drifting

PAPERBOATS
by cris

There was an ocean between him and me. I knew it.
I could see it stretch beyond what my eyes could follow, I could hear its roar and whispers even in my sleep. I felt its depth and I was saddened at how far he seemed, how so out of reach.
This ocean, it had no waves.
I walked its shores with soundless nonchalance. Any noise I make, he would not heed anyways. The sand was a bit coarse, there were stones mingled with it, even broken pieces of glass now pretending to be shards of corals or gems blinking enticingly by my feet. Aged shells calmly retorted in their silence. The sun still hid. An invisible blanket, this horizon, it covers the ever-flaming ball that rose and rested like the beating inside my chest.
Only a few hours now.
I keep noticing these things. My mind has to. I think of people in comas, their minds protecting themselves - it is to the corporeal what to the abstract is known as hope. The physical realm's manifestation of such a force - one that cannot let go, one that hangs on because one day, it will reawaken and maybe breathe life into an empty shell.
Am I in a coma?
Is this why I keep seeing these intricate details of a scene before me, a scene that is not even real? But nor is it imagined.
The waveless ocean is there.
I knew it.
Between him and me.
I knew it.

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I'm leaving.
This he said with such fire in his voice, and the same fire in his squinty eyes.
I remember I smiled.
Just about the only involuntary response my body was able to conjure. A million nerve cells sparking off electricity in unimaginable speed and power, reacting one by one to the stimulus sent and yet all that came out from within me was - a smile.
There was a wedding and he was invited. He'll be making several trips by bus and ship, traveling miles and miles to. But all that registered was that he was traveling from. Away from me.
The bags. The clothes. The money. The tickets. Where should he start?
I smiled again.
He was my friend. He is my friend. And yet a strange but not completely unfamiliar feeling crept up on me that very moment, one I was desperately trying to lose.
The green monster that had ravaged so many others now had his eyes upon an unsuspecting prey. Me.
It was after me.
No weapons in hand, a still-broken body and a confused mind, I could only do one thing.
I ran.
I ran so fast, so far. For so long.
I did not even notice that I was running from nothing anymore. The monster had given up.
Still my legs did not buckle. They did not stop.
Night had fallen. The wind lashed at my face, sweat warmed and pasted to my skin.
And when I looked back, you had gone.
The snapping of nocturnal birds, their mocking songs and wingless flight - they followed me home, as I ran to the only place I knew I could not be gotten to.



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The paper boat was cast away by my hand. I was young, then. Barely seven.
There was a calm to the storms that I knew. They would start as a drizzle, little tickling fingers that tasted briny and smelled wrong. In a matter of seconds, it would come down, hard and raging.
So I made boats.
Different kinds. Colors. Sizes.
I folded them gently, creasing them like they were precious and not so very vulnerable. I made every fold ceremoniously. I knew the storm would wait.
Until finally, I was ready. One by one, I let them go. The puddles by then were already more than five inches thick, craters in the cement making my little oceans, little oceans where my vessels can drift about and sail away.
I would watch them with a smile.
They looked so beautiful and majestic, small as they were.
For several minutes, they taunted the heavy drops. They flitted in between and escaped the harsh fleeing of water from the clouds.
One drop makes all the difference.
Just one drop and the boat gets trapped between two forces that only sought its demise. From above. So too from below.
The boats sank to the sound of my heart breaking.
I was drenched and I smelled. There was no smile on my face.
But there were no tears.
No.
No tears either.

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That night, I got home before the rain fell. The days and the nights before that were dreams made of paper boats that sank no matter how strong you made them, no matter how long it took you to make each vital fold.
I wish I had the time to try to save it. Scoop the water out with my little fingers and put rubber into the holes that threatened to capsize my silence.
It was cold. And I started to cough. I coughed deep and endless.
I pulled the sheets up and I tried to think clearly. It seemed my hands were not the only ones on their own. Even my mind was.
Did I sleep soundly?
Did I sleep at all?
I could never remember.
What I do remember, is the feeling of being adrift. Whether asleep or awake, I felt waves underneath me. I felt t he gentle rocking of the water, and sometimes, its maddened tossing. I was pulled and pushed and there was nowhere to go. Somehow, I felt like I was with him. There in the sea, right by his side, with a dream right in front of me and nothing behind that called out our names.
A waveless ocean.
A boatless voyage.
I'm hoping I did sleep then.
There are some friends that never go away and that night, I needed one's embrace.


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I was not the same when I woke up.
I was not the aimless wanderer who saw glass in the sand. I was not the one who ran nor the little boy with the sinking paper boats.
There was an ocean, yes.
I could still feel it.
I touched its presence, there, between him and me. He had gone.
And I knew why.
I understood.
And loved him more for it.
With him, I would always feel the water.
He is flowing. He is never anyone's possession. He is drifting.
If I am to know him, I must know the shore will be seen one day and whether he takes the step toward it or not is something I must be ready for. Whether he walks the length of the coast , glass and stones in the sand, holding my hand. Or he could float away in his own paper boat, beautiful and majestic, never to sink, never to fade from sight. Far and yet always near. Away and yet always here.
I think I found home.
It was a waveless ocean.
It was him.


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finite.