OBSIDIAN ISSUE #2 : WOUNDED

FIFTY

I can be anyone who I wanted to be...

I can be anything... A word unspoken. The breath held at the utmost shock. A wandering thought...

A wound that never heals.

How powerful is our mind that apart from its mastery to preserve an arsenal of ideas, it could divide itself to guard what we perceive to be an imbalance. How my mind has become a shrine of endless memories and incarcerated phantasms. Powerful is the mind indeed that it inspired most of modern inventions.

But above all, it influences the heart. We don't love from the bottom of what's in our chest. They are ruled by the mind. And even then I have concluded that we, after all, were initially conceived inside God's mind. That we were just once a thought from the ones who came before us.

The infinite possibilities the mind could carry us that while my feet is on the bedroom floor, in my thoughts I am elsewhere. In that way, I can easily imagined my body sundered from my winged thoughts. But at some point, it gets hard to wash off the stains of imagination that tainted reality. It gets hard to distinguish living in the real world from just... watching a past memory.

With my back against the full body mirror, I turned my face and zeroed in on the reflection of the tattoo symbol on my nape.

"Create your own reality."

I did. Atleast inside my head wherein I could be anywhere as well. In the past or in the now...

"But of course, despite the ugly truths, most dreams do still come true and love will always find ways to reach its beloved however we deem it impossible. Ways we could safely say that love indeed defies the extreme odds, even the realms of death."

I was taken back to the porch in our renovated mansion in Dalaguete. It was one of those following days after Mama and I reconciled. Marahil ay sa pagiging abala sa trabaho ay nakaligtaan ko na ang pag-alala nito. Malaking bahagi naman sa akin ang pumapanig sa kawalan ng tiwala.

"What do you mean?" I leaned my back deeper against the patio chair while sensing this conversation is about to take a dark turn.

"Your father has always been around, Sam," she uttered in a reminiscent tone. "The roses in my garden, only one of them sways strong as the breeze blows at its mildest."

Worry begins to graze on my chest. I don't want to judge her choice of living in solitude. Hindi ko na binuksan ang usapan na iyon dahil masaya naman daw siya lalo na kapag nasa bahay ang kambal. But we'll never know. Curse myself for not bothering to make sure if she's really fine!

But then I thought how this sounds eerily familiar. Always been around... I threw myself in a daze trying to dissect between the lines.

"You felt him..." A heavy whisper, with my thoughts adrift now squinting at the distant memory of my fleeting madness.

"Yes. This is why I don't worry my life away anymore..."

It breaks my heart to hear a crack in her voice and even with, I assume, a broken smile.

"And...I don't think I have told you this but Salvatore saw him."

"What?" I almost sprung to my feet. "My son saw what, Mama? Kaluluwa niya?!"

"I know," marahan siyang natawa at tila naiiyak. "Sal pointed outside the house and told me he was standing near the gate! Kumakaway raw. Dorcas and I saw no one but the rose swayed, so I believed the child. Sal said your father is trying to touch the plant."

Umiiling ako na para bang ganoon na lang guguho sa isipan ang imahe ng anak kong nakakita ng multo. I could have taken this lightly but only if he saw him inside the dream! Just like how he saw his father!