Michael in October {#2}

Some time in October,
electricity lit up the city,
like it does everyday;
however, on the 23rd,
I actually felt it.
I always knew
that the clouds float above me,
that the sun burns my eyes
and how bright things can make you cry, too,
that the hot water from the shower
feels like rain except
it actually stung when it's
not supposed to.
But some time in October,
I notice the sky was actually a dome
that encloses a safe place
the earth, our home.
The sun hurts me in many ways,
but in October,
I felt grateful for how it
allows vegetation, and beach days,
and sun-kissed skin, and California,
and summer flings, and sunflowers, too.
And when it rained,
I felt it, too.
Except I wasn't in the shower.
I was at Pickard Hall.
And you were in line by the nursing office,
and I was in the bathroom,
and yes I did notice you.
And yes, I chose to walk past you.
Because Michael,
that rainy morning,
it was not in the shower that I felt the rain.
I felt it the day I first saw you.
And unlike my hot showers,
it did not sting much.
But I had to walk past you.
Because the moment I recognized you,
I already knew, like my hot showers,
it's bound to sting soon.
When it's not supposed to.
October always felt like autumn,
because it is autumn, and with the leaves,
I fall for you, too.
Leaf by leaf, day by day.
Heart beat by heart beat.
But we both know that heartbeats
are just contractions of the heart that
eject volume to feed oxygen to our body.
But no, let me have my October.
Let me take a step back and not be like you,
who only lived to charge his phone,
and said that the clouds look like cotton candy,
and that Texas summers are the best,
and thought that rainy days are inconvenient
while laughing at the classic joke
that your car will get into an accident because of the sky.
In October, let me be not like you.
Let me feel October with my heart
and appreciate it like how I would a masterpiece.
Because you made it that way Michael.
You made Octobers make me feel every bit of it.

Of Michael {#1}

It hurts. But I must go on, mustn't I?

And I keep rewatching the movie,

examining each frame of the film,

rewinding the bar to 10:23,

fast-forwarding and pausing,

trying to read between the lines,

trying to look for the first signs of trouble

not just in you,

but in me, too.

And I don't want to admit this,

but I've always known all this time,

I just didn't want to face it.

That you bring out the worst in me,

as I do with you.

But I loved you. And you loved me.

And we said that a million times.

And shouldn't that have been enough?

But then again, I've always known

all this time,

that it wasn't and will never be.

And you see evil in me,

as I do in you,

but everyone has a little evil in them.

It is just that you chose to see that first,

and I did, too.

And it made me believe 

that I was as bad of a woman

as I have felt when I was with you.

So I started becoming it.

Trying to find justification for

your perception that I needed to merit.

The trick is, love, to believe in me.

To always let me know that I had good in me.

Have I not done that? Did you not hear that

enough from me? I guess it was a bad trick.

It was a mess.

Shattered glass on the floor.

Wallpapers torn off the walls.

Hangers dangling by the cabinet,

with no hints of you and me.

And maybe I could have kept you longer.

Maybe, had I just been less smart.

Less ambitious.

Less loud.

less disappointing.

Less of everything that I can do.

Maybe, just maybe, you would still be here.

But confidence was arrogance to you.

My ambitions towered your reality.

And the constant cheer I hear from the background,

was food for my ego in your eyes.

And the worst me that you saw,

as terrible as this might sound,

was already the best suppression of who I really am.

What more if I stripped myself naked?

More naked than when I take my clothes off in front of you.

And you realize that I could be worse in your eyes?

I lived this prison for some time now.

Of sleeping behind bars,

whose coldness cannot be felt by my fingertips.

And maybe I belong here.

But maybe, I don't.

I traced back to before I met you.

Looked at myself in the eyes of past lovers.

Heard my names in the sound of different voices.

And remembered who I was and can be,

in each pair of arms.

I was different in all,

but all pieces were truly of me.

I can't seem to show you this abstract I made

because you think badly of the cloth that hung over it.

So I let you walk out of the glass door.

Turned off the lights.

And locked the museum as I go home.

And you have your pains, too,

of which I cannot fathom as I cannot be you.

And you could write about them,

as beautifully or as painfully as you want.

But I have to let you go.

Because words are words,

and I only make up a letter in your sentence,

and won't ever be the dot that finishes it.

I have to understand that as much as you hurt me,

I have hurt you as badly, too.

And we're going to put a comma on that.

Or a semicolon.

Where you can start writing again.

Where you can be happy somewhere else.

Where you can fit in the puzzle more perfectly.

More comfortably.

More symmetrically.

Than you ever did with me.