You care to know my name but it is of no utter importance. What matter the most is that I have spent almost six years of my life not looking forward but looking back, back at the place where it all began.
The time spent at looking back to trysts of life, to the time where heartache and magic where almost one and the same. Looking back to the time where we started the love and ended it in the place where the chrysanthemums bloom to the red light of the sun’s twilight, where the sound so devoid that one can only appreciate the whispers the wind carries.
Yes this was what it was during that time, where the sun laid silently as the witness to growing and destruction of what was to become us. Now we ask ourselves, where was it all now? Where have the deadening emotions rouse? Looking back at the place of silence, we lived out our lives as if it has already been set for us. Yet, we choose to break out from it and shatter the screams of millions to hear what our hearts scream and communicate it through the listening eyes of ours. Yes, this was the moment of how the million tragedies started, the hollowfication of the creations the sun has set to fire up the passions in our hearts.
Yes it all started in the place where the sun was silent. It was the place where it all began. We met on the hilltop to wait for the sun to kiss the twilight’s horizon giving an end to the moment where it was darkest. It only took a few seconds for the light to emerge and blanket its warmth to the land of labor, the sea of possibilities and to the limitless sky. I was there and she was there. She, with the long black hair that the yellowish red light has reflected upon and skin that was of white that the nymphs of the trees grew jealous upon, waited for whispers of perversions that seemed to last forever. She sat on that rock and without a hint of hesitation I gave my jacket to her and left without looking back. She called to know my name but replied with a hint of arrogance yet simmered to the tone of humility.
“Nevermore”
I continued to walk the path which has been set for me, thinking this was only a moment that will never pass in time again. Yet with the sun as our witness, she whisper no words to the breeze that the place gives us – maybe this was not to happen ever again in the moment of our lives. True or maybe not, the glimpses of our hopes and fears of that very moment started to spark in the trudging of what the palisade cliffs of that hill may gossips to the trees, to the grasses, to orchids that bloom in waking and the chrysanthemums that spill the sweetest words of our fateful encounter.
Days pass and I return to that place of bittersweet silence to try and drown the memories of heartache and magic. I wait for the sun to rise and beam out the warmth that can comfort my tortured soul, a release of the tainted blood that course through my veins and pure my heart. I shout in an utmost, almost disastrous, fervor.
“There is no escape to the mutations of ghastly proportions and only in death shall I free myself to the poisonous machinations of a love lost to crystal believers.”
The aberrations come and go and I stand on the palisade cliffs of the hilltop. I almost made the jump then she came along, wearing the same jacket I gave her. I noticed her presence and at that moment the intention of ending the sentience of screaming butchers in my ears seem to fade at the very instant. What was I to her and her to the place of where the sun is silent? The nymphs whisper perverse gossips – revenge upon the beauty that has strangled me. It was like in the story, how beauty killed the beast. I pass by her and hoping that I would never return to the palisade cliffs at the hilltop.
“Infatuation has strangled me again”, I whisper in her ear.
“There’s no resisting the tangled web of your secret fantasy and a strange sensation is falling over me”, she replied with a sweet whisper.
“I may be blind but I can see your kiss will punish me and I will fall down on my knees in anticipation of the dawning”, I replied
I tear myself from the beaten path never to look back and still I glance, the lure of a forbidden dance. I’m hypnotized by the sordid nymph who races from me. I left and trudge the long path and in the recesses of my mind only one word comes out of it.
“Nevermore”
She quickly grasped my arms and only told me to wait. Perhaps even angels had devils for their advocates. I stopped on my tracks and took a quick glance at her. I ask myself the question why would she go out of her way to care for a little love that cannot be revived by any whisper. Her words were dancing in the surrealistic surroundings of time and space. Yet, I only wanted to continue off the palisade cliffs on the hilltop. As the sun as my witness a bearer of the many truths that will be told, this was the best for the both of us – to let go any traces of me in her heart and mind for it will do no good, no better, no best to her.
“If you must leave, at least let me know your name” she whispered with a tone of bittersweetness.
“Are the labels time have placed on us important?” I replied with such regress.
“At least get to know mine.”
Will I care to know her name as she will care to know mine? Funny how I ask a question that I know the answer to. I know this because she knows this because the sun, the trees, the blooming orchids and soothsaying chrysanthemums on the palisade cliffs know this.“You cannot ask which I give freely” I only muttered with such sick desperation.
“Can we meet again?” she said.
