HERE BUT THERE

1:13 AM

 “All this time, I still remember everything you said. There’s so much you promised, how could I ever forget? So listen, listen to me...”.

I still can recall how this melodious line reverberated through my hazy consciousness as we were riding our way home. His head was on my shoulder; the weight, the smell of alcohol and the heat brought about by the dampness of his sweat made me aware of our nearness, physically, one cold November night. Not sure if he was feigning sleep, or indeed there was truth in his words about his low alcohol tolerance; but either way, the whole duration of that taxi ride was spent without any exchange of words. Apart from the song there was only silence, and the sound of his breathing.

"I know you're going, but I can't believe, it's the way that you're leavin'. It's like we never knew each other at all..."

And at one moment he separated himself from me. He looked at me in the eye.

“Phil Collins. That’s a Phil Collins song.” he said.

----

Most of the memories I have about the person no longer give me nostalgia. I was well aware that I never had the intention to make him an important figure in the course of my life’s history, nor I reckon a come-across in the future. Although he did left a mark in me probably more than I did in him, for me, he was no more than a transition. He was a temporal, evanescent element who passed by at a certain period when I, incidentally, felt empty.

---

But this particular memory still lingers in me sometimes. I never realized this before until now, that the aforesaid moment manifests how I have this ability to detach some aspects of my existence from each other. My ears was in connection to those saccharine sweet words from a ballad it has never heard before, and my tactile senses tell me that I was with someone; someone who was able to break the walls that I have had purposely have built to protect myself. Yet my mind was somewhere else; somewhere which might be beyond the geographical boundaries of the archipelago where we currently stand. Somewhere, separated from time and space. Somewhere, making me slightly oblivious of sensations I had at that present moment. Somewhere, that even though I was aware of my presence in this current state, all along, I was with you.

Came along with my mind, was my heart.

---

“All this time, I still remember everything you said. There’s so much you promised, how could I ever forget? So listen, listen to me.”