3rd Letter: Without Addresses, Without Recipients

He stared out the window; his eyes as blank and lifeless as a copper coin. Outside the sky was burning like a purple flame. The molten orange washed down the mountain ranges and disappeared into the shadows of the deep valley. No wind blew and it was as if everything was held still to watch the sun set, but below him vines crept up his window to escape the coming of darkness and found there a dimness greater than the waking evening.

One by one the bottles scattered on the floor lost the reflection of the sun’s dying rays, and as the glint of the last beam was extinguished, all of them vanished amidst the carpet of crumpled papers slumbering on the wooden planks.

He watched the last ember exhale and wrung his hand around the neck of another bottle. He rocked it gently. When he heard no splash inside, he put it back down. Seconds ticked away, minutes passed, but he looked at the mountain ranges as if there was still something to see. All that was left there were humps of shapeless giants against a blacker sky. Skyward, one by one the stars lit up and the moon unveiled itself from the clouds. He looked up.

The moon.

He remembered the moon.

He was lying there on the grass with his arms embracing his shoulders ever so tightly because of the cold. The moon was staring down at him that night and it was so bright that he could not see the stars. Everyone else seemed to be asleep but the cold would not let him. It was seeping in his combat boots and scouring every inch of his skin despite all the shirts and socks that he had on – not to mention his camouflage jacket.

He strained his ears and heard nothing but his beating heart and the whistling of the wind. There had to be something else he could hear or else he’d go mad. He rubbed his hands once again.

And God, this damn cold. It was so hot just this morning.

He turned to his left. Roger seemed to be sleeping so soundly. How could he? He turned to his right and saw Rizza dozing off just the same. So much for the best bivouac of his life. He sat up. There had to be salvation. All around all that he could see were lumps scattered across the grassy mountaintop. Unstirring. Oblivious. Could it be possible that he was just imagining all these discomforts? Perhaps he was going mad.

Then he heard a sigh.

He turned to the sound and saw her sitting up as well. When she saw him she smiled faintly. “It’s quite cold,” she said softly, her voice shaking. “Can’t sleep too?”

He returned the smile, took off his jacket and then handed it to her.

He banged his head on the window. The memory faded. He found another bottle and took a swig. He honestly believed that the warm beer tasted like paper. Did it, or did he just can’t go beyond the scraps lying on the floor? Crumpled letters with no addresses and no person to send it to.

With broken sentences with-

…broken phrases

…and broken words

…and broken thoughts.

He took another swig and then decided to gulp it all down. The alcohol did not hit him the way it used to. He couldn’t remember how long it has been since he lavished moments of sobriety, or distinguish at least which were the moments when he was in or out of drunkenness. He wanted to lose the feel of his limbs and his fingers and for his eyelids to fall shut, but the traitorous alcohol would not pin him down. He knelt down on the floor and looked at the bottles, looking for the dark one. The clanking hurt his ears and the shuffling of the countless balls of paper too.

His fingers finally touched something smooth. Ah, there you are. He unscrewed the cap and took a taste. So much better. He took a couple of gulps and closed his eyes. He laid his head on the floor, grasping a piece of paper in his hand and hoped for a dreamless rest.

Shafts of light escaped from the moon and slid inside his window. The radiance filled the room with a drop of blue luminance. It touched the paper gently, as if it was able to decipher what it contained despite the splotches of beer, saltless tears and deep etches from a heavy pen.

“Anon,

Do you know? I cannot feel anymore. Or else I cannot feel anything else any longer. There is this endless hole at the center of my chest. It consumes everything: the mornings, the afternoons, the evenings. Because of it no sound can reach my ears. It sucks up the light that fills my room. It has consumed all my tears and it would not give them back. I am hollow because of it. I cannot speak, I cannot move away. It has taken all of me and now it is all I have. Without it then there would be nothing else and I would disappear.

It is all that I am now. It has devoured all my other memories and left only those that conjured it in the first place- memories of you. Memories that scathe my waking hours, making me smile at their first seconds and writhe with despair piece by piece every moment afterwards. Memories of you haunt me at every corner. In every place, every object, my thoughts lead me nowhere else but to visions of you. I can’t help but see you everywhere. Your memories are haunting me, killing me slowly. But now the tortures that you cause are all that I have left. Without my grief I am nothing.

Wallowing is my stake at cowardice, but I cannot pull myself to the other end of the river any longer. The current pulls me with such strength that to fight it would be futile. To fight thoughts of you would be futile. They pain me and yet this pain is bittersweet, because in that reverse haven I have you. You and nothing more, nothing else. And if I stay in this limbo you would linger forever.

