Under the moonlight two people fell dead, I span around them like a second hand. I was young at the time, I think I was ten.
The world around me seems like the friction of a story. An incomplete mess as God suffered a writer's block when he saw himself overflown with characters, all side characters, no one important. All done to keep the focus on the main characters, the ones in front of the camera, the ones shouting cliches.
The untimely dead can never be the heroes of their own stories. No one likes an anticlimactic ending where a third-year medical student dies in an explosion on his way to college. Who'd buy a story with that as the main character? At best his death instigates the hero's journey of people who stayed alive. Could be a nice revenge flick, a journey to forgiveness, a journey to letting go. Whatever it is, his death will never be his own.
Like the beautiful girl on the third floor whose father dragged her by the hair once and I never saw again. Like, the thirteen years old I saw in a wedding dress crying while people around her rejoiced while applying makeup on her. An empty vacancy for a hero in their stories, stories they never really owned.
As for me, I am the one writing those frictions. Hoping to write sense into it or with it someday.
Under the moonlight two people fell dead, I span around them like a second hand. Like a second hand, I tried to pass by as fast as possible, hoping that would be fast enough for me to forget everything as I leave them behind.
When I was ten, I told my father I wanted to be a dentist. Now, I wish I was a wisdom tooth stuck up this city's mouth, making it feel pain every time it bit someone.
The next morning, I was angry at my father for leaving again. I was also angry at my mother for letting him go. I asked them both if they love me and how much. My father jokingly said, "We love you as much as there are bad guys in the world". He then put on his police uniform and went away.
I wish I could have talked to God to stop writing those anticlimactic endings. I wish I could have told the girl on the third floor about a plan to avoid her fate, I don't know how exactly, it is too late to find a plan now. I wish I could have talked to the little bride's parents so she'd be left to live her childhood.
I wish that God picked a different day to get rid of his expendable characters than the day we picked to go to the theme park.
Under the moonlight my parents fell dead, I span around them like a second hand. Like a skinny, weak second hand, I checked their wounds. I tried to spin around as fast as I could, hoping to make them move. Maybe move counterclockwise and turn around time. But, eventually, I will stop.
Like a skinny, weak second hand, who tried performing a miracle, I will stop trying to set the time, just so everything would feel timely. Hoping that a little girl would make it to school in a timely fashion, hoping for a girl on a third floor would meet her lover and end their date in a timely fashion, hoping for things to come and go in a timely fashion.
Until I stop spinning and until I stop trying to make the clock's hands move again. I will be reminded that whenever there are bad guys ending things in an untimely fashion under the moonlight, I will have the dark comfort that my parent's love for me grew a bit more.