Fourteen Boys

5

Here's to the boy who
slept with me on the cold, tiled
floor somewhere at a province
he's always loved, while he whispered
me stories that reminded me of
my own childhood, and whose
closeness was like a run-on
sentence never perfected.

•••

We were lying down on the hospital floor that night - granted, it was the cleanest most sterile tiled floor I've ever seen in my life, and we talked. We talked like old friends, like old lovers although we had never met before. My few months in the children's ward introduced me to a tragically ill boy named Simon.

I had a breakdown one night because I looked at myself in the mirror and I didn't like what I had seen. My reflection was pointing out all the flaws I had, making me second-guess everything that I perceived to be good. I felt like I was deceiving myself. I hated that feeling but it clawed itself into the deepest crevices of my brain and took over all the good that was there.

Like all other teenage girls, I was really insecure about my body and my capabilites. It was hard for me to accept myself because I felt like no one else accepted me or even cared to check up on me. I was being compared to a million different people I didn't knew. And worse, my family didn't even support me or cared to listen.

"I'm not good enough," I cried. "I'm sorry but I'm just not fucking good enough."

"You don't have to be perfect," he replied. "I'll love you just the same."

"No, you don't understand. I'm worse than a volcano when I'm angry. I cry harder than rain, scream louder than thunder. I push and pull, crash hard like a tsunami. I'm a fucking typhoon of a person, a storm of emotions - the only thing I'm good at is destruction. Simon, I am a human calamity."

"But you don't see what I see."

"Don't tell me you see salvation because there is none - I've checked, Simon."

"No, I see something better. I see a delicate snowflake in the midst of a snowstorm. I see a rainbow after the longest storm. I see a light at end of the tunnel and tiny specks of dew in the morning in your eyes. I see the iridescence in your soul not darkness. And when I'm with you, I feel like I'm in the eye of the hurricane. You are a tropical paradise."

In the midst of tears, I found myself laughing. Here I was, a match on the floor burnt and slowly withering away but a brighter flame comes closer lighting me up once again. I remembered a quote from a movie I saw called Like Water for Chocolate and it said, "Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves."

I found it impossible to come back after losing so much but he seems to have pulled me out from the depths of Tartarus. After all the boys I have loved and lost - he was the one I loved most.

Simon was my very own salvation, as cheesy as it may sound. He was the one who righted my wrongs. He made me believe that I was worth something. Months later with his help I got better. And I wished I could have done the same for him. The crevices in his arms were too deep for me to pull him out of. There were too many scars for me to heal.

"So, I guess this is goodbye." Simon held onto my hands, afraid to let go. Even until my knuckles turned white I never moved.

I didn't want to be separated from him so I refused to take a step. "Please don't say that."

"But you're better now. I'm proud of you." He let go of my hands and planted a kiss on my head.

It was the last time I ever saw Simon. I couldn't bear going back to that place knowing that he might not be there anymore.