I feigned courage to make you believe that I can survive life without you, knowing that you somehow felt something for me. But when I poured my feelings out in the letter that I sent to you before you went away, the truth is I poured everything and left nothing to myself. I was so sure that you would return my love and patch up the hole in my heart. But you did not. How could you not do so? Now I am nothing. Now I am no one. I am a drowned person. Drowned in this bottomless well in my chest; drowned with countless bottles of forgetfulness. Drowned too deep and only you can find me. Only you can pull me out.

This means then that I’m drowned forever in this hollow body. Drowned because this is the only way that I have to be forever with you.”

2nd Letter: Raphael

The morning was a rush. Her family was, as usual, running late for their flight to San Francisco so they were constantly running about like headless chickens, phantomly clucking about the time. She, on the other hand, had all her luggage arranged and was more than ready. She was simply waiting for them to tell her that it was finally time to go.

She went back to her room one last time; her beloved sanctum that would soon be abandoned to accommodate distant cousins and relatives that would stay to look after their house. How she would be missing this place. As soon as their dad arranges for them to live with him, the stay may become permanent. Their family would be whole again; whole but far far away from home.

She sank into her bed and remembered just how soft it was. Oh, how she’d lie there every night, wide awake and unable to sleep, then she’d take that precious picture that she had stowed away from a friend’s wallet and hold it close to her. At that moment, everything would simply be alright. She took the same picture from her bag and looked at him. He was smiling there, smiling for her only.

From the sala the frantic voice of her mother called for her, telling her to hurry – please damn hurry – so that they wouldn’t miss their flight. She obeyed and headed out towards their van.

###

The insistent buzzing of the speakers that nagged the passengers to board their respective flights was deafening, especially since her mother was doing her own broadcasting, scolding them for nth time for being late. She didn’t want to speak, savoring the small breath of peace in her silence. It had just been just a day since she left school, but it had seemed as if an eternity had already passed.

He hadn’t called nor replied in some way. It must’ve been just as she had always feared. You’re so stupid, Julia.

“Julia! Julia!” she turned and walked towards her mother’s direction, her head downcast. “Stay close would you! Go off daydreaming again and we’d never get on that plane!”

She looked up, saw the vein at her mother’s temple throb and just turned away. There was more than enough of that kind of stress for a day. Loose conversations and farewell wishes flitted through her mind as she tried to preoccupy herself with the thought of living in another country instead of thinking about her mother’s haranguing… and about the letter. She tried to envision the spear-shaped leaves of spring-time trees lining those boulevards, of the foreign stores and the tourist sights, but the memory of her hand guiding her pen carefully as she wrote on that piece of paper kept on bobbing up in her mind.

She decided to place her gaze elsewhere and look for a more tangible distraction. So many people walked around, so many lights, so many things moving and moving around… and then she saw a familiar face, and everything seemed to fade.

He was walking; looking for something; searching for someone… they were so far yet so impossibly close. She couldn’t speak, her voice caught in her throat; she could only stare at him as he walked. Then finally, he looked towards her direction. When he saw her he stopped and stared. At that moment she wanted to go to him, but he just stood there, looking at her. Not moving. Not speaking. Just seeming like an austere statue looking at her looking back at him. He did nothing and she was left to stare at those eyes that she’d miss so much.

At the far end of her consciousness she heard monotonous announcements fill the air and vaguely felt her mother pulling her away, taking her into the boarding hall. Everything, every sight and sound seemed to slip inside a vacuum, infinitely making no sense. She closed her eyes and felt herself allow her mother to snatch her from the aching that was dampening her thoughts.

Farther and farther away from him she went, and within her sudden oblivion all that she had hoped for was the simple sound of someone calling her name, and she would run to him, but the sound never came.

She drew away and still he just lingered there. So utterly unmoving that the image of him stuck out like a splotch of grime amidst perfect white sheets in a picture that was littered with people hurrying across the halls, walking here and there towards coffee shops, lining up to get in boarding halls and scanning booths with multi-color displays for toys and confectionary presents.

Finally the monotonous announcements ceased.

###

She settled on her window-side seat while inwardly battling with the tears that were vainly trying to escape from her eyes.

“Is there anything wrong?” her mother asked, now thankfully calm and suddenly once again more parent-like.

“No,” she said and absently rubbed her eyes, pretending as though dirt was caught in her thick lashes, and then averted her glance to the small porthole. “Just missing my friends, I guess.”

“Hey, sis, I almost forgot. I took the mail before we left, there are lots for you,” her sister said as she unzipped her bag and handed her an inch-thick pile of letters. “Mom was so psyched out that I forgot to tell you about it.”

She smiled absently and took the letters. Neon envelopes, characteristically colored according to her specific friends’ tastes, hurt her eyes. She shuffled through the others and found that some were pastel, most baby blue or baby pink, and all of them were scented. That’s why when she saw the simple white envelope with a simple print of her name she took notice. She took the letter out and began to read it.

