Do you recall our favorite cliche? What we promised each other — that we’d always consciously stay in love with each other. We both despised clichés and the noisy emptiness they represented. But, for the sake of our love, we resolved to ride with that nothingness, but this time with “depth.”
Our cliche was more than words. “We’d always consciously stay in love” were the 6 most important words we shared as lovers. They were more important than the 3 ubiquitous words people know and use carelessly — 143.
We wanted something that signified depth–real, true, and sacred to us.
The promise to constantly stay in love was the first ink in the book of our love story. It was the premise. The foundation. The basis. We loved it.
Let’s play pretend, shall we?
Now that our favourite cliche has become what I silently dreaded. Now that it has suddenly become MY cliche. Now that my worst fear has become my unplanned reality and I’m re-reading the chapters of our story alone, shall we pretend for a while that you’re still here?
Let’s pretend it’s Halloween. Your costume would be you wearing your favourite shorts and the shirt I got for you that I didn’t get to give you. And my costume would simply be me wearing the biggest smile ever knowing you’re with me.
I miss you and this is my heart’s way of refusing to believe that our love story didn’t even get to its sixth chapter. We planned to get to “Chapter 100” as we fondly quipped.
The 100th chapter was the goal. Remember? We weren’t writers, but we decided to learn every lick of the technicalities of writing in order to pen down the most intriguing love tale.
We didn’t want our story to make sense. we didn’t want it to be for anyone but ourselves, and most importantly we weren’t interested in writing it to teach anyone what love means. We protected our love like a mum protects her newborn child.
We wanted a story with two protagonists–me and you. We wanted a story that didn’t follow the usual grammar rules. We knew everything in life has a start and an end, but in our case, we wanted a story that only had several starts–without an end.
But now that our story has been cut short abruptly by life’s unavoidable curse, can we pretend that you’re still here, smiling at and tickling me whenever you have the chance?
I want us to pretend and act as though it were more real than the harsh reality of our separation. Let us return to the beach where we invented our favorite cliche and promised each other that each chapter of our narrative would be more intriguing than the last.
Let’s pick up where we left off. If we continue now, I’m certain that chapter 7 would be the most perfect and interesting part of our love story. After all, they say 7 is the number of perfection (another myth we rejected). Chapter 7 will be titled, “Death is a curse but the strength of our love is a blessing that outweighs every curse”.
What a lengthy title, oof. Who cares, though? It’s only for me and you; it’s our book, our narrative.
So, shall we?
Will you get up from that grave and give me the opportunity to keep writing this love story with you till the 100th chapter?
Por favor!
