Mathus' Meditation

The colors of the sky filled the sockets of my eyes, I let the sunset pour its golden beam, the red, orange and blue into my hollow chest - gravity had sucked me in like quicksand, if only being a few hundred thousand feet above the ground could rescue me. I was desperately searching for a silver lining somewhere in the clouds but my heart caved in when all that ever happened was the night falling through, blinding my vision.

My seat belt buckled, ready for landing. I looked outside from my window to the sky cloaked behind a black veil, here and there, I saw sparkles shining a valedictory. I couldn’t tell if they were the stars or if it was the city blinking from afar, crying for help.

It has been four months since Hong Kong was at war. I remember it chanting for freedom, I remember it fighting in flames - its people teared up in chemicals, bent and broken in brutality, their home burned to ashes, and fell as raindrops to wash away the city of sins.

You and I had met at a fairly strange time in our lives, where chaos and comfort coexisted in conflicts. Hidden away in your cozy flat on Hollywood Road, I curled up like a flightless bird, trying to find shelter in your arms. I liked your company. I also liked that you had curly red hair, freckles and a big smile that fully masked your crooked soul. We were a houseful of regrets, both knew what we were here for, and somewhere along the line, our anecdotes echoed.

“When you have no hope, you have nothing to fear,” you read aloud from the book we picked out of the shelf, left here by the landlord who used to live in this apartment, “...nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to lose.” We were both on our own journey to seek salvation but instead were brought here, caught between lovers and best friends.

You came to Hong Kong eight months ago, hoping to break free from the monster of who you had been. Your mistakes held you captive until you turned yourself in, you had to be exiled with a pistol pressed against the back of your head. We were both refugees of our past, jaded by our own corrupted moralities. Arriving at our destiny from a shipwreck, we found each other.

I rested my legs on yours as you read Rebel Buddha, we took turns and it was your chapter after mine. I would never forget your voice mixed with the soundtrack of the rain tapping on the window, and bullets firing ferociously in the background. What a time to be alive, I thought, breathing in the 21st-century solitude as we took sanctuary in this foxhole. I made fun of your accent and we played fight when you held me down on the bed, trying to tickle me. 

If remorse had a tune, it would be my self-loathing disguised as laughter. You said happiness was to be found from within, and you told me stories of your retreat camp in Colombia. But I was brought back to this split second up in the air, where God couldn’t be found and Buddhism couldn’t be justified. I prayed to be set free from my reality, only to have come to one where I was entrapped by my memories. Feelings might not have been real but moments were.

I thought of the time when you told me to unpack the bags that weighed me down, you said to live was to let go. Then the cabin lit up, the airplane about to land. I looked out the window at a black quilt, still covered in shivering lights - being on top of the world did not alter a thing about the truth. If only the gunfire could be blocked out by distance, if only the explosion could be muted by apathy, and if only my pounding heart could be muffled by meditation. And who was I trying to fool when you said you loved me? We both knew well enough - you were my escape from reality and I was just your remedy.

Shimbashi Shower

An early Summer shower washed the dust off the lanterns hanging outside a ramen shop, it brought colors to the lifeless Monday in Japan. You and I walked on the pavement, shuffling from shelter to shelter, hoping the rain wouldn’t drench our clothes. It was at dusk and the lampposts lit up the streets of Shimbashi, billboards stood in solitude on top of the three-storey buildings, some flashing in a steady tempo, signaling for attention.

You held my hand and asked if I was ready to run to the other side of the road, I looked at you, before I could respond, then I felt my body dragging my legs in puddles. I tried to shake your hand off but failed, “I won’t let go honey,” you said playfully. I wanted to get mad at you for ruining my brand new shoes but you laughed. And I laughed. I guess that’s what you do to me.

Raindrops tapped on my face, I woke up to the heat of July in Hong Kong - there I was, at Repulse Bay, lying under the sun and the gray clouds, my body covered in sand after play fighting, letting nature take me places. I closed my eyes again to reminisce the picture in my head, my only memory of Japan, too vivid sometimes I’d think of it as a dream.

You asked me a while ago that when I looked at certain photos, if I would feel as if I was reliving the exact moment captured in frame. I told you I couldn’t. I couldn’t because pictures were only pictures - and I would like it to stay this way. But what if I did? What if I did feel something - would you still have let me go in the end?

Love was in the door two years ago and I thought it was a game of patience. And here I am now, lying on my bed, tossing and turning in the dark, with lights shining from the phone piercing through my eyes - which somehow has become a usual practice most nights when I am alone and restless - to go through pictures of us for hours, until I start falling asleep and so I stop weeping.

Funny enough, it doesn’t hurt me, the thought of you doesn’t sting. My eyes pour like the early Summer shower in Japan, my memories stand high up in solitude, at a distance where I can’t ever reach. Perhaps we have always been wrong about love. We think of love as something special, when it is standing on top of a three-storey building, flashing its neon lights calling for attention. And we think we can call it love because it brings colors to our lifeless Monday and it lights up the empty streets we walk on at dusk.