Heliophile | J.JK

p r o l o g u e

I fell in love once.

I do not know when it happened, there were no borderlines, no markings, no specific datelines, no receipts. I think it would have been a lot easier to forget and move on if it were something simple like that — like a shallow love at first sight.

Because eyes are quick to forget, a moment passes and it's already a faded Polaroid, back in the cobwebs of your mind.

But the heart never forgets. A sliver of a deja vu and memories from decades ago come barrelling back, playing so vividly before your eyelids like a broken record player that you cannot turn off.

For me, It was all the same. That feeling was slow and developed over time, all until my heart got enmeshed and the feeling became etched into my bones and vessels and lungs permanently.

It was a blur, a soft hue that blended into the time. It was all hearts in tandem, the sound of breaths when there was nothing else to say, smiles too bright to be forgotten and a touch callous enough to engrave its mark on my hands.

All I am now, is a guy with bruised knuckles because I like to punch walls too much and am trying to pry off from my brain a memory that's already a part of my blood and being.

Oh dear, eyes are quick to forget, hearts aren't.

•••

Either everything in this life happens too slow or too fast. You break and you heal. Forgive and forget. Lose and learn. If you fall, you're bound to root again and inevitably rise.

And grow, you must always grow. Because between rising and growing, there is a lifetime of incongruity.

Rising is bittersweet. The thrill of quaffing pint after pint, burning absinthe down your throat. Seeing the world become smaller and smaller as you climb the hierarchy pyramid.

And growth, on the contrary, it is soft. It humbles you, it changes you in a more subtle way.

Rising is grand. All glory and gore. Falling is also a journey in itself.

Rise, fall, up, down. Anything beats standing still.

Standing still on a red light signal glowing against the night washed concrete streets on a busy boulevard of broken dreams that reek of risks not taken.

With your meaningless leather bag and a styrofoam cup in your left hand filled with steaming dark coffee that gives a hazy reflection of yourself as you wait for the bus to arrive for your regular nine to five job.

That clerk life, plane jane straight lane life, is stillness.

You suppress the pulsating questions at the back of your mind. How different would it have been if I had, just once, followed the most reckless of my dreams?

What if I had deviated from the straight line?

And I lived that question until it constructed a cemetery in my mind.

I chased my dreams, caught them and displayed them in a jar like they were vibrant butterflies. The splendour of all my accomplishments on luminous display.

I was at the top of it, homogenised into the world of fame. And fame is immortal. Immortal yet fleeting. Like a fire, you throw everything into it, your life, your guts, your dignity, your desires, all. Only to keep it burning for just another second. Just another second, you even throw your own self into it.

And with the smallest breeze, it extinguishes. From a dim pilot, to a flicker, to mere ashes.

Hairline cracks appear and everything is gone.