread her wings and jumped into forever paradise, her forever freedom.

These unnamed feelings, these unnamed thoughts; these unnamed things we had going on between us; these curses of an unnamed work I have laying in front of me.

Is this really it? Am I going to finish this piece without titling it? Am I really going to close off this chapter, leave it off here? Am I really going to end this story, abruptly, give up completing this work?

Am I finished with this novel?

I shook my head, No. I have to finish this one, my tour de force. The only book I’ve written so far actually, the one that will probably take up my entire lifetime. I am not going to end this one, just so I can move on to another, I want this one to work.

I want this to have meaning. I want this to be heard.

I want this to be named.

The wind whistles beside me.

I’ve decided. I wrote down the title of this chapter, which I believe will then turn into the title of the book, the title of this story, the title of this life.

I stood up, and I walked towards the window.

The parchment lays there, not moving. The breeze still occasionally rustles the sheets. There lay, bold and brave,

No Title.