It all started with an obsession, for the feelings were all new, and just like a novice, I burnt away all my grace and was left undone.
Then there was this moment where you said hello while I was looking down at a page, comparing the complex problems of my life at sixteen to the balancing of chemistry equations. As I looked up, I saw your eyes gaze right through to my soul and knew you were the one — but alas, this life may have been amiss. And just maybe, just maybe, you would recognize me in the next.
Then came a time where I met her among the smell of orchard tea under the canopy of rain trees. The green eyes with specks of twinkle, always leaving me in awe. I suppose fortune does not always favor the bold, for I held on to the fraying ends of strings while life pulled us apart.
Time went on like it always does, and at some point, I decided to run along with it, trying to stay ahead. But life, time’s only friend, had something in store for me — and so I walked right into a curveball, completely out of the blue.
She whispered sweet nothings every night, swirling me in a concoction of love and lust, leaving me always wanting more. And so I grew mad, losing all sense of self in pursuit of her acceptance.
They say one spends seven lives with their soul mate. In that phase of madness, I lived and died many more.
Finally, as I emerged, I was broken beyond repair — and just like one keeps a broken thing for nostalgia, I kept the idea of love.
My time has now passed. These memories sit closer to myth than legend. Life has never stopped nudging me to set the weights down. Perhaps it believes it is best to meet death with none of the strings attached.
And so I say to my younger self, “This is the end of the line.”
To those I have loved and to those I have lost — you are nothing but mere whispers, the kind people trade when speaking of myths long forgotten.
A Tribute to Myself 