Contemplations

Dear readers,

the EDITOR would like to clarify that the story below has NOTHING to do with tkwek EXCEPT that he wrote it - it is modelled on the experiences of friends (:


you pause in your flight,
but ay! wings that never
stop beating in the hearts
of men.


The Straight Times Editor



Petals

He stepped out onto the bridge, the cool draughts of the river below and the warm currents from the road behind swirling around him in intangible eddies, pulling at the lapels of his concert blazer and the laces of his synthetic-leather concert shoes. His hair flopped in combs of suave black around his features – tanned, but troubled – and framed those glinting silver spectacles against the harsh night sky.

The cello he pulled behind him skipped over drain covers in rattling annoyance. He’d never been heading for home this early after the traditionally-exhilarating year-end concerts. For once, tonight, he left his friends back in the Hall, drenched in post-concert euphoria, and made his own solitary way back home, letting his mind revel in various tortured thoughts as his footsteps dragged him towards the bright lights of the MRT station.

Of course, he was thinking about her.

The ‘she’ that filled his thoughts could or could not have been called a loved one. Officially, there was nothing between them. Careful to hide their relationship from the prying eyes of their burgeoning communities, it had flourished for the past months within their hearts as well as in the eyes of a few close friends – who, bemused and touched, sealed their lips with knowing smiles.

He first met her in school – in his favourite practice room, to be exact. Sitting at the piano, transcribing the latest Evanescence hit away from the disapproving glares of his teachers, he’d been rudely interrupted by a sudden gust of wind from the corridors and a presence behind him. Then he’d turned around with a sharp rebuke ready. But the moment he set eyes on her, he was smitten.

In the blink of an eye there came that fateful afternoon when they’d shared everything at that same piano, improvising on the spot in tactful counterpoint, and sitting ever closer to each other with each passing phrase. And before he knew it, the three words he once thought he would never ever say – not before seventeen, at least – cascaded out of his mouth like so many glittering diamonds, landing on her lap where his hands held hers.

“I love you.”

What joy it was when her golden lips uttered the same words too.

Now looking back on that time, now half a year removed, he was finding it harder and harder to unearth those unearthly emotions he once felt about her – she was gradually becoming just another girl, just another friend, yet never a girlfriend. Though he was sure she still loved him, he wasn’t so sure about himself. Whether he loved her still. Or even liked her at all.

Frankly speaking, she might have been dimming in comparison. There was always Raquel, that angelic flautist he met awhile ago. And whom he was trying his best to forget – or rather, not to fall in love with again. Now Raquel had much better looks, a much better voice, and a much better heart than her – he was beginning to wonder how he’d fallen for her in the first place.

Or perhaps it was just because he hadn’t seen her in some time. After all, the school was having winter break and she was back in Toronto for the week. Sure, he got letters from her telling of sumptuous turkey dinners and adorable cousins but he’d trashed them after the first paragraph or so.

Or perhaps, perhaps, she had been just a phase in his life, like most things he had once grown to trust and love were turning out to be. Maybe this whole love thing was a phase in life too, he reflected. This strange emotion.

Stopping on the bridge, he sighed. It was a sigh of contemplation, a sigh of depression, a soft sigh of consternation that drifted into the eddy already surrounding his feet and whispered little thoughts into his ear.

He loved her, he loved her –

He loved her not.