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The dried weeds underneath their feet made a faint sound, helpless, as it crashed upon the thick soles of their shoes. It carried steps that was too slow for a normal human, almost dragging, probably from tiredness, or worse, from the weight of guilt on their shoulders.
As far as the eyes wandered, they entered the land of no man’s—surrounding their senses were environments long abandoned, perhaps a factory; perhaps a warehouse. Scaffolding stuctures pathetically crawled the sky, long rusted, as some of it failed and collapsed into debris. The ruins had long rebuilt itself into an asymmetrical amusement park for people to vandalize—marked their territories, thinking they were primal animals.
Their cheap spray paints had long splattered, spilled—whatever had happened—dyed the weeds near it artificial, making the ground infertile to bear nature.
The place was suffocating, as if life was sucked out from it; doming the ground accursed.
The person carried on—it was not the environment for them to indulge, anyway—none of disturbances mattered to them. They maneuvered their dragging steps, turning left and slipped into the cracked structures, almost like a crooked dancing. It was the deepest corner, guarded by fallen rusty scaffolding they seek.
At the other side of the fallen debris, a small incinerator towering; the mechanism is old, but still worked despite moribund, just by using petrol they kept in the bottle. The person circled the machine, slow, like preparing a ritual, making sure each of the buttons and lever are intact before feeding the machine—burning the insides aflame.
Inside the tube, they had put bundles of papers, stacked against each other. One was bound like a scripture of god-knows-what, yet the others were letters tightly sealed, with one of them fancied with their finest cursive and stamped in intricate wax seal.
They were familiar with this ritual. Almost like a coping, almost like a prayer. A reckless faith.
Things that held steps are meant to be burned down; but never once they thought it in this form.
The machine started, proturding hurr filled against the deafened silence. The heat gave a false sense of warmth. A blind faith.
They knelt, fingers touching the gate of the incinerator the last time before it melts the hardened phalanges, pondering long lost the feeling of being burned, like the letters inside; of no violent agony, only a sweet pain—delightful as the flame choked with mercy.
As fire crackled, they gasped, knocking themselves from the haze, eyes kept fixatong on the flame behind the gate.
Pray, as if God is there to take the flesh of them.
Levah.
At the end of the day, we are the one to choose our own names.
Names, you said, are something more ephemeral than what we thought; changing it means a rebirth, of something new—or something we believe as new.
You never understand how your words had left me in awe—of those words ingrained into me despite my lack of ability to grasp your meaning. Though, now, perhaps, I have finally gained a fraction of your thought; and thus, shall I call you one last time with the name I cherished upon you. Levah.
Unlike you, Levah, my name itself was not built that intricate like how you danced with words. It was just four syllables, colluding two ancient languages I am familiar with. Mine isn’t as important as yours that I kept under my tongue; yours were picked for me, just me only. The sweet name is threaded from your love to this ephemeral life, drugging me.
When I sobered, the gentleness that was your fingers curled mine, blurring every lines as we found each other's: the sweet melody of our laughs; the tears made trail on our cheeks—we bare ourselves, ignoring the vast uncertainities outside us.
In desperation, we entangled ourselves, tightened the bonds we tied together; of understandings; of sentences asymmetrical by others; of words uncommitted.
The strings arose from our hearts, giving us enough to thread, until it was too late that we found ourselves strangled. Anytime one of use forced to close the distances, it tightened, tearing our skins.
We were bleeding, ichor made colors pooling under us. Though you were hurt, there was a glimpse of sparkle cherishing reflected from your dark iris, as if cuts are a gift and blessing from God.
You were captivated, lost and basking in our damnation, conjuring this stage of uncertainities as strings drew cuts deeper; chuckles echoed irony as Fate played us dumb.
The sky I stared was bleak, broken, and you waltzed along the stage underneath. Each steps we made—of me following you—grazed the skin, bled, and revealed the horrendous flesh underneath—the one that caught the starving ravens' eyes. I shrunk into fear, afraid that once again I would become a prey.
I pulled those strings against you and I fled; you let out a tearing scream as you fell.
I thought I saved myself, I thought I saved us.
I thought we could be freed together.
Levah, my dearest dearest Levah.
Know that your heart is vast as the endless sea you took me on that rare opportunity; where you told me about a tragedy of the blind and the mute who could only reunite during the dusk; as they represented the world, you said. Just like the sea is silent and the sun is blinding. That allegory struck me with questions; why did the blind represent the sea? Did falling in love with the sun blinded their eyes? Or did it happen because their yearning drowned them in trenches unbeknownst to any men—thus, removing their sight into none?
