Reflect in the Reservoirs

I had some wild idea to call you up and have one final meet with you next Tuesday or Wednesday evening for the cusp of my 23rd year. I thought it’d be like peeking into an alternate life, seeing how you have changed and grown some more and moved on since I am slightly curious with what you’ve been doing with yourself since things were upended in July. I hope you’re still doing what you love and I’m quite sure you are. You’re true to your passions — that’s part of what made me fall. I thought it’d be nice to just spend an hour or two distracted from my own life and its convolutions to hear about yours, and I do still owe you your Christmas and birthday present from last year and this one respectively. (My mum points out how my strange boy and you are both Arians, and I’m gobsmacked but you two do fit the sign quite closely somehow.) I thought it’d comfort me somewhat, to remember what kind of man I really want to spend my life with, even though you’re not so close to that image anymore.

My father’s vehemently against it though since he thinks it’ll accomplish nothing. A part of me is beginning to think maybe it’s not so wise as well. I guess most of it’s motivated by that Zee Avi cover of Morissey’s “First of the Gang to Die” where there’s the opening line that goes,

“You have never been in love

till you’ve seen the stars

reflect in the reservoirs.”

You should still be living near a very lovely reservoir. I always kind of did want to go sit there one evening and take in the smells of somewhat open water, fresh grass and the peace of the stillness of waters. On a cool, dark, deep night, what tranquility can be found. And even if my father alleges I can’t say I’ve been in love with you because it was an unrequited thing, I still know what I felt for all that time, and maybe I wasn’t properly in love with you since I couldn’t know who you really were, but I know I was in love even with the image of you I’d found.

Chivalrous

It suddenly crosses my mind that generally you, of all the men and boys I have ever had to deal with or spend time with late into the night, would always try to ensure that I was sent home, cabbed home or at least got home safely.

Mother would have approved tremendously of this rare sort of chivalry. A full year on, I thank you for this.

About A Boy

flor ありがとう

先月彼と初めてここに近づいていく。今彼との関係は終わらせなければならない。甘い物は確かに人生の痛みを治せる。

ー18.12.2010 1550h

\

We walked thereafter, from Duxton Hill all the way to Mount Sophia, constantly talking, me asking him question upon question without returning what he asked, the tart taste of my bittersweet (how appropriate, he might have remarked) hibiscus tea still lingering in my mouth. I brought him up that eternal flight of stairs up, up to that place of refuge looking out over Dhoby (we almost didn’t find it until he pointed out where it eventually was), that open space with an aluminium sheet roof I discovered three years ago, three years ago now. We sat there and talked as I gazed in serenity at the view (two bright yellow birds, a squirrel, a lizard twisting in a perfect round, the sparse sort of pseudo fir trees which let in the sky, and Christmas lights from the tree in a home glittering through obscuring foliage) and he stared nigh unblinking at my face (reminded him of Damien Rice’s The Blower’s Daughter he said) and later, when he proved his sincerity, when he softened my heart (sitting silently and preparing tissue as I sat silently refusing to look at him, thinking to say he did not deserve to see my tears), I gave him a gift, of watching the sunset together (though his unspectacled eyes were blurred so I described my sights to him) and feeling what it’s like to be a young couple in love (my head on his shoulder, our arms entertwined then our fingers, embracing me twice and my running commentary when we had one standing up). We left at around 8.15pm when it finally became fully dark. He put back his glasses, walking out I attempted to entwine our arms for a last time then gave up at the oddity of it and pointed out the clouded moon (sharing my love for observing it) instead as a distraction for my gaffe, I remarked how I felt like asking him for another last embrace again, loving the slight vertigo rush from leaning up to him, so tall, and then at the foot of the forever stairs, telling him emphatically bye and walking away without ever looking back or wondering why.

But I miss him now. I miss him in this barren aftermath.  I might grow to miss him quite, quite bad and quite rough.