Figments


by Nina Naval

His eyes reminded me of melted chocolate—the kind that I used to love to eat as a child. I’d bake
chocolate chip cookies as a child and shove the leftover chips in the microwave. They’d melt,
and I’d eat them with a teaspoon when it had cooled enough. Those were his eyes—sweet,
kind… but bitter, too.

His voice reminded me of my mother’s old piano. It was loud, and the noises that would come
out of it had the potential to be so beautiful and portray so many emotions—sadness, love, grief.
My dad used to play it while I sang “Think of Me” from Phantom of the Opera. I was
determined to become Christine Daae. The piano, though, would often get out of tune,
sometimes causing the whole illusion to shatter as we were pulled back into reality.

He reminded me of so many things—he was warm and he was kind; he was a goofball and he
had depth; he often smiled, but he often felt pain, too. I admired him, and I will continue to do so
from afar—he was my first love, my true love, my only love in my life—but, like all stories do,
they must end.

“So what do we do now?” He asked me, tears now forming like a flood in a typhoon. His eyes no
longer reminded me of the sweetness of chocolate, but its bitterness. That’s what chocolate tastes
like when it gets burnt.

I didn’t know what to tell him. What do you tell someone in a situation like this? How can you
tell them it’s over, knowing that, in truth, it will never be? You will always love them, always
cherish them, always think of them. Everything will remind you of them, and you will always
dream of what ifs and what could have been. It wasn’t over, and it would never truly be over.

“I don’t want to leave,” he told me, his voice coming out as a croak as the words fell out of his
mouth in a desperate plea.

Oh, if only I could turn back time, change the clock, make it be so that this would never end, I
would. I would, I would, I would. I would do anything in the world to keep him, to continue our
journey. To continue this love affair we had, and to continue until the world ceases to move and
all life ceases to exist. If only we could continue, and our love not be frozen in ink and loose
sheets of paper. If only I could turn back time.

“I know you don’t,” I told him, my voice steadier than his—like a knife cutting cake, it was firm,
slow, determined, purposeful. “I never want to leave,” I admitted, putting my hand on his cheek,
stroking a tear away from it.

In truth, I could turn back time. I could, I could, I could. But to do so, would mean to leave him
anyways. He would not be the man I had shaped him to be, but the man I had met so long ago—
long before I entered the picture. All our stories would be rewritten, but never exactly the same.
Changes would be made in them, and so changes would be made in us. To backtrack is to say
goodbye anyways.
“Then don’t,” he begged me. “Keep on,” he said, “you can. I know it. Just keep on and don’t
give up on me—on us.”

I sighed and I looked at him patiently. I saw the pain he was in and I acknowledged it—I felt it
too. I felt it first.

See, in this world, I always feel things first. I know things before they happen, and I have the
ability to change events as I please. I always know first.

I knew this would happen, and I knew it would hurt. I knew he would cry, and I knew the colour
of his eyes. I knew the sound of his voice and the warmth of his skin. I knew the brokenness of
me and the loneliness in him. I knew it all—I knew it long before he did. It was the way of the
world.

“If I would, our story would end anyways, but end much worse. It would end resentfully,
painfully, abruptly, sometimes even dully. That’s not the way for us to end, my dear. Not like that
—never like that. It would never do us justice. A crude depiction of a beautiful image, my dear,
and that’s not what we are, is it?” I asked him.

He wouldn’t respond.

He didn’t respond.

Instead, I closed my eyes, and I felt my hand fall to the side. I would imagine that his figure
would be shattering like glass, some fragments eroding into the black darkness, and some just
soaring away, never to be seen again. I closed my eyes, and I knew his brown eyes would go
grey with the rest of his body, committed to dullness, to coldness, to death. I knew, I knew, and I
wouldn’t even have to look.

This world was never about him, just as it was ever about anybody. This was about me. What my
will was, so it would be—that’s how this world works, and that’s how it always worked. Despite
the bugs and demons, this world worked for me.

I opened my eyes again and I was in a field with grass so green it reminded me of Granny Smith
apples. The sun was so bright, it was like a flashlight being shone into your eye at the doctor’s
office. The sky was so blue, it reminded me of the Philippine sea when the water was shallow
and clean—when you could see right through it.

In front of me was a new figure, a new person to start a new adventure with.

Her eyes reminded me of the clouds in a typhoon—stormy and cold when it wanted to be, but
sometimes it would only just linger. They held so much depth that you could swear that you may
even see Zeus’ lightning and Athena’s wisdom.

Her hair reminded me of golden string—the kind Rumplestiltskin would spin. It was shiny and
yellow; it was long and it would sometimes curl.
She was so full of hope, so full of potential, so full of life, ready for the taking.

In a minute, she’ll say hi and we shall begin.

“Hi.”