Monday, August 18, 2014

FOR REGINA (BIRTHDAY)

By Invictus


They say the body is made out of dust, but no one has ever told me the flesh could also erode from the body like a mudslide. A hug can warm the heart, but tell me other ways how I could warm your heart without crushing what is left in that body of yours. Those bones were reaching out to me like branches, and I could only hope I was  a bluebird singing in the vast forest of your lost faith. Unwilling to let go of my memory of that girl you once had been, I held you in that embrace like a remnant of an artifact whose real form had gotten lost in time; you, whose body is now a collateral damage to the bloodshedding of your own hopes.


But that day I saw you, I was engulfed by your stillness. Heaven knows how deep your ocean was, yet you came back up to the surface resilient, sending ripples across the water with your smiles and whispers. Don’t hold back the tears, Love… It’s okay to cry a river sometimes, for every river flows to the ocean, and every ocean sends tides to the shore, to place a kiss on that one lost bird, waking it up to go back home. I know you came back home. 

Once, I was sitting at CafĂ© by the Ruins. I couldn’t help but admire those shattered bricks. And at that moment I had this sadomasochistic realization that we have to break a part of ourselves in order to see beauty. Sometimes, we have to swing the hammer against a wall and to look straight through the rubble to see how breath-taking the sunrise is. That day, when I saw you and your mom loosen your grip on old grudges just to hold each other, I chose to see the sunrise and not the wreckage.

I know some wounds are as deep as an ocean, but I've been told that in order to allow healing, we have to remind ourselves over and over that other people are wounded too, that we are not alone.I know the world is far from perfect. I am not the type who wishes upon a falling bomb mistaking it for a shooting star. But I have stuck my head way up there with the clouds after realizing that Maroon 5 is right, that "it's not always rainbows and butterflies." We have this habit of turning decay into a fertilizer and wounds into a treasure map. Sometimes, our optimism is borderline MADNESS. I can never take away your pain, no one can. I can only share my dose of INSANE OPTIMISM to make you sane enough to believe that it is not yet over, that you are still here. So hear me when I say,

"Just because your heart feels heavy doesn't mean you're weak. The next time you lose count of the times you have come undone, remind yourself that every person, in his most battered state, wears a cape. The fact that you are still here shows the kind of super power it takes to carry boulders of grief and shame in the chambers of your heart. You may not stop the forest from burning, but it takes guts to rescue every cinder of your own faith. May you always find comfort in the fortress of your strength. May you always look up to see the chandelier of your hope and remember that the only thing you should hang is your dreams."

I know it's hard to blow the candles on our birthday cake unsure how many breaths are left. But we still have to call it a birthday, right? We wear bracelets even though they don’t have flesh on both wrists to latch on and even though those wrists are now all skin and bones; because there are just too many good things in those bracelets to hold on to. We still mark our calendars even though we know our hopes and prayers outnumber our remaining days. 

When I told you, everything’s going to be alright, I was not lying, and neither was I giving you false hopes… because that day, I saw past that delicate body. I saw your unyielding spirit.
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"In the middle of all these troubles
He is always there
Hold on to the hope of eternity
That all these things shall come to pass
But we will see the wonders
The wonders of our God."

~III-Green of S.Y. 2013-2014

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