5 Minute Reads | Anthology

Fixed

By santir0sales

Our relationship is a roller-coaster.

First, it will be all good; next second it will all go downhill.

I don't know how I know this but I am hundred-percent sure about it and have a feeling my partner even knows this. When we're together, it feels the world has suddenly turned into glass. Every moment is delicate and fragile; every word is constructed perfectly in our own minds; every tone must be what the other wants to hear – to protect our bonded love that's slowly dying away like a wilting rose that can only be watered with two persons' love and affection for each other.

We try not to acknowledge this bonded relationship is not like it once was. No one wants to admit it because both parties still care for each other, despite they seem to be drifting apart like sand blown by the wind.

I am sitting across him, and he is sitting across me. My eyes are on him; his eyes are on me. But my mind is anywhere but him. I can sense he is feeling the same way too. We keep our conversation lighthearted and I crack a joke but our laughs are dry as if they were forced to pass through that huge bulge in our throats.

None of us wants to face the music dancing in front of us. We try to ignore, but the more we ignore and the more we try to fix it by not fixing it – it's growing worse. The dark cloud surrounds us, scaring us when we turn our backs to each other and walk away to our own ways. It'll follow you like a dog, but it'll be much closer than you would have thought.

Our heartstrings don't play the same song anymore as it used to. My hands are holding on to his world, but it is falling through my fingertips. The songs on the radio keep changing, our song is now no one's song. We can't pretend to be naïve anymore. We are fully open-eyed and wide awake of the world engulfing us in its embrace as reality keeps slapping us.

I want to save this. He wants to save this. If I could just find a single diamond in the rough, it is enough to let me know that there's something worth fighting for. If a love-filled teardrop still manages to escape from our souls, it will be enough, too. Hope. Faith. Believe.

But I am still tinged with doubt – the dreadful what-ifs. What if there's no diamond? What if we're tired of this and could not process a single teardrop of love? Instead, we'll cry in resentment and leave it like that until it breaks eventually.

Still, I don't want us to be fixed. Even if I had the opportunity, even if he is annoying as hell, even if he hurts me in ways he wouldn't imagine – I don't want to change us for the better. I won't make him perfect. This imperfect him was some of the reasons I'd fallen for him in the first place and still now. I want to let him stay the way he is albeit he is destructive to me as I am destructive to him. We are each other's time bomb. It continues to ticktock, waiting for either of us to step into the trap and does its job.

I hear something shatters from far away. I listen to it closely again. I realize it is actually my heart. I run toward it and bend down to pick the fragments of the heart. But I keep stepping on them, crushing them more beneath my weight. I feel tears building up, blurring my vision. Then, suddenly, my knees buckle and I start to cry. I pour out my tears as if I have never shed a tear before. It's, like, isn't my doing. They just come out without my permission. I blink them away. My vision clears. I see him in front of me. Our faces are only inches from each other.

His eyes bore into mine, longing in them. It catches me off guard for a second how this is one of the moments where the world suddenly turns to glass, except for some things that place this as different and more precious than others. It's where we'll help each other picking up the broken pieces off the floor and make it whole again, instead of leaving the pieces lying lifeless. His hand reaches out and cups my face. He wipes the tears from my brimming eyes and I let him. He then moves his hand down to my jaw, my neck, my arm and finally, my hand – in which lies the broken fragments of my heart. He wraps his hand around it and brings my hand to his lips. He releases it and I see the fragments have changed. It's now a puzzle piece. I just need to assemble it with the other pieces to make it whole once again.

He leans in and our lips meet. It feels foreign, although we'd done it a hundred times before. Probably because of the delicate moment? Or something else? But we finally match each other's rhythm and I can hear it again: the strings of our hearts. The songs on the radio. The sounds of nature. All of them somehow blend into one song – that's neither his nor mine, but ours. I play his strings like a violin, while he plays mine like a harp. Two different instruments, but when played together creates a harmonious music.

The world turns to glass, but it's not brittle. It is protecting us from the outside world, and the reality to let us live in this fantasy in our little heads for a little much longer.

The rose is dying, but it is paving a way for a new one. A bud blossoms into a full-bloom white rose. The atmosphere smells of new beginning.

I pull away and I stare into his dark eyes that hold thousands of promises – both old and new. Those dark eyes have seen me struggling while I was balancing on the tightrope, hoping not to fall into the darkness for fear I might never float to the surface again. But I know deep down, he would save me from the deep waters and hold me tight into his safe arms as I learn to breathe.

We may be clumsy with our porcelain hearts.

We may be scared to face the future ahead of us.

We may be breaking into a million of pieces.

We may not be there for each other.

We may not be truthful.

And it may be too late to undo the damage; to let this wounds and scars to heal.

But one thing I know: I will keep holding on to this love embedded in our souls even if society keeps saying we should let it go and leave it to the breeze instead. I won't give up on us for I know he is worth every risk I am taking with my two left feet on the ground.

But if I could change us, make us into something better . . .

. . . I'd keep us just the way we are.