I only gave out a loud sigh and silence thereafter – in respect to the sun as our witness to the everlasting delusions of our own grandeur. I continue to walk and then I stopped and replied.
“That is for our hearts to decide.”
Then I walked away.
Days pass and I return to the palisade cliffs to ask an audience to the ever silent sun. She was nowhere to be found and alas all hope was gone. Love so sweet yet so bitter. Like the everlasting whores that can only give what the flesh lusts for yet leave the screams of our hearts desire forever falling into the abyss of nothingness. I waited and waited and waited until the nymphs of the palisade cliffs whisper again of perverse gossips about her. Poisonous lies which I cannot stomach, nay, destroy something which I have spent days creating. Until I heard a bittersweet tone that made the whispers all go away.
“This heart speak of such tragedies yet when the tragedies end the lustful desires of this heart begin” she uttered with such sorrow.
She walked by my side and I held her hand and I gave not a care to what the nymphs of the palisade cliffs whisper to my ears. It is only her voice that gives calm to this weary soul – a tryst of a love lost to crystal believers. I feel an utter sadness inside me as I held tightly to her hand. The heavens also feel my pain as it cries with my heart, hoping for this lost love made anew. As the water drips from the sky I start to wonder if I’m still alive then I have to find the answer. Could it be that this was all but just a dream and I’m still beside her? Right before my eyes a tragic surprise, the water stops.
“I hold your hand as you hold mine.”
“What do you think could it be?”
“Do you think it’s wrong of me to long for you despite how you taste?”
“I’ll never leave the ground without having to let go because every time I try I’m further from the sky.”
“I wish that I could let go, but I’m lost in your beautiful trance.”
An exchange of words so sweet yet so bitter and for the first time it meant something, maybe a beginning of something else. This was a tragic ending to the perverse gossips and unsubstantiated soothsaying.
Weeks then pass and then the months pass. The memory of such tragedy was long gone inside my mind. It was trapped forever in the recesses of my unconsciousness. On the eve of night of the one year that has passed, we dare our weak-willed hearts to return to the hilltop, to the palisade cliffs, to the blooming orchids and the soothsaying chrysanthemums. You have arrived before me and then as I thought they were gone, the nymphs again whisper of perverse gossips as we all wait for the sun to rise yet again. I slowly approach you and turn towards me with a tear of a sweet nectar as I graze upon my own thoughts of what might have happened.
“I’m sorry” she said with such sad tone.
“I do not understand” I replied.
“I believe that everything that is between us is not supposed to happen” she replied.
“I still do not understand. What are you trying to make of this?”
“I thought that my heart only belonged to you but it seemed that it belong to someone else.”
“Your heart beats for another?”
“Yes.”
“To whom does it beat for?” I shouted with such rage.
“Goodbye… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.”
Then she left there on the stillness – the sun still not rising.
“To whom does it beat for?” Again I shouted with such rage.
I kneel on the ground pitying myself the things that have happened. Alas the taste of death of my love replaced the smell of the palisade cliff’s death. A lovely wee morning draped in regret. I should have listened to the perverse gossips of the jealous nymphs. Were the gossips ever so perverse? Were the nymphs ever so jealous? Perhaps they were only protecting me and I have disregarded their pleas. I am the one who now suffers.
The sun rises as I slowly get up from kneeling on the ground. I am bounded on the palisade cliffs enchanted by heartache and I am breathless. How could it be that such a wondrous place is trapped in silence? I open my mind to whispers of the breeze, the trees, the grasses, the blooming orchids and the soothsaying chrysanthemums. Yet none of them comforts my weary heart now lost of love anew to crystal believers in a scouring imaginarium. The only thing that I cry my pitiful love are to the nymphs of the palisade cliff that no longer speak of perverse gossips but sing the tunes of rage. The tunes comfort me as I listen in peace and amazement at each screaming wave.
Everywhere I look there’s only agony and pain. What’s the point of fighting everything when there’s nothing to save?
Time is melting away, I can’t explain but my eyes are begging to stay. I must say a sunny day that the silent sun gives helps push the memories away. Yet, Caution must be obeyed on the palisade cliffs on the hill lest one want to have their weary, love-lost hearts be tainted of decay.
Maybe none of us really understood what we’ve lived through or if we had enough time to set an audience to the ever silent sun. This is the end of what was to become yet a start of something that was supposed to be undone.
– Jancarlo Quibod