Through the eyes

The fire in her eyes always scared me. Maybe I saw the reflection of my imperfect self through her eyes, and got frightened by the reality of it. Or maybe I was not ready to accept someone who was willing to turn everything, no matter beauty or pain she received, into songs that she dedicated to the grounds she walked on, the skies she set her eyes upon, and the waters she drank that washed away her torments.

 

And although I loved her with all my heart, I had to move on. Because I knew I couldn’t stay in the world she perfected. I was the unfitting piece in the puzzle; the rough in which the diamond should not have been stuck in. I thought that was the best I could have done.

 

“It wasn’t. Why do you think that was the best you could effort? Look inside the past again, see what you’ve done wrong.” The night speaks, as the dimly lit yet spiraling colors within her iris stares into the soul in which I threw away eons ago.

 

I am back inside of the youth that I once called myself. The strain on the calf muscles in which I use to walk; the itch on the bottom of my lips that I intently scratch; the bristles that my hair makes every time it bounces up and down to the steps I make; it is all me again. But I cannot do anything about it.

 

So, I move along the journey on an already finished path, a painfully familiar path in which I walked on. My body becomes time; something that continues to move, even with the desperate tries I fail to succeed with. The time I arrived from has stopped; but the time I am stuck in indifferently continues, without a second of a thought.

 

Then I see her.

 

I see her cherry-red lips; the soft lips that sandwiched against each other whenever she felt troubled; the fiery-scorching strands of hair underneath the blazing suns of the only summer in my life, soon to end with the appearance of her dazzling beauty.

 

The love of my life.

 

The love of my life, whom I let go of so long ago. The love of my life, who my heart aches and yearns for even after her accumulated images fading within my brain. The love of my life, who never seemed to love me back. The love of my life, who I never once told her I loved her back.

 

 A memory so vivid once replays within the back of my head. The day, when, she came searching for me, dragging her blood-stained, white dress against the ground, as the blisters on the bottom of her feet popped at every time it made yet another grueling contact with the tiny pebbles that dragged her down.

 

She stares at me as teardrops, hotter than my heart that was once set ablaze, silently trickles down her glistening face against the setting sun. And there’s nothing I can do but to watch, as I stare through another man’s eyes at the beauty that was once mine.

 

You were never looking at me, he says.

 

She replies back.

 

“Every time I lost hope, I found its glimpses through the rays of light from the sun. Every time I felt lost, the winds that brushed against my hair gave me reassurance to set afoot on the right path once more. And I lived for that. For this world. For how beautiful it was. The breathtaking world we lived in, that you lived in, which we could live in together. But you perfected my world. The world that I thought was impossible to get any better was false; a hypocrisy; for you existed in my world. Two perfect things, clashing with each other. And that was enough to break my adamantine dogma. I love you, more than you love me. So please.

 

I’m sorry. “

 

“You were always looking behind me. Beyond me. At the plains that stretched behind my back and the bees that stung me. At the aching sun that burnt the back of my head. I was never there. It was this world. It was never about me, was it?”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“It hurts me more to be with you than not to be. Your words tell me your focus still remains around me, not on me. I broke your adamantine dogma about the world? Forget it. You still love it more than you love me. You don’t know how much I loved you. And you never will. You were my world. My only world. But I’m just another aspect of yours. We don’t exist together. We never will.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

I’m sorry.

 

I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to see the world through your eyes, how you saw beauty in everything. How you saw beauty even inside my crooked, broken heart. The colder I pushed you away, the more I shattered your heart into pieces. It was never about you. It was never for you. I was demanding sacrifices that even I never made.

 

But all I can do is watch her weep as I turn my back against her. My selfish, past self slowly drifts away from the love of my life, who dissolves in the blazing sun that she loved. The sun she loved not as much as me. And I can do nothing but watch, not at her, but at my own selfish hands, as they blur out, and a warm sensation trickles down the side of my foolish, young face, unknowing of the lifelong mistake he has made.

 

The bed is wet with the sweat I have spilled throughout the night. I slowly look down into the hands, the same hands that I saw instead of looking at her for the last time, to tell her I was wrong, to tell her that I loved her as much as she loved the world, but was too jealous to admit it. To tell her that I didn’t know the love she gave me was greater than anything else she had given me. And that I was so, so sorry. For everything.

 

The cruel hands of time do not wait. The only thing that remains from my realization is the slightly darkened, wrinkled hands that belongs to the man who never looked at the world like what she did. Without a purpose, I walk outside and stare at the blinding horizon that stretches across the love of her life. It is beautiful, yet so painfully bright. So bright that it confuses me on whether or not the tears that fall from my eyes are from my body trying to protect itself from such blinding lights, or the regret that I feel after all this while.

 

Within the light that fills up my cornea with a bleached out vision, I see her face once more. The deeply troubled yet awe-inspiringly beautiful, youthful face that I once loved and still love excruciatingly much. If only she knew how much I regret slipping away from understanding her love.

 

If only.