some years ago i waited for the pedestrian light to turn green so i can cross the street to where you stood, one fine evening after work. it wasn’t dark enough for the lights to burn, not late enough for you to be engulfed in the traffic of people that usually covers this particular street in this small city, and i saw you clearly, standing under a stoplight. there was nothing extraordinary about this scene at all, except for how i felt; waiting, watching you, listening to dave matthews sing about satellites being strung from the moon
Tell me more, tell me more
Who’s the king of your satellite castle?
the light turned green, and i took it as a permission to chase you, and love you, and when we started walking i wanted to ask if i could hold your hand. maybe you would have said yes, but the light turned red just then and the moment was lost in a blur of cars and thoughts and secret wants and your overwhelming nearness.
so what brings me back
to this intersection
of yesterdays
this highway of almost?
nothing much but the nth beer with friends and an arbitrary moment when Satellite came on from a random playlist; for strange reasons exclusive to drunken reasoning, i tried to explain what it means to me, this song, that moment, using even stranger objects to illustrate
“this is the junction, the street” (some chopsticks)
“this is where i was standing” (a dumpling crumb to mark the spot)
“this is where he was standing” (a potato chip)
“this is the stoplight” (a padlock)
and i crossed the street and the lights did begin to burn
i could have gone on to expound your virtues the way we tend to do so about people who are long gone, appreciated in the aftermath of drifting apart, but instead i wanted to talk about lights;
because isn’t it that in one way or another, we all put up our own imaginary stoplights? we stand on sidewalks and edges waiting for signals, calculating the risks of getting hurt should we go against the stoplight and run; we wait for our chance to bridge the distance, wary of other pedestrians who might take our space on the same path. we try to measure the proximity of where we stand from where we want to be, and how much time we have left to reach it before the lights change. more often than not, we forget to ask ourselves: is this street even worth crossing?
yes, i could have talked about how you can finish my sentences and how your laughter can set off mild explosions in my senses, but i have my own stoplight to heed and you no longer stand under it; we walk and wait on different streets now, streets which may never meet, but—-
darling,
it was beautiful to have known you
(such an understatement)
quite beautiful to have loved you
(even more so)
and everytime i walk past this junction of longing
i wonder
perhaps
i should have taken your hand
and told you these
before all the stoplights
on the intersection to your heart
have turned
permanently
red.
