The Brain of The Kid I Used To Be

Not like I used to

I have stories now

But we don't flow

We don't structure

We don't rhyme

There is chaos

In images and the fantastic

A silence that can be heard

In the words I write

It is the paint

And your attention, my brush

The darkness in your mind

The canvass

When you let me in

And read what I write

The picture is yours now

Because you let me

She has free reign of when to watch it and I'm okay with that.

I will say that I love how I can get to sit down with her in whatever episode she's on, and be okay with it. I love it more that she catches me up on the big moments.

I love that she includes me in everything she's passionate about. No matter what they are.

Not even years.

I cringe at the next thing I’m about to write but sometimes the familiar set of words are used because nothing else can be closer to the message that needs to be parted with: let me back up.

2019 was the last time things were normal for everyone. I was with friends at the end of that year. I was with my fiancé. My friends and I visited the Philippines during November. The flight was long, as expected. And Manila was a sight for sore eyes, arriving in the dead of night, just so we can spend it at my home, the place I grew up in, not even 24 hours. Because after that, we had another flight.

Thailand was wonderful. And it was a dream, with my fiancé and my friends and her friends. It’s a recipe for the perfect teen slasher flick. Except no one dies and were WAY past our teens. The high was at its peak but this was just Bangkok. This was not our last stop. Another local flight the next morning and there we were.

Chiang Mai. A small city province with a personality so big, even a mosquito bite unearths a Formosa on your elbow (true story) only to be rivaled by the fever you get the day after (also a true story). Night markets, food stalls, haggling through vendors who barely spoke English but fluent with “how-many-fingers-I’m-holding-up-is-how-much-I’m-paying-you”. Thailand, its people was so alive, and when the lanterns were lit and filled the night sky, nothing else mattered. We feasted on the sight of the flames reaching towards the infinite darkness, a part of me was waiting for a forest fire in our wake. It may have been a morbid thought, to wish for the local wildlife but it was just a thought. The gang was too busy stuffing themselves with curry noodles and skewered meats. And I couldn’t be happier in the arms of the birthday girl.

Imagine all that tiresome back-to-back flight, led us back finally for some respite in the house in Manila. My friends and I were well taken care of. My mother, who cooked and presented my friends 4 square meals a day, a concept so foreign from the western culture that I was berated with the question, “how y’all people ain’t fat?” Or “how your people still alive?”

Further down the timeline, we found ourselves in Palawan that seriously had my friends think: retirement is here, in the Philippines.

2019 almost ended and we even had a day’s worth of stop to take the view in, in Beijing China. Hong Kong was protesting, and I had one Korean friend who kept getting stopped in the streets. But we managed to see the walls of the forbidden city, but not before our minds were blown when we stopped to eat at a local restaurant where there wasn’t a single English Character to read on the menu. Google Translate was used like a dime store hooker on a Saturday night and you still end up having to use your fingers—to point at what you may or may not want to eat… it was good. Like the noodles were heaven. I mean, they did invent noodles. I’m not the late Anthony Bourdain, so sue me.

We can all see where 2019 is going… 2020.

I’m lost when you let me go.

Shouldn’t you be too?

Discarded

is far from an act

It’s a feeling

too familiar for us

I know what it’s like

and you’re not alone

But why,

why are we

There’s nothing in this room

except my shadow

and it’s no friend to me

i could be better but i choose not to

.

there’s nothing in this room except my shadow

this shadow is not a friend to me

i could be better but i choose not to

.

there’s nothing in this room

that i like

i’m not a friend to me

i could be better but i choose not to

.

no one is worth saving

not in this room