Reviving Dead Stars

I read Paz Marquez Benitez's "Dead Stars" a couple of times today. A certain memory came flooding in.

We were sitting on the slanted side of the huge park, between the trees. No one knew that I was the happiest person those days. Then I again I never really told anyone, including myself -- except for some paper and the unconscious escaping through my dreams.

We talked about it, the thing that we cannot put into words. Maybe because the words were caught up somewhere between the february days and a handful of what-ifs and never was and supposed to be's. They almost materialized, between the poems I've written and the trance-like conversations we had and little stories that circulated amongst our friends.

The problem with us, being aspiring poets, we often spoke in metaphors. At least, during those times, when we speak to each other. Even the laughters and puns we shared hid some things we can never really tell to the other (Or was it only me?). Time and circumstances took the better of those days. I lost you in the picture.

So when you returned, I failed to see that we were in another picture. Something that was cut short came back to me, in a whirl of past events that I attempted to paste to the present. Until it all came down to this -- sitting on moist grass, between the trees.

You said that things are the way they are now because of the choices we made in the past. That if it weren't for that, we wouldn't even be in this kind of friendship.

If you only knew that all those days when you looked up to me, I also had you in a pedestal. That's why it still puzzles me up to now, why some things were never said when we should have seen each other on the same ground. Your question on why I did not throw the first words still rings in my head every now and then. Though it did not seem likely, I am still a female affected by some female conventions, if not all. Apparently, it did not occur to you back then.

So, after a long winding of euphemisms and figures of speech wherein we concealed the matters to be discussed, we agreed. We agreed that it was something to be left in the past. I said it was cool, that I was okay with it. Perhaps, only the trees on our sides knew that the answer I gave was half-meant, almost otherwise.

After that, I staggered back to reality. Beyond the wide mat of grass where we were sitting lie concrete paths that we had to walk on. That was supposed to be the end of everything that has to do with it.

But like the boots, the bicycle, among the long list of things I never had, the idea of you comes back every once in a while. Only to be amplified again the day I learned that you found your girl, and it was not me.

So after reading and rereading 'Dead Stars', I can't help but remember the memory of us sitting on the grass between the trees, because we were under the stars. Sure they were wonderful, but I never really bothered to look up. You were beside me, and that was pretty much all the wonder I could handle at that moment.

When I came close to the ending of the story, I read it back to the start. But now I'm already tired. For hours I had been Alfredo Salazar, and you were my Julia Salas. At the beginning of the day I wanted to be Marquez Benitez , so I could've ended it somewhere in the middle, the "unforgettablered-and-gold afternoon in early April". How it odd it was that the end was set in the same place where we are now.

And how odder it seems that I've grown tired of reviving the light of dead stars, yet holding back, too selfish to admit that I'm merely looking from the sky of another.