…back to where it began.


The cherry trees showed their pink smiles in the spring. I laughed sincerely as you fell face-first into the ground from a game of tag. The petals fall onto the ground, and then summer comes, greening the leaves on the trees. I cried as your eyes dulled at the death of a firefly, forgetting the fact that today was your birthday. The leaves, aged with mature hues of brown and yellow, scattered themselves under the autumn gold. Your running arms carried me along the cement sidewalk across the park near our new home. It was the last time I saw you. The winter rain hugged my skin as I stood, naked, alone. The silver strings of your heart began to give way to the fire burning inside my heart, and the scythe of time painlessly sliced them apart. You were no more to me; the pages of our memoir faded away as the icy winds robbed them from my hands.

I am alone. I’ll be alright.


Every year, the womb of nature nurtures this cycle of seasons. When you and I were one, we did things our way, unaware of what lies beyond the carnation field. It was my fault, not yours, to have allowed the seasons to take me away from you. We would spend time frolicking in the puddles of the streets after the spring rain. We would watch in awe the summer rainbow that arced from the sprinklers in our uncle’s backyard. We would roll with the autumn wind and laugh at ourselves for flubbing the lyrics to First Love. When my hands cracked in the cold of winter, you would sit alongside me, caressing me with your silver lips. You endured my childhood pains so that I can live my life contently.

Yet, as the seasons colored my heart, my eyes wandered from your sapphire gaze. Who am I? Who are you? Do we exist? These questions dampened my mind with spring showers as I talked to a beggar in the summer before the police arrested him, my friend in the fall before she passed away, and my parents in the winter before they left for work. I took in adult pains that you could not endure alone, and my soul became uneasy. What am I? What is truth?

Goodbye. I’ll be back. You’ll be okay.

I ventured to the blacks of my soul, abandoning you in my quest for truth. Awakened by my past, my black words humanized you. Your ebony hair rusted iron-red and your marigold skin melted to mud. When I freed myself from the darkness, I returned. You weren’t there. A paper, scarred with red from the blood spilt from my finger and brown from the dirt on my fingertips, remained.

I wish to stay you forever, yet I cannot. The blacks had poisoned my soul. I hold your dried pen and throw your remnants into the trash.

I write alone. I’ll be okay.