text: &#x200B; Dearest ‘fella’, &#x200B; I am continually haunted by the ghost of you. No, my dear. You are not dead - not yet at the very least. You stand before me right now, clad in white. (So, why do I call you a ghost?) &#x200B; Because, the memories we created, shared, and bore within our hearts, the very core of our soul. The memories that I kept locked away from sight, in the lacquer box that was passed down by my mother, to me, for you, when she ‘left’ for a better place that required no passport. &#x200B; The memories that are - unquantifiable, unthinkable, worthless yet priceless, these memories that I store away like treasure, as though they were diamonds found among the ruff. Memories that I wish the next generation that I bear would be able to keep, these, moments, that hold immense value as intrinsic as it may be. Moments that I’d never be able to forget - at least, not in this lifetime. &#x200B; These memories I carry like baggage for the rest of my life, in my fleeting heart - like a traveler that roams aimlessly, in search for something to fill the emptiness that is harbored within that red pulp of vitality. Sometimes they are as heavy as the weight of the entire universe - sometimes they are as light as the weight a new born baby carries in his heart as his first innocent breath kisses the very existence of the world. This, cruel, cruel, unfair world. &#x200B; But for when they feel weightless, I feel uncontended. I simply fill the void within my soul with vices, cigarettes, alcoholism, gambling, the very vices that I swore to never touch when we made our promises to one another under the sapphire moonlight that fell ever so smoothly on your face, that effaced the very beauty of your opal skin that I long to brush my fingers against once again, as tenderly as an artist would be to his first and last painting. Ah, this memory once again, it haunts my very being. &#x200B; Bittersweet. &#x200B; Most of the time, these memories feel like a weight that even God - the creator of heaven and earth, the creator of you and I, cannot lift off my soul. I remember the times you would say that you’d be there for me, from dawn till dusk, from then till the end of our exhaustible life, or even from there till the ends of the world, “for you a thousand times over.” I remember the last time we talked as though it were the fondest memory of a lifetime that I have yet to live till the end, but yet a chord strikes within my heart - I know, I’ll never forget this memory, the memory that haunts my existence, the memory that eats me from within till I’m no longer a man but simply a being that eats, breathes, lives, and exists for no other purpose than to live till the day I leave this world for a ‘better’ place, where I would meet my mother once again, to give one last gasp of breath - indicating the end to the vitality of my pathetic life in which the shell of my body - the vessel of my soul carries. Before my soul goes towards the underworld, past Cerebus, into the gates of hell. &#x200B; Dies Irae, dies illa. &#x200B; I’m sorry; I got carried away. Back to the memory which I was talking about before my mind was engulfed in a series of completely, undesired but necessary emotions. The memory, the last chapter of our story as ‘one’, the last day I spoke to you in which you were still willing to receive a portion of my love with contempt and dejection, but refused to reciprocate even a percent of it. The day you left me. &#x200B; It was a more than average, typical Saturday afternoon, we met at the café that we went to on our first date, the name? I forgot, a distant memory. When we sat down on that round mahogany table that separated the two of us by no more than a single meter, for some reason I could feel the distance that you were trying to put between you and me. Your eyes refused to meet mine, is it because mine was filled with the furious unquenchable passion of love that you could not match, or because you could not look into the eyes of the man whose life you were about to shatter with a few words. Under your breath, you muttered a series of incomprehensible words that to this day I still couldn’t make out (or I couldn’t bear to come terms with). &#x200B; “... love you, ... working out.” &#x200B; Then, you got up and left, leaving nothing behind but a man that was left void of emotions, emotions that would only come flooding in at once later in that dark night as he is accompanied not by you but a fine bottle of chardonnay. Oh, you left a 10-dollar bill behind as well, which was just enough to cover our usual order of 1 vanilla latte (decaf, no sugar) and 1 cappuccino (extra shot), (even though you didn’t even take a sip of yours) which would leave behind 20 cents of change. The 20 &#x200B; cents that I still keep today in that lacquer box of memories that I shared with you. The last memory of you and I. &#x200B; Goodbye. &#x200B; Today I came dressed in the suit that I intended to wear on the day of our marriage, I came with my best intentions for you. I don’t understand why you invited me. Was it because you wanted to spite me? To let me know that you were no longer mine? Or as an attempt to get my pathetic excuse of a human being to finally move on? - If so was it out of love? Whatever it is, seeing you smiling with him beside your side as though the entire cosmos stopped in their tracks just to watch you for that day, to watch you get wed into the arms of a man that wasn’t me. I realized that you are no longer within my reach, but more importantly making me realize how I was selfish to ever think that you were in my reach when we were thousands of miles apart. That weight was finally lifted off my chest, the weight of the memories that I held close to my heart in the foolish belief that we would one day be able to relive them once again. No longer will these memories haunt my soul, as watching you, that part of me has died in an attempt to become as pure as a drop of a dew on a morning in spring, to be innocent and to be void once again of any memories. The remaining of my life has become a new, blank, canvas. For in his arms, I saw that you were the happiest person in the world and I’m no longer bitter and sorrow, but happy for you. &#x200B; The memories we made shall simply become a chapter in my story that I will hold dearly in my heart, but yet I shall choose to forget. For &#x200B; memories distort the reality of life and prevents one from moving on towards a better future for themselves. &#x200B; I’ve finally become a better person, by the memory of you.