♫ .. in a restless world
such as this is
love is ended
before it's begun.. ♫ ♪
I remember how, after hearing the Loboc Children's Choir
practicing that song by the old church in Bohol, love came
and crushed me without any warning.
I had thought I was alone, my friends busy with their shopping and picture-taking by the plaza, when I decided to sneak through a crack by the rear gates as I had done so in the past, Leaning Into The Afternoons while being serenaded by the choir. I had been thinking how I wouldn't mind getting married there, to let the weight of the church become the symbol of my vow, when I heard footsteps and realized that I had been followed.
It was right at that moment that my heartache stepped forward and looked at me. The first time I yearned to be tender in his presence. He was standing by the iron-grilled window, the sun setting a golden kaleidoscope on the chestnut and hazel strands in his eyes.
His eyes. He had stared but had not seen me, for his eyes held an ocean that was keeping us continents apart, and I knew all at once that I could never swim the distance. I knew all at once that love had come, and had gone in an instant. There in that centuries-old church, its cold stone walls again bearing witness to my sadness.
That sunset in Loboc had become my own Valparaiso: the epitome of my hopes and losses. It was Loboc at first, then Baclayon, Plaza del Principe: all the places we had been to. Each one offering a testimony of sadness. Each one telling me that the heart turns into a heavy boulder as it silently bleeds off its agonies within its own walls. Each one telling me that the heart is crystallized...before it breaks.
...
Where I am right now is far from Bohol. But tonight, everything: the silent mist that cloaks the cold streets of this Northern city...slivers of dewdrops falling off pine trees...a stray dog pissing by an old garbage can...the depth of his snore drumming into my heartbeat...they all remind me that I am, truly, alone.
They all remind me that the heart is crystallized... before it breaks.
