Simula
His eyes, my world. His lips, my escape. His arms, my home. How come a human can become someone's home?
"Maureen," he nuzzled my ear.
I turned to him and smiled. "Lyle" a sweet voice escaped my lips.
Lyle Tan, my husband, my better half smiled back as he looks at me adoringly. "What do we have for today?" nahihiya kong tanong. Ever since, I had always loved to read poems and internalize it, there is something about it that makes me feel deeper in love with everything. Lyle, unlike me, isn't a fan of poetry, he's athletic. Nevertheless, he always read poems for me daily.
"Soul mates" he said.
Biglang may kung anong lamig ang dumaloy sa aking katawan. It felt so familiar, like a lost piece of me.
"I don't know how you are so familiar to me—or why it feels less like I am getting to know you and more a though I am remembering who you are," a pang of pain and tightness filled my chest. Nasasaktan ako sa aking nariring.
"How every smile, every whisper brings me closer to the impossible conclusion that I have known you before—in another time, a different place—some other existence"
"Ah!" suddenly, my vision became blurry and my head throbbed. Those words repeatedly played on my mind with another voice speaking, it belongs to a man but it's definitely not Lyle's voice. Naramdaman ko ang marahang paghawak ni Lyle sa aking braso.
"Maureen, are you alright?" that was the last I heard before my world completely dimmed.
A sight of a shirtless man lying beside me as the rays of sun shone on his back. I can't see his face even though it's a quite vivid imagination. I imagined Lyle's face–his almond eyes, chiselled nose and thin reddish lips seem so foreign to me. An image of a smiling slit-eyed man flashed crossed my mind and it feels home.
I finished painting the man who always appears in my dreams. I had to hide it from Lyle, baka kung ano ang isipin niya. Tumitig akong muli sa aking pininta at hindi ko naiwasang mapangiti dito. I can now always see those piercing and cold eyes that haunts me even in my daydreams and beautiful nightmares. His fair as milk skin and pinkish thin lips almost like a baby's that I always think of whenever my lips are on Lyle's. I then, decided to name it 'Soul mate' because every time I look at this canvas, I always remember the lines from that poem. This is my masterpiece. He became my favourite masterpiece.
I sighed and rested my back on the chair. "Who are you?" I spoke to him and secretly wished he existed.