Like how your heart now became the trenches—colluded with grief had become your answer?
The moment I found you blind, my hands were cradling the love you gave upon me, still bleeding, and I could only gaze at both of you helplessly, wishing I could just receive your love, bask into the warmth of it, and carry on this feeling.
I wished I wasn’t that ungrateful bastard who took upon your bleeding heart and cradled it silently
A sigh escaped me when Fate reminded of the alien shape that was my own heart, forcing me to snap out of my wishful thoughts.
Do you know the agony as I stared at yours? It bled on my hands; normal, beating, shaped beautifully, bleeding in scarlet. A perfection against the abominable mine. I wouldn’t even want to try fitting it; feared that mine would bend it, destroying it just to be compatible. I would not want to hurt you again, like how I had hurt you with those strings cut across your body.
Therefore, I made distance, silently dragging my foot as I drew back the lines between us, doming myself—pulling myself away from you.
Levah, my dearest, because your love—in its own simplicity and complexity, existing in between the paradoxes—I was able to let you in, to peek the fractions of me: my rage, my sadness, my grief, and every other vulnerability I wouldn’t scar myself open.
Yet, I am a greedy person, Levah, I had long waited and wished you would do the same before our time was running out.
Levah, maybe it was your anxiousness that wretched the very innocence of you; clouded your poor eyesight with fear of rejection. If only you could lift your head, revealing your beautiful eyes towards me; I wonder if that would make you able to speak as slow as you can, savoring each word spoken and vulnerabilities spilled to me to contain in genuinity? Feeding me of my greed; satiated myself upon the woe?
I have known all the surfaces; your kindness, your bluntness, your recklessness, none of them cowered me to delve deeper. But, we were really running out of time, there was no possibility to fix the twisted part of us—fear would creep as thrones drowning us in this rust-scented sea, then when we finally numbed and lost our breath to this battle, what would be left of us? Your bleeding heart will decay on my hand, contamined mine with your traces, yet never truly for each other.
Levah, know my dear, as our time is running out, Fate rewired my brain incoherent, forcing me to vomit all that was holding back behind my tongue and, know, my dear, never once crossed in my mind I did these all to hurt you, to confuse you, to nourish the anxiousness of yours—despite so, no apology from me is sufficient.
Of anything, it is the time for me to bid farewell to you, my dearest—it is now I beg you: please stop loving me. None of us deserve this.
I promise you, my darling, that you will not lose anything by losing me. The me right now that you see, does not have the luxury of imagining what you would do to me; of tenderness and intimacy. This distance is the only gift I could bring to you, shove it under your tongue as it melted painfully, my last offering in the shape of unknown, wretched love.
Yet, my dear, after you let me go, no matter how painful it would be, I promise you there will be plenty—dozens—of people you can love like how you had loved me.
Nevertheless, I am a weak man out of all; I can’t deny that hypocrisy from the depth of my heart, still wishing that you will still be waiting, out of your stubbornness, and I will be able, in that time, to run, welcoming and to return your embrace, our love, and this world.
After the smoke dissipated, that person opened the door of the incinerator, observing the ashes carefully, eyes still fixated. Their mouth whispered, “ashes to ashes; dust to dust.”
In the silence of the burned letters, they recounted Levah’s words about belief; about gods; and about the nature of humans. Their thoughts lingered long as fingers reached for the warm ashes, dyeing skin grey, as if the memory replayed within those traces.
Deep inside, not any second, they found themself humming, in a rested moment ingrained, the time when Levah told them about the universe: of the creations, of the stars, the birth, the death, and how humans carried the stardust.
They reminisced how Levah would reference that maybe, the reason humans were said to be created in pairs was because they carried pieces of the genesis that used to belong together—until they shattered into pieces.
In their lamented hum, sentences unspoken, maybe our meeting too was led from the faraway star colliding—but yet we never made it, never to recollect our pieces into one.
Is time really running out? That person got distracted, stopped their steps as they pondered; wishing to know it too. Yet, in their upturning, fast-moving, unforgiving world; they know from heart that Levah was never meant to be fitted.
Maybe, that person walked away, it’s like the comet Levah told me; never to be together, just in-line for a moment.
It was beyond saving, yet the traces of each other were still found reflected on both of them; in the shape of healing scars, or in the tongues that speak.
One day, they’ll meet again, not in this form, but as something more trifling, when that day comes, they hope Levah will still remember them.