While her eyes went across the words she was smiling yet crying at the same time, and when she finished it she just couldn’t help but let tears stream down from her eyes.

She stared at the letter that was slowly tearing her heart into irreplaceable pieces then gazed with incomparable regret at the sight of the airport turning into a miniature rendition of the actual place as the airplane zoomed up into the sky. How so plainly it reminded her that she can no longer turn back; that she had not turned back when she still could.

“Dear Julia,

I hope that you’d read this letter on time. I feel so stupid to not have at least told you what I feel for you and I know that I’ll always regret the time that I wasted without telling you all this.

I admired you from the first time you sat there next to me. You were almost perfect. I loved watching your eyes sparkle when you laugh and how you smile so brightly. You’re just so beautiful, almost too beautiful for me to grasp the reality that you were real. But now I know that even if I had my eyes closed all this time I would still feel the same way, because I saw your beauty outside as well as inside. I saw how beautiful, how real you are, that I need not think why I have fallen so deeply for you.

Later on I realized that you had your flaws. Yes, you had your crazy moods, your baggy-eyed mornings, your silent tantrums, your bad hair days, but somehow I have seen beyond that and now these are things that could only make you more endearing. I cherish them because they make you more real.

This is quite hard to explain. My heart beats for you; I have no other words for it, but in this strange way, I feel you in there. When I’m beside you, when I utter even the beginnings of a single word, when I wouldn’t even dare to hold your hand but dare to think it – my heart seem to beat faster and faster, filling my veins more and more with this unexplainable passion.

I cannot define what love truly is, but I guess that it cannot simply be a feeling of need and want, because you’ll live even if you do not have these things. Merely needing and wanting leads to selfishness, because they only aim to satisfy a person. I must admit that I need and I want you, but why do I seem to feel that I would die in a life without you in it? That it serves something beyond satisfaction. Maybe that’s love. Maybe it’s something that gives us a gift beyond existence…it makes us learn how to live.

Then I guess that I do love you.

What you are is the reason for the pulsing of my beating heart…and that made me so afraid. I know that you’d be going off to another country after this school year. That crushed my hopes, so I held back, thinking that if I tell you what I feel I may not be able to let you go anymore or that I may have to face the reality that you simply do not love me. I mean, who am I beside you? But despite this thought I was so horrified when I looked into your eyes and thought I saw there tenderness when you looked back at me. Knowing how it could possibly end and what frustration a false assumption could bring, I harbored the fantasy that I would be beside you always in that small classroom…that my dreaming would never cease. But my dread grew and the more that it grew the more I realized that I’m falling helplessly deeper.

Time passes. I know that it’ll never stop moving and I know that the time when you’d have to go would come. But I just couldn’t live with the thought of me not telling you how I feel. I would be willing to endure what pain there is of accepting the reality that you may not feel the same way, but I know that I cannot endure waking up each morning and feel nothing, because my heart had stopped beating.

All that I could say is that I love you Julia. Beyond time, beyond emotion, beyond words, beyond existence…I love you. When it really began, when I realized it, why it is so, I have no way of knowing, but know simply that I do.

If you love me, meet a happy man at the airport tomorrow and he’ll tell you never to go away again. He’ll hold you tight in his embrace and tell you the most honest thing that he knows…that he loves you and that he’d never leave you. But if you do not love me, just cast down your eyes and grieve for a broken man who, at least for a moment’s time, saw himself in the eyes of the one he truly cares for.

Regret nothing, Julia. Whatever choice that lies within your heart I shall accept, for it is from you and it is who you are that I’ve come to love.

Raphael’

1st Letter: Hidden Pages

He dumped his bag on the waxed floor and slapped his thick mathematics textbook on an unoccupied seat. With a sigh, he sat down on his own battered armchair.

The classroom was nearly empty. Understandable since it would only be a few days until classes end, and most of the better students had gone to early vacations. Apparently his seatmate too, Julia, seemed to be one of the early vacationers. Probably that’s the reason why- to his utter dismay – his friend, Arcee, was the one who gave him back the textbook he lent to her.

He tapped his fingers on the crisscrossing vandalisms and took another look around. There were at least fifteen people left – fifteen and not a single person more – all nonchalantly waiting for their teacher to come back from the faculty room and hand out the make-up tests. Each one of them wore a dazed look and none bothered to speak, acknowledging the inconvenience of still having to be there at all.

He shook his head disdainfully.

Perhaps it was pointless to have come after all. And why does the day just have to be so painfully slow? Outside the sun burned mad at the cradle of the cloudless blue sky, causing the electric fans to overwork themselves till they burn out. It was a comfort then that it was a windy day; the summer breeze teasing the sleepy leaves back and forth now and then.

