Mutya Dela Cruz
love letter to the obscured
Dearest,
How remarkable you are indeed, written in invisible ink, painted by bald brushes dipped in transparent colors, sung in silent symphonies, celebrated by phantoms—the sole witnesses of your greatness. And yet here I am, certain of your existence, you in all your glory, in all your grace. You who, again and again, have forced yourself numb to the callousness of this world, brimming with an ire contained behind the lips that have been stitched together by a thread of antiquity, the oldest one there is.
Perhaps you have become callous yourself, for it was the only way to survive when you were starving to prove the capability of your mind, the brilliance of your being. Perhaps you have chosen to remain tender, for it kept your blood coursing out of your beating, broken heart. Perhaps you bled, perhaps you did not. Perhaps you took the form of a maiden, or a warrior, or a priestess.
Perhaps the perhapses will cease, in this lifetime or the next.
No…
The perhapses will cease, reclaimed by perceivable certainties.
Dearest, I shall find you. Emphatically, I shall find you. In this lifetime and the next.
I shall go where you remained, into the fragments of your souvenirs, in the shadows of the erroneously praised, in the ashes of ancient prose, in the forgotten odes of lost epochs. I shall roam this land in search of you until the pages of history are covered in your ink. I shall scour every corner for a glimpse of your ghost until the canvases are drenched in your colors, bright with every hue possible.
I shall heed the melody of your song, until my pulse syncs with its rhythm, until your symphonies are cried out to the heavens so that even the stars will know your name, and blaze in their veneration of you, and join in on your celebration which will leave no room for phantoms. and every eye, opened or closed, will witness your greatness, until, at last,
numbed, hushed, starved,
obscured,
you no longer are.
Lonely Mind, Longing Heart
It was the deafening silence that had done it, the arrival of the ungodly hour in the vacant spot where she sat, stagnant and hushed. She was left unsupervised, vulnerable at the hands of her thoughts, whose claws gripped her ruthlessly, creeping into the chambers of her beating heart. Her mind was at its loudest in the quiet, you see. It screamed and thrashed within the confines of her skull, untethered from the presence of witnesses, its tantrum profusely aided by Solitude. Now, Solitude was a fickle companion. Solitude hovered between friend and foe. Solitude was sometimes tender in its embrace, warm with its touch. But more often than not, Solitude was a vicious creature who preyed upon the mind of the lonely and the heart of the longing. And it just so happened—in that particular moment where she was cornered in torturous privacy—that she had both.
First, the mind: She was wandering restlessly, perhaps to numb the loneliness, perhaps to fill the emptiness. She was chasing shadows who teased at her hopelessness. She was settling for illusive lovers, for their imagined solace. She was tired. (Let go.) She stilled. (Let go.) She considered drying herself out until she would prune from the insufficiency of emotion. (Let go.). She carried an abundance of love for someone whose absence made it heavier on her shoulders, whose obscurity drove her to insanity. (Let go.) Her grasp was weakening, her fists unclenching. That is, until a flicker of resistance came from underneath her rib cage, an indication that Solitude was having quite the fun.
Now, the heart—her beating, breakable heart: She was aching for the soul of another. She was yearning for the sensation of a beating heart against her own, pulse against pulse, rhythmically coordinated, emotionally knotted. She was holding on to the possibility of it all, of love. Love as it was described by the poets, as it was sung by the bards, as it was written in sonnets, as it was mourned in elegies, as it was celebrated through matrimony, as it was declared through art; love as it was a catalyst for wars, for madness, for beauty, for sin. Surely, surely this would be worth holding on to, she thought, stifling the outburst of her mind, resolute and stubborn, perhaps foolishly so. Because in the silence of the moment, in the hours between day and night, with her fickle companion, she wandered and allowed the shadows to haunt her once more.
You in every goddamn thing
When I told you
it has been going on for some time,
what I really meant was:
my time has been taking your shape,
and I’ve been allowing it,
agonizing it,
relishing it.
Meaning, instead of hours,
there was us.
And instead of summer,
there was you.
And the stray eyelash on your cheek,
the hesitant twitch of my fingers,
tied down by the terror
of receiving your back.
There was the darkness
below our dangling feet,
away from a ground that couldn’t save us,
where I whispered a silent prayer
of salvation.
But darling, you looked so pretty
with the light on your face,
so perfectly painted by fairies,
that my prayer turned into
complete surrender.
There was the ache in my legs
from your taunting warmth,
how you leaned ever so slightly
against my lap,
how I wished you’d just collapse into it
under the clouds that mirrored
the smoke I wanted to swallow
from your lips;
in the back of my knees,
from my stubborn urge to be standing
close, until my lungs are swollen
with your breath, until it knows
no other purpose but to consume
and be utterly consumed by you.
There was the sun,
which could only live
and die beautifully
when it bears your sight.
There was your name
in every birdsong,
a hymn for all the times
you said mine.
There was the grass
that seeped between my fingers,
in the space where yours would have fit,
perfectly intertwined,
if you hadn’t left me
with all these ghosts
and the vague promise of another,
made by your dwindling figure,
held by my unmoving one.