you slowed down time.

He Slowed Down Time

He slowed down time.

Every moment felt like forever with him. The gentle tug at his lips when he smiled and the soft reverb from his chest whenever he laughed with sparks in his eyes. The vulnerability he had shown at times he spoke of his past and the melancholia. He overflowed like a sink of rainbow; it slowly hit the ground and flooded my entirety.

He slowed down time.

And with it came my fragility and insecurities. I swallowed the lump in my throat and felt the bile creep up. Every thought haunted me how I would never be enough and how I was no more than but whom I currently was in his life; a bystander, a secret admirer, and a lover from afar.

He slowed down time.

And with it came the pain. He left unannounced.

“They said he’ll be leaving soon,” a friend whispered to me and I swear I felt myself crash down, slowly. And despite my knowledge that I was falling, it never really occurred to me that I was in a free fall. All I remembered was the bone crush.

“Where will he be going?” I asked but she could only shrug her shoulders as an answer. No one knew, especially not I. Who was I to even be someone he could tell such news, my audacity.

He slowed down time.

And with it came the longing. I missed him so. I continue to miss by a long mile. We did not have any contact with him. Although I don’t think I should expect to anyway. Who was I in his life anyway; a bystander, a secret admirer, and a lover from afar.

There was not one day when I did not wonder about him, as if I lay in a meadow with the sun rays warming my skin. Ever since he left every day I felt time go faster in a blur. Ever since he left I no longer imagine his face while everyone else in the background pass by like a blur.

“Do you miss him?” they asked.

“No.” I long for him, and it was more than the feeling of missing him. Come to think of it, even when he was here I missed him. Ah, right. He was never close to me anyway. It was probably why I missed him despite knowing and seeing him in the same room. It was because we were close, yet so far away from one another. And now at present that he no longer was in the same room, the feelings intensified and grew into something more. Something unbearable, something suffocating, something inescapable.

Yet there was something peaceful with his presence gone. Did I hold on to him so tight that I forgot to be with my own presence? Most likely.

Tomorrow came after several months of other past tomorrows. There were whispers in the group I could not make out.

“He’s back,” they told me with a nudge then added, “and he’s coming here”.

Time seemed to have stopped the moment he came through the door and once again, he slowed down time.

How he had such effect on my being was something I would never understand. All I knew was that he had the gift to make it seem like everyone else was nowhere to be seen, like he was the only one that mattered. Like he was the only one I was meant to see and focus.

He slowed down time.

And with it came the pain. This time around his presence confused and frustrated me. My head was empty on the way home but as soon I stepped foot inside the house, once again, there was the bone crush. Why did it hurt? I could’ve sworn I was feeling better without him. And that was probably the answer.

He left and it taught me to be with myself.

But then he came back as if he did not leave in a sudden and I was unaware of it, and the longing I felt came back.

Because my heart remembered how much I willingly held on to him. My heart remembered how I yearned for him, how I searched for him in absentmindedly when everything went silent. My heart remembered how I loved him.

fin.