A fleeting thought of dipping in the icy crystalline waters of a certain luxurious beach resort crossed his mind, and it suddenly made the burden of attending these last few days of classes all the more insufferable.

Just as he was about to rest his head on his arm to attempt to take a nap, a vagrant gush of wind blew across the windows, causing the pages of his book to flutter open. He hurried to shut it and save any loose pages from falling out, but a stubborn piece of paper eluded his hands and fell to the floor. He stared at it at first then picked it up. With a curious grin he flipped it open.

A letter. To add up to his surprise of the alien object, for some reason the letter was addressed to him. A pang of apprehension suddenly built up in his stomach, a sickening feeling of the world suddenly turning around and around, and for the first time he felt amazed to see his own name. He thought twice before reading it, but his insatiable curiosity proved to be the stronger urge. With a gulp, he unfolded it and began reading.

“Dear Raphael,

By the time you have read this letter I’d probably be gone. I didn’t have the courage to give this you myself, so I tucked it in your book. I just felt that you deserve to know how much of a great person you are. You really are one of the few people that made my days here really worthwhile. You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. You didn’t have to cheer me up when I was down but you did, just by being there next to me.

To all the nonsense that I bothered to talk about, thanks for listening and enduring. It made me know that what I feel actually mattered, and what I think about is worthwhile at least. When I was alone, even though you’d just spurt out some sparing remark or even just cracked a little joke to cheer me up, thank you so much for going out of your way just to make a smile come to my face. Even though it may not seem like such a great effort for others, it really meant a lot to me. You don’t know the happiness of knowing that someone wants to make you smile brings.

For laughing when my jokes were really corny, thank you. A smile like that warmed my heart and completed my day. For reminding me not to do something wrong, thank you; the concern in you saved me. For the little moments we shared, I can’t thank you more than enough, because now those memories have become my lifelong treasures.

Especially, I thank you for being who you are. Finding someone as special as you was the most amazing thing that has happened to me. Nobody is perfect, and I wouldn’t want you to try to be anything but yourself. I’m willing to accept you for everything that you are. Your bad habits, your moods, your faults and your limitations, I’d really want to know them. I know that I’d be willing to accept them and love you more for them.

I wouldn’t ask you to make me someone special for you, can you just be there somehow and I promise you that I would love you. Believe me when I say that if only I can do so, if you’re down I’d comfort you, if you’re sad I’d make you happy, if you’re hurt I’d make it alright. Just as long as you need me I’d be there and even if you don’t, know that I care for you. Even though I’m hurting, I’ll still love you. I love you for who you are, who you were and who you’d be. Even if your future may not contain me my love would still endure. You have become the reason for my imagining, for anything that I know can make me more complete.

Still, I don’t expect you to feel the same way. Love by force isn’t love at all.

I know it might not make sense that I would do this now. I admit that I’m just able to gather enough courage to write this down because we may not see each other again, and so I wouldn’t have to face the possibly hurtful consequences of my actions, but I hope that because of this you may be able to keep me in a small place in your heart; just enough to keep the memory of you and me alive in there. Though it hurts me to be away from you, I guess it’s only fair for me to go because deep in me I had loved you selfishly. I loved you without giving you the chance of knowing, and that is one of the most unfair things that a person can do – to not allow someone to know that they are loved.

Raphael, do you know that it had hurt me to look at you, wanting to keep you, wanting you to be mine and when you stare back I see nothing in your eyes that promises the same feelings? Though it was heart-breaking I know that I’m the only one to blame, because it doesn’t mean that you have to love me back no matter how much I love you.

Maybe if only you had seen what my eyes meant when I looked at you sooner, and looked back, I could’ve given you my everything, but I guess some things are just not meant to be, so I just endured the pain of knowing I’d never be able to keep you.

Just remember…I love you for the pain, I love you for the joy, but most of all I love you for helping to complete me, because all that I am is you.

Love,

Julia”

Even though there was nothing left to read, he couldn’t let go of that piece of paper. A blank stare that bore through the letter snatched his consciousness from all motion. Was there a mistake? Perhaps there was a mistake. Never in his wildest imaginings did he think that something like this would be given to him. He did not even dare to fantasize anything that came close to this. It seemed too much to ask. And from her.

She was that girl who sat next to him, that popular but admirably simple girl in their batch. She was the girl that almost all of his classmates hopelessly revered for her saccharine beauty and her unpretentious kindness. She was perfect and without saying it out loud so many seem to gauge themselves and knew that any attempt to be beside her was useless. And she gave a letter like this to him? Confessing her feelings to him? But he was a mere surname that their teacher barked out each painstaking class session. He was just him.

He stayed that way for the longest time, frozen with disbelief despite the sweltering heat. Then he took out an envelope from his bag and held on to it tightly. It was a letter, a confession of seemingly hopeless love…

From him to her.