the Sunset at Sumida
This write up could have been done aeons ago, but the pain was too hard to bear. However, going through the photos, taking the time machine down the memory lane, I was expected to meet the pavement full of broken shards, but there weren't any. Instead, I was just met with a tinge of nostalgia. You're still there...
Yes, you.
But you don't exist anymore. You're just the fragment of that time who still existed in that certain time, like a distant memory. And there's another me there too, the me that existed at that time... in that certain time.
It felt like I'm watching in the third person, as I ran through the memories this time round. I could see your face, your smile. It was bittersweet, definitely. And that sunset at that time was perhaps the last sunset that we had before we close our chapter.
You, being you. Me being me.
I was insecure then, but I should have recognized love when I see it when I had it. Not when I'd lost it.
There's nothing more to say, as I watched the sunset in silence. It felt like the closing of the chapter, engraved in the middle of the cityscape. The pale yellow horizon could only mark the closing, but not the end. The sun slithered through the skies, like a half-broken bookmark but that you would still use because it carries too much sentiments to throw away. Well, there are things that we don't throw away after all... is it?
I have what I want for closure in my head. But that's another story to tell, another thing to unfold. However today, I traced my hand across the skies of yesterday. Of how I had you for all these years, how I selfishly kept you from the world that you deserve.
The sunset changed for abit, instead of the closing of a chapter. From another angle, it just felt like another opening of one. For both of us, just that this time we're both writing our own "next" now. The streaks of colours came out like words for tomorrow, and the words weaved into a colour palette of oranges and pink, that danced with the cherry blossom petals as they fall, celebrating.
I looked at us from afar, with the remote in hand, in my pocket as I sunk both of my hands deep into my denim as if trying to hide them, as if trying to freeze time. But I was also gripping it as hard as I can, to let myself know that things pass... Just like the river... just like... us.
I looked at us there and then, oblivious of the end. Perhaps you do, for what you had installed for me was heartwrenching when we're back. However... at that part, I couldn't tell. When your eyes marvel at the plush unicorn, holding it like a kid with her favourite toy. It made me there and there... that I want to protect you, hold you... But did I do whatever it takes? No. Perhaps what the Universe have for me was different. For there are much more voyages I had to make, the world I have to see, so I can come back with stories to tell, to share to weave.
This beautiful cloth of flag that flows down the river of time, across Sumida, was nevertheless ever-changing. For the water always flows with time, current and wind... That day I saw myself holding your face, pushing your fringe up, whispering to my heart that this moment is one of the happiest ones in my life, as I spun you around... oblivious to our future, to the people around us... and for the moment it's just us... and the Sun.
We are about at the end when I saw us looking at that statue that I awed in as if I'd returned to my childish self. You pulled me against the sunset to take a nice silhouette pic, which would be digitally stored for the rest of time... perhaps if I ever uploaded it.
I hide behind the block just so you both won't catch of glimpse of me messing with time. I looked at us again, me chuckling with the photo, you trying to say it's your turn, before making me taking numerous unsatisfactory shot again before dinner.
The sun felt like our storyteller today... and this time it's time to put an end to the chapter as I could felt her flipping the pages like the skies. The hues turned into a navy blue, as if solemn for the future that's about to come, but for the oblivious us... we were happy, then.
I traced my footstep back to the streets, as I stood there... in a dazed as people from across the past walked through me like I'm a ghost. And I could felt myself pressing the button and fading out, like the ghost that doesn't belong in this time. I felt myself floating up into the skies, and this time the city felt so tiny like how it was at the top of the Tokyo Tower.
And that night, the ghost of me was cast across the skies in a starry blue that we won't have seen before. And that night, we're both back sprawling across game centres, my eyes are on you, but not the skies.
I felt an enormous arm over me, like an embrace, but... it was also like a goodbye, as I could felt the cities folded like paper, before reducing to a 2-dimensional page before I closed the chapter. I'm back again... In my room, I looked at the blight screen, that cast our past, the goosebumps in my arms over what just happened, and with a touch of euphoria, I begin to write...
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