Late nights at the studio alone where I was immerse myself in my craft of creating music, the one thing that makes me happy, and the one thing I'm using to convey my despair.
It's cold in here, the lights are dim and the nights are long and lonely. But I have my bottles of beer to keep me company.
I keep going throughout the night, writing lyrics down as quickly as I can spit bars, creating fresh beats that would become a hit, continuously going over every single detail and improving anything that doesn't fit up to my standard.
There comes a point during the night where I become completely frustrated. When things don't seem to work out and everything that I do feels useless since I can't do it properly.
And that's when I pick up my old dictionary. It's old and tattered and all the pages have dog-ears and it's probably out-dated since there's bound to be more words that have been added into the dictionary since I first bought the book over 10 years ago. I bought this to keep my mind fresh, to explore new words which would provoke new feelings.
I close my eyes and flip it open on a random page and place my finger on it. I open my eyes to see the word I landed on.
Memory - noun
1. The faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information.
E.g: "I've a great memory for faces"
2. The process of retaining and reproducing past thoughts and sensations; the sum of things remembered; an individual recollections; commemoration.
E.g: "one of my earliest memories is of sitting on his knee"
Synonyms: recollection, remembrance, reminiscence, evocation, reminder, souvenir, echo, impression.
I pause once I've read it. The word itself begins to stir something inside me. But it's a word I'm already familiar with so I decide to open it up at a random page once more.
Fleeting - adjective
Lasting for a very short time.
E.g: "I saw her face for a fleeting moment"
Synonyms: brief, transient, short lived, short, momentary, sudden, cursory, transitory, ephemeral, fugitive, evanescent, fading, passing, temporary, impermanent, short-term, rapid, quick, swift, rushed.
This definition seems to stir something else inside of me and I place the two words together.
Fleeting memory
And instantly, her face appears in my mind. A wave of nostalgia courses through me and I accept it. It's a good time to sit and remember my past, bits and pieces of it that has contributed to building me.
I allow her face to come to the surface, arising from the water where I drowned her in my mind, to erase her and the pain left behind.
I can't make her out clearly since its been such a long time. Her image is hazy, blurred on the edges.
But I remember her.
Her scent: she smelt of apples and cinnamon, fresh with a hint of home. Her smile: her pink lips curving upwards, flashing her pearly white teeth. Her eyes: almond shaped with long thick eyelashes covered by her fringe. Her hair; long, brown, wispy and I always had my fingers in them, playing around with the strands.
Memories of what we once were, flood my mind and I re-live each and every one of them, my heart beating just as fast as it did whenever I was with her.
I remember when we first met. I was out grabbing a coffee so early in the morning and she bumped right into me. She looked half asleep but she woke up once we collided, eyes wide and alert, lips parted. She bowed 90 degrees before apologising like crazy and then dragged me along to pay for another coffee.
And that's all it took for her to go from a person I didn't know the existence of, to becoming my whole world.
It was instant attraction but I fell for her personality. She was shy and quiet but crazy and loud in her own way. She laughed at my stupid jokes, and danced with me even though we both looked like a pair of crack heads. She matched my intelligence and thus we spent most nights lost in deep discussions of every single topic we could think of. She showed me a new side of the world, her world and I loved every second.
I remember the way she would take the lead whenever we were out for a walk. She would tug my hand along and then look over her shoulder at me.
That look.
It was innocent, just a look. But it stays imprinted in my mind.
She looked the most beautiful then. When she was in charge of her own world, allowing me to take part. All I wanted to do was to stare at her, examine her features, examine every part of her, examine the masterpiece that was her.
She seemed to know what to do and say, when I needed her and when I wanted space. She seemed to understand me, what I wanted, what I liked, what I disliked. She understood my love for small simple things like a decent amount of sleep all the way to my love for music and absolutely everything in between.
But I didn't seem to understand her.
She said contradictory statements , and did contradictory things. One minute I was doing everything right, and the next, I was doing it all wrong.
Apparently I didn't pay enough attention to her, I didn't care enough about her, I didn't love her. But that was false.
I spent every minute with her just staring at her profile and absorbing every detail about her, and I spent every minute apart missing her and worrying about her. I fell for her so hard that I practically surrendered my whole being to her.
Everything else seemed so important before her but nothing else mattered after her.
But I wasn't enough. I didn't care enough, I didn't love her enough. I wasn't good enough for her.
Just like that she disappeared, right before my eyes, back into the person I didn't know the existence of. As if the moments we spent together never happened.
The words we spoke to each other. The sweet nothings that we whispered to one another. The small touches, the rapid beating of our hearts, the promises, the lies, the sincere feelings, the cups of coffee, the presents, the laughter, the tears, the cinema tickets, the bike rides, the hideouts, the fancy dinners, the moments of silence, the new places we discovered, the goofy grins, the magic between us.
Everything that we ever did, everything that we ever were, as if it never happened.
She left no traces behind.
She was just a fleeting memory.
