In Continuum.

Turquoise Winter Morning


Will someone please call a surgeon
Who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart
That you're deserting for better company?

Thought kept me awake almost throughout the night yesterday, banging on the sides of my skull like fists of an innocent prison doomed to die. I could almost hear the scraping of the nails upon the walls, the sound of the prisoner's dying pleas to be released, and part of those being my desperate call to fall asleep. But neither of those were answered by anybody out there in the middle of the night, as I laid widely awake on my bed, with the only sources of light coming from the yellow lamp above and the blue screen of my cell phone.

My thumb hovered above the button and was suddenly afraid, to look back at the old messages and further send myself into the pits of insomnia. It wouldn't help to read them all over again, for the choice ultimately isn't up to me. So I deleted all the messages and tossed to phone into a comfortable corner, under the pillow which I slammed my head over and over. Sleepless nights like this happen rather often nowadays, and to be honest they are getting on my nerves.

With one eye opened I stared at the colors and patterns, white stripes and blue criss-crossing the bed sheet. Alternating these zebra-crossing like patterns were turquoise squares with white diamonds in neat rows, lined up right underneath my face. I stared at them for the longest time until the diamonds swirled and blended, until they formed a giant blurry star in the center of my vision. The need to fall asleep passed then, and taking over my attention and desire was this growing shape of white, reaching out like claws of sorts through my vision and into my mind, grabbing at memories of the distant past.

I can't accept that it's over...
I will block the door like a goalie tending the net
In the third quarter of a tied-game rivalry

Distant past, did I just type that? Strange to think that the memory is distant, for it only just happened a little more than two months ago. But distant it feels, and that is true. A part of my brain unleashed that memory, and the hope to fall asleep in the middle of the warm March night faltered and scattered like the way the sound of the cars disappeared downstairs on the lonely streets, always heading away from the window and away from me.


It was Christmas morning when I awoke from my slumber, and the dizziness still filled the majority of my head as I sat up in bed. Barely three hours of sleep then as I checked the digital clock on my cell phone, and breathed a sigh of relief as it was still a little more than an hour until the alarm sounds. The alarm, I cursed the alarm under my breath then. It would cue the time to get ready for departure, to leave the comfort of my bed and the warmth in the arms of the woman that I love. The overhead announcement resonated through the white walls of my bedroom, though no speakers were in sight then.

So just say how to make it right
And i swear i'll do my best to comply

It was merely my imagination, as I thought to myself. The square of light at the window was still young, the youthful day awakens from his own slumber through the night. But not yet has it grown into it's full glory, but rather the gentle shade of soft turquoise. What a beautiful way to receive the Christmas morning, as I rubbed my bare arms with my palms, cold from the blowing fan and the exposed skin.

You laid there on your side, your face away from where I was. Your hair covered the most part of your face, but your cheek emerged through the dark sea of black, like an island in the middle of the sea. The plateau stared back at me with it's compact softness, a demure beauty almost too fragile to touch or feel. But the urge to protect was betrayed by my lips, for I reached down and kissed you gently on your lips.

You stirred with your eyes still closed, and with the breath of morning you smiled at me and asked if it was time for me to go. It wasn't, I whispered into your ears. Go back to sleep, I then said. I kissed you again on your ears, and there was a weak and tired chuckle from between your lips. The space underneath the sheets was still untouched by the morning light, and through the white curtains the turquoise remained, hinting of the mild winter days yet to come.

But within the walls of the blanket everything was warm, and everything was safe. And despite the clock constantly counting down the minutes and the seconds, secretly inside our hearts we kept praying for a minute or a second longer, pretending that the world was under our order. We pretended that we didn't care for the time, and supporting myself on my elbow you opened your eyes finally.

Tell me am i right to think that there could be nothing better
Than making you my bride and slowly growing old together

There you are, I softly said. Good morning my dear. It wasn't time yet, and it was still early. The night of fun and memories wrote tired marks upon her eyelids, and the island in the black sea rolled over to show the beautiful face that was submerged below the surface. You smiled again in the cold winter morning, and into your ears once more I whispered 'I love you' once again, only a time short of enough and never too many.


I feel I must interject here you're getting carried away feeling sorry for yourself
With these revisions and gaps in history
So let me help you remember.
I've made charts and graphs that should finally make it clear.
I've prepared a lecture on why i have to leave

So please back away and let me go...

How did it come to this, was the only question that I couldn't resist. All these while I have been trying so hard for one thing, and that is not to blurt out anymore nonsensical words that might discredit my vow and my earnestness. But that is the sole question that I have in mind, like the innocent prisoner pounding on the walls of my head, until blood splattered on those walls and trickled down the edge.

I can't my darling I love you so...

I blasted the songs in my ears today as I took a walk home, remembering your shadows from this side of the road. Boarding the bus and seeing your body disappear amongst the crowd, then waving a quick goodbye as the bus sped off into the busy traffic. Then walking down the covered walkway and into the interchanged, my fingers danced upon the metal railings to the sad melancholic piano in my ears. To everybody else at the scene, it was a scene of utter boredom for a guy to be tapping his fingers constantly on the metal, making a constant ringing vibration up and down. But it was also a scene that involved a crime, or a death scene that should have very well involved my dead body marked with white chalk and yellow sticker.

The red, white and purple bus rumbled to a stop, and inside the bus there lined two neat rows of yellow seats. Yellow, I thought to myself, I subconsciously took the corner most seat at the back, thinking that we might have sat on the same bus before, with you on the exact same spot where my palm fell gently. The engine of the bus rumbled, and the wheels rolled over the black and yellow striped bumps. But there I was trying to cup the space on the seat, afraid that a slight trembled would send any sign or scent of you off into oblivion, disappearing from my life. Then I questioned myself about the purpose of this stupidity, the act of trying to uphold something that is fleeting. And at the back of the bus, quite alone and lonely, I smiled to myself for my own foolishness and naivety.

Tell me am I right to think that there could be nothing better
Than making you my bride and slowly growing old together
Don't you feed me lines about some idealistic future
Your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures

I can't believe at times, that you did whatever you did to me, even after that turquoise winter morning. As if nothing was redeemable, though nothing should be quantifiable. How did we come to this, that is the only question that I have no answer to. It may be you, and it may be me. But I do not believe that neither of us has a part to play in this foolish dream.

Preparations of the heart has been done, though I am still afraid. Afraid to face the bitter reality of your eventual words, but yet with a little light of hope I still hold that so dear. Both paths are opened to me right now, and there is a only a single command from you for me to walk through either one of the doors.

There is a future with both paths that I might take, since life goes on with or without. But I can't live the path that I am most likely to take now, knowing that I can never remove the turquoise winter morning from my mind. Because really, before that morning ever came along, I never knew that we could end up the way we are. Before that morning, it was such a pure and simple love on my end of the boat, and before then it was blissful and simple. Perhaps the morning was a curse, or a final farewell blessed by the Gods, a hint for me to bid farewell to those blissful and carefree times. Now that that day is over, whatever happened to us, and that day, and the kiss, and...

There is no purpose in the mornings that I live in silence, no purpose but a desire reaching merely skin deep. Should the grasp that I have around the rope of hope burn away, I shall fall into the depths of self-pity and never to rise again like I did from the ashes. I might, I just might, like a stubborn cockroach from the bottom of a slipper. But should my face be broken and my limbs be snapped off, would you still remember my name, and can you don't remember me this way?

I admit that i have made mistakes and i swear
I'll never wrong you again
You've got a lure i can't deny,
But you've had your chance so say goodbye
Say goodbye