To All the Boys I've Loved Before

To the Tall Chinito Neighbor who is Close but Far Away,

Darn those chinky eyes.
Why do I love eyes so much?
They are windows to the soul, they say.
Ah, yes, yours are my favorite –
eyes filled with hope mixed with just the right amount of aching.
My heart was big enough to fit you and my arms strong enough
to hold you at your weakest
and I was always the girl who wanted to fix things when I see them broken.
You were so broken I wanted to take you home and see all the parts I needed to heal.
But we can’t fix people, can we?
And I learned that much later in life.
You were just a boy
but you were a boy I would’ve given my heart to and didn’t mind if you broke it.
We were too young and never really had the right timing.
Such a cliché, really.
Years later, we saw each other again.
How do you even have closure for something that never even began?
You even said you loved me and that
I was the one who got away.
You loved the young me – that boyish, naive little me
who was ridden with so many complexities
who saw the world through a different lens.
It wasn’t love, I told you.
It was something else entirely different disguised as love.
But even if you confessed it that night,
you made me realize that it didn’t matter
how many brilliant books I’ve read
or how many poems I could make about you.
It didn’t matter if I could sing you to sleep every night
and make you forget about this world.
It never mattered if I could make you laugh and cry at the same time
or make you question your current reality.
It didn’t matter if I would let you tell me stories about all your scars
and make you fall in love with their very existence.
It didn’t matter if I could give you the stars
or I could name one after you.
It never mattered if I had some sort of power to make the ice in you melt
like hot chocolate on a cold, rainy day.
It didn’t matter because it wasn’t supposed to.
It wasn’t meant to.
I grew tired of having to translate an otherworldly language
to someone who only knew the alphabet.
My soul, a beautiful ocean but you were so terrified of the depths,
content on standing by the shore.
You could’ve dived, I would’ve taken you in –
but you were so afraid to be vulnerable
so afraid to show the chinks in your armor.
It was just too much to ask.
All the words I said to you
all those things spoken at the spur of the moment
they were never meant to take root
inside your barren heart.
So take the letters I sent you
set them ablaze and watch them burst into flames
so that it could somehow spark warmth into your cold and lonely soul
and ignite the dying embers of your icy heart.
I guess, even if we never had the kind of closure I wanted
it was the kind of character development I needed.
I learned the beauty of waiting and just letting things fall into place;
to not chase after things that aren’t truly meant for me.
And maybe you’re only a perfect metaphor
of all the things I could’ve done
or could’ve had
or could’ve been
or all the things I should leave behind me
and things just being not meant to be.
It was fun travelling that road of memories
but I now I set it free.
I’m just glad you found the one,
And hey, I did too.