Farewell Indeed

“Where have you been all these years?” There was not a drop of emotion in his tone.

I was never one to tell a person I just saw after how many years everything. “Away… Doing some stuff,” I replied, matching his voice’s monotony. It had been years since I last saw his face, almost 10years. Here I was, at 25, juggling many part-time jobs and trainings that the stress seemed to pile up so I decided to take the weekend off and hit the beach. Who knew that he’d end up on the same beach as I. I heaved a heavy sigh and stared at the sea’s infinite blue.

“Why did you go,” he asked me. He asked me this before, I remember. “I thought you loved me… Then what’s the whole idea of running away with him?”

I gave him the same answer that I gave him 9 years back. “I’m sorry about that.” What was I supposed to say, anyway? Nothing was going to change the way I treated him in the past and asking me the same old questions won’t correct my past mistakes.

Like many girls in high school, I adored the idea of being in a relationship with a guy. I liked the attention, the sweet nothings, and mushy conversations. These made me happy. But unlike others who get bitten by the love bug, I don’t dive in with my whole heart unguarded. I don’t enter a relationship with promises of forever and commitment, because I was a fickle girl and I always put my own interests ahead of anyone else’s. He was my first boyfriend, one who I didn’t intend to have as my last. This was all just a teenage phase to me. Unfortunately, we weren’t on the same wavelength there. And as fickle as I was, I left him for someone else with whom I took interest upon.

“How are you two now?”

I answered him with all honesty. “We two broke up couple of years back... We never worked out.” He must have thought that I was the same old dreamy-eyed fickle-minded girl that he was with almost 10 years ago, knowing I still didn’t end up with the guy I replaced him with. But time has a way of changing people and their perceptions. Time allows us to grow, become wiser, more mature, and let go of our childish pasts. “He just wasn’t the one for me. I guess, I was looking for something else, something I didn’t know was very much within reach during those days.”

I looked at him and I don’t know if there was a moment when a certain emotion showed on his face. But whatever it was, it left as fast as it came. I then saw an approaching figure behind him. I smiled. He must have been confused with this because he turned around only to be shocked to see a face of slight familiarity approach us.

“Dear, I’ve been looking all over for you,” the man approaching said. “Everyone else is waiting by the cottage.”

I looked at the man I was conversing with, the man who was once part of a very distant past and said, “I would like you to meet… my fiancée.”

I Fade With Yesterday

It seems like only yesterday
That you had your arms
Wrapped around me
In the back of a cab
I still remember your warmth
You long for mine when I’m gone
But yesterday is history
And though I want it back
Reality won’t let me
Someone else holds my place
You no longer need me
You’ve got her
I didn’t ask to be replaced
Nor did you plan to
But even if you tell me I’m not
You know it’s not what we see
You’ve got her now
She makes you happy
And I fade into history
The way yesterday did

0411 (Editted Version)

Closed rooms, empty stalls

No more music through these halls

Corridors owned by the silence

No more footsteps from rowdy students

The white concrete is cold

Classes these rooms no longer hold

The old red brick hushed

No more tales of long-forgotten memories to spill with each touch

No more couples to see walking side by side in the pathwalks,

No more howling and ball-dribbling in the gym,

No more sweet noises to surround my being

I look at the green field and still see people playing

Their voices in my ears ringing

But the images are vague, the sound faint

That’s all that’s left when I came

Sadly, it just wasn’t the same

[this was the version after a workshop in my CW10 class under CJ Javier]

0411

Closed rooms, empty halls
No more music heard through these walls
Corridors owned by the silence
No more footsteps from noisy students
The white walls are cold
Classes the rooms no longer hold
The brick walls are hushed
No more tales to spill with each touch
I still see people playing
Their voices, in my ears, still ringing
But the images are vague, the sound faint
A nostalgic rush brought about by a trip down memory lane


--had the urge to write this down when I visited Pisay last April 11.ü--

Beige and Checkers

I can't believe that I'd end up missing the one thing I kept complaining about. I really thought our school uniform sucked. Instead of the usual white blouse, we have a beige one. And due to the hundred shades of beige, the color of our tops aren't standardized. As for our skirts, when other schools have blues, greens, and reds, our institution decides on something that's a cross between orange and brown. And it's checkered. It practically looks like a table cloth you find in sidewalk eateries. Some batchmates even claimed to have seen SM employees using the same cloth as a rag. Ain't that grand? It makes us stand out in the sea of students. And come to think of it, not everyone knows what school this uniform belongs to. I complained about our uniform lots of times. It felt weird to walk around the mall in my skirt.

But now that I know I won't be wearing the ugly (sorry, Pisay) uniform, I kinda miss it. Hey, I remember a lot of weird and wacky moments with people in the same outfit. My uniform just simply hangs in my closet. I didn't even get to rip and cut my uniform. J6 and I planned to go harajuku at the end of our fourth year during our graduation party. But, the Ethereals had no grad party and we didn't get to destroy our uniforms. How sad. But, what the heck.

Now, I'm just wondering what to do with my five sets of uniform. I wouldn't want to burn them. Haha! Hey, I'm a proud Pisayan! I mean, a proud Pisay alumnus. God, I feel old.

So, to you current Pisayans, or should I say Phisciers, wear your uniform proud. You'll miss that after graduation day. ;)