5. A part of me never left. (2012-2022)

 

I arrived at the bus station a few minutes before midnight. I shouldn’t have come but I couldn’t help myself. All the while, I prayed over and over that I wouldn’t find him there. That he got on the 8 o’clock bus like he said he would. The station was still packed and it was hard to see through the crowd. I closed my eyes, placed my hand on my heart, and listened for a heartbeat that would match.

I opened my eyes. He was a few meters away from me in line to get on the bus. His face lit up when he saw me, like he’d gone without sunshine for weeks and woke up to a beautiful sunset. But the same light quickly drained from his eyes when the crowd parted and he caught me in full view. I was there without any bags. 

I wish I had the courage to talk to him. To tell him my reasons, however feeble. I wanted to tell him how I wanted nothing but for him to be happy, but that I knew I could never really meet him there. I wanted to kiss him one last time, hold him so tightly, it would feel like his bones were breaking. I wanted to wish him all the luck he deserves. But I just stood there, chickenshit and in tears as I watched him flash a half-smile telling me it’s okay, that he was glad to see me one last time. A part of me never left that bus station. But then again, neither did he.

---

I don’t come here every day, just on days when I need to remember. I am back on my bench as people board the last bus for the night. The driver is behind the wheel tapping along to a song on the radio. I check the time and I’ve got a few more minutes before the guard will ask me to leave. I plug my earphones in and let a song fill my last moments here.

All the money I make can’t buy the life that I made. Spending it away again. Throwing it away again.

Physicists and sci-fi aficionados believe that entire universes could exist parallel to ours. Right now, at this very moment, a million different versions of us exist. In one universe, I’m a gazillionaire in some obscure island sipping mai tais. In another, perhaps I am discovering the cure for cancer or the flu. In some far-flung reality, millions of light years away, perhaps I live simply on some farm where the work is hard but the problems are easy. In this universe, I’m about to be kicked out of a bus station.

The conductor looks at me with a pained expression and all the strength I’ve been fronting melts away. He’s seen me here before. He knows this part of the story but he asks me anyway. 

“Last chance, sir. Are you getting on?” I hand him my ticket. Like the dozen times before it will go unused. He gets on the bus, mock salutes me as they drive away. I hear Laoag is pretty this time of the year but I’ve never been.

Physicists and sci-fi aficionados believe that entire universes could exist parallel to ours. If that were true, I’d like to believe that there’s a version of us out there where we end up together – where we’re happy and in love and we have all that we need. In the daytime, we work our fingers to the bone to put supper on the table. But at night, he holds me in his arms and sings me to sleep. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me. 

We’re safe with me.

We’re safe with me.

Postscript:

What’s wrong? C’mon, you know you can tell me.

I… I don’t know if I can do this.

What do you mean?

It’s just… I guess if I can be completely and unabashedly honest, I’m scared. 

What are you so afraid of?

I don’t know. That we’d run away chasing after your luck but it still wouldn’t work out? That you’d wake up one day and realize I wasn’t who you thought I was and you’d leave?

You think I’d ever leave you? Not in this life.

What about the next one? Or the ones right after?

No matter where you are, or who you are, in this life or another, I promise I will always find you.

And if I don’t come to you?

Then I will wait for you. Until the last bus takes us home, I will wait for you.

  
♫: Cavill | A Way (2022)
Photo: pexels