Closing Time: 11 PM

2. Can't, Don't... Please

Love that once hung on the wall

Used to mean something, but now it means nothing

The echoes are gone in the hall

But I still remember, the pain of December

-Let Me Go, Avril Lavigne

#

He held the hands of the woman beside her.

They looked happy together. He was smiling and laughing, she was telling him something. After a while, they stood up from where they were seated.

He opened the door for her and she went ahead of him and he followed. He walked beside her and put his arms around her shoulders. They look good together and saw some people look their way.

They are very lucky to have each other. She is so lucky to have a guy like the one beside her.

She's one lucky bastard for I lost my first boyfriend to her and now they are so happy.

I wiped the tears that ran down my face and remained standing where I saw them. I only wanted to jog, for heaven's sake, and now, I'm finding reasons to kill. I wished at that point that I was the restaurant's chef and I would put some gasoline on the food I will serve them. Or maybe, I will add some insecticide to their fruit shake. Worse, I will just go out of the kitchen with a butcher's knife and stab them to death.

Now that they're out of the restaurant, maybe I can just push them both once a truck passes by and they'll get hit.

Damn, I will never run out of ideas to bury them on the ground. Dead or alive.

We broke up a month ago. He said that it's him who has a problem, not me. I wanted to tell him to fuck off because what he was saying was my problem, not his. He said that I do not deserve him. I asked if there is a third party and he said there was none.

I didn't know it was a fourth party. Fine, it was my mistake to ask the wrong degree of involvement that he has.

So he left me and I cried. I begged for him to go back to me and he said that he doesn't want me because I never let him touch me, never went beyond kissing in private.

So I let him dump me again. But I was some sort of an unsung hero and I went up to him, offered myself, and he declined me. Said that he couldn't. I asked what he wanted and he said he just wanted to be away from me.

No, I didn't go back to him again because if I do, I promise, his family would be mourning the following hour.

But with the strong and happy façade was the reality that I am a piece of paper torn into pieces then crumpled and burned. I am now the remains. The ashes. The ashes that would scatter once blown.

I took a seat on the sidewalk and hid my eyes that was welling up with tears. No one can see me like this. I can't see myself like a beggar of love.

Damn you, Adam. Damn you for making me go to moving on step number one again.

#

I took my seat and opened my lesson plan.

It's a Monday and I have to finish doing the exam that I have prepared for my fourth year class. They keep on complaining how hard the exams have been for the past weeks. If it was because of what I went thru, I do not know. My co-teachers were all attending to their own monitors. Bea, one of my closest colleagues, noticed my eyes.

"What happened?" she asked me.

"Happened what?"

She pointed my eyes. Why is it that it becomes so evident when I cried? I didn't answer her question.