tired & expired

The Borrower

Once again, I emptied the bathroom of your facial creams, facial scrubs, exfoliating cleansers and perfumes. You have a lot of them, and I thought to myself, these are all going to burn your face but I guess the fact that you use them proves that they do you good. Some might have been here for ages, the packaging were chipped and torn off on sides and corners. The words telling how effective and beneficial they are were falling and fading… just like you and him years ago.

But you insist on being a living ghost. You linger, you stay, you whisper in his ears your demands. You keep on coming here at night, haunting this mirror, these empty jars, these perfume bottles and the memories I am making. You walk the stairs wearing your high-heeled shoes to make sure your presence is astoundingly heard. You go straight to his room, open the closets, rest on the sheets and stay there as if this room, that is indeed familiar but changed, is your own. And I wonder how many times did you try to ignore that the illogical accusations you wrote in his closet had been long gone. You weren’t in the proper ground to say that and you weren’t in the proper mind to paint that word there all huge and screaming. You were gone, you ended it, it was over and you should have been.

The walls have already been repainted. The scars you left had healed and the accusations you’ve thrown and the bad memories you made no longer matter. And you weren’t the one who picked up the pieces and put it back together. You did the mess, stayed and forgot that just like the four-letter word you wrote in the closet, everything can be fixed. Broken glasses can be swept, stained walls can be washed, scratches and peels can be repainted and windows left shut can soon open.  

“Ghost, look at your hands, they stayed soft, clean and pampered. Clearly it wasn’t you who fixed what you had wrecked.”

At late nights, beneath your breath that smelled of beer and Marlboro Lights, the loud music faintly hides your rosary of “whys” for your self-redemption. You drunkenly blurb of attachments, of your liking/loving and relationships that were too late. You had your time, and all you did is boil yourself on your jealousy with these people you now claim to love. One time it occurred to you that there is a sorrowful mystery you’ve been skipping and for the first time, you felt ashamed. But you came pass me the other night, I didn’t close my eyes and watch you walk up to his room, your body language proud and bragging. I didn’t see the truth.

I wasn’t expecting respect, but I thought your intelligence can grasp the idea of sensitivity.

And yet I come here and start my memories with pulling down the clothes you left hanging in the shower. I sleep with all your books above my head. Restless, I would toss to my side and find your coffee mug with your name drowned in blue. Do you still remember the letter you wrote him, the one that made him believed he was nothing? You told him you wasted your life on him. Why stay? Why linger?

Tonight, I shall wait for you by the mirror with your burning cleansers and perfumes, a candle in my hand.

“You see, Ghost, you have to go. I am here now and I want to waste my life with him.”

Posted 2 months ago