… that I care too much when I shouldn’t, and that I have my heart held hostage in all the wrong places.

It is because you represented the part of my life where I can be who I want to be and not yield to the status quo. Where I am nobody’s son, nobody’s employee, nobody’s partner, where I don’t have to march to the beat dictated by my current station in life.

Where there is just you and I, with no baggage, no history, no bounds. Where we can speak freely, laugh without restraint, be naked without inhibition, where we are just hands and tongues, skin and fluids.

But where we would be escaping from fate, awaiting in the form of cynicism and hurt and regret, beyond these four walls, which is but a house of cards doomed to crumble.

Do you know what it is like to lose something before you have even possessed it?

This is why I treated you as if you were a fragile object.

I am back in the July we had spent together sitting at your playground, where sounds of the neighborhood, reminders of the reality that existed beyond the world we had bound ourselves to, played out over our conversations like a soundtrack to the film that had played only in our heads.

“I will never understand your affection for me and why it exists. You are the only one who ever treated me with such care, as if I were a fragile object.”

Like a mirage in a desert, you are a product of contradictions. You yearn to be desired, to be placed on a pedestal, to be worshipped, but deep down inside, your tempestous youth still fights the binds a stable love will wrap around your heart. In the struggle between being wanted and wanting more, one cancels out the other; passion, but without the burden to constantly express it; pleasure, but without the need for reciprocity; comfort, but without the suffocation. In the end, all there can be is an impasse of your heart and your head.

Yet it is the alchemy of your cold, hard logic and fiery libido that fuels your curiosity and makes you feel the most alive, even when you know all too well the oscillation from one extremity to the other renders you an enigma few could or would comprehend. Which is why I, a man crawling in that desert, his throat and skin parched, can only admire but never possess the unattainable treasure that is you.

You were, and will always be, the mirage I can never reach.

A flood of memories comes rushing back. I reach out, wanting so much to touch them. A reel of fragmented scenes projected on a wall, they burn though my searching hands. Like the fleetingness of your smile, your voice and your skin, they dance in and out of focus, in plain sight but out of reach.

I don’t think it was as cool a year ago on the night of June 20 as it is here tonight.

The zephyr embraces me. Briefly, I imagine you are here with me on this very same bench smiling at the respite.

This park brings back so many memories of you, of us. It is the reason why I find myself back here every once in a while.

Because it is the only thing I have left of you.

I wish I could hang out with you sometimes, drinking and chatting like we used to.

I look at the people I pass by, and imagine it’d be nice to have you walk alongside me.

Sometimes.

Merry-makers. Colleagues. Friends. Partners. Lovers. Over music and laughters, they dined and wined. Into the crowd I searched, hoping I would find you, and wondering what it would take to hear your voice or read your words again.

She slides lower into the safety of her rattan chair and hugs her legs tighter.

The clock ticks the first minute of the fifth hour. The flow of words has ceased. In the void of a conversation writhing in the last throes of its life as the sinewy fingers of sleep wrap themselves tighter around its jugular, only stale cigarette smoke and cautious intent hang in the air.

The prince of darkness, a jet-black crow, lands and perches ominously on the edge of her chair. With a pit-less stare it surveys, with neither prejudice nor malice, the tragedy of the two persons in the room and decides it has to mete the only function its presence serves.

The cloak has spread. Like a blossom decaying, it begins to wrap around her small body, announcing as its feathered edges lightly scratch on her fair thighs that innocence has seen its last light and that the first phase of darkness has already been set in motion.

Disembodied words on a screen, piercingly bright in the dark. Late night cab rides, traversing wastelands and neighborhoods in slumber.

No traffic, no pedestrians, no nothing. Only him, a lone figure on the streets in the still of the night, as he impatiently makes his way to hers.

To see her. Hold her.

Like a specter, he does not exist by day. Like the shadows he is so acquainted with, he comes out only at night.

He can only come out at night.

And so he walked out of his self-imposed exile and back into the company of friends both real and imaginary.

They came to a pair of deck chairs by the pool. Nestled in the dark, they were flanked by two of the many palm trees which dotted the landscaping of the property.

He was glad to be rid of the heavy bag he has been carrying all day. Quietly she sat at the edge of the other deck chair, her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped. A conversation began between them, but it was the kind of talk that neither he nor she would later have any recollection of. Just like the unspoken and intangible buffer of cordiality that separated their words, they consciously sat some distance away from each other. Not pleased at the awkwardness, he looked at her and patted the empty spot beside him.

Without a word, she complied. He noticed with interest that she assumed again the same sitting posture; elbows on knees, hands clasped together. It almost looked as if she was guarding herself from any advances he could be making, though he wagered a guess that what she desired was anything but.

They talked some more. But only for a while more, for the both of them felt an inexplicable, dawning shift in both their moods and the ambience in which they basked. Their gazes met and silence fell. She lowered her head and looked away. For a moment, he could only look at her in quiet awe. She looked so vulnerable. Almost fragile. It was a side of her that he has never seen before, a softer side she hid so well that Saturday afternoon when they met for the first time.

He placed a hand on her chin. She fixed her gaze on her lips as he leaned in. Lightly, their lips met. A butterfly kiss on a bed of clouds. Then those beautifully sculpted lips of hers parted, and her hunger emerged. She grew bold and he reciprocated her unspoken challenge. There was a scent which wafted in the air; he soon realized it was coming from the nape of her neck. With his lips, he traced a path to the intoxicating scent. Unsatiated, he tasted every inch of her strong neck.

They kissed again and again, their advances oscillating in a courtship dance that was tentative and decisive all at the same time. Between raspy breathing, they tasted, explored, teased and fed. The quarter of an hour lingered like an eternity.

When it was time for him to go, the frown she wore on her face betrayed her reluctance. The walk to the gate was devoid of words. They did not hold hands. Twice he pulled her aside and kissed her again. The last time they detoured, she broke off and sighed in frustration and defeat, a noise which encapsulated the frustration at all that they could not do, of which they both knew only too well. Her lips pursed, she took his hand and tugged him away from the shadows.

They held each other as they waited by the roadside. A lone taxi cab approached in the distance. Reluctantly, and almost desperately, he kissed her again. His thumb, which has been tracing lazy swirls on her stomach, fell away. They exchanged soft goodnights. As his taxi cab pulled away, he heard again, in his head, her plaintive sigh. It was a sound that continued to haunt him for the whole journey home.