What I Saw While You Slept



It was a drowsy afternoon you couldn’t fight off.  Humidity hung heavy in the air, and the whirring fans and the droning TV tugs at your eyelids. Sleep beckoned and you followed. That’s how it started.

I’m still thinking how it felt as I watched you sleep --- a beast tried to claw its way out from within the depths of me. It felt as if I was a priestess in a temple of some old forgotten god, and I was about to lay down a sacrifice at the foot of your altar. It felt like a winged creature which has slept for ages inside a silver cage, has stirred and fluttered and now struggles to get out. It felt big and terrifying but beautiful too. It felt like love.

Your face was both new and old to me; the texture of your cheek with the 5 o’clock shadow both velvety and rough. Without warning, I was caught in a time intersect, when I could see both now and tomorrow and the story in between. 

I saw another evening in a time far away, where I watch you sleep. You look exhausted, probably after a day just like today. There may be kids, or none. There may be money or just enough. But I understood that all I need from now on is to see you beside me, watching you sleep, and I will be content. 

I have lost so much. I have faced herculean sorrow and despair. It made me terrified of having something or someone I can lose again. But when you reached out for me, searching for my hand even as you dream, I am filled with resolution. 

When you awoke, and caught me watching you, I gave you some flimsy excuse of some lame decision I have made. But the underlying truth is that, I have decided to wake up. I will do what it takes to keep you happy, to protect you, to buoy you up. I will put Amazonian women to shame because of what I can do. And even if having you means I am exposed to the risk of losing you, I shall bear it, like I have borne it before for people who are as important as you are to me now.  The only difference is, I didn’t get to choose them. But I choose you. 

I could do it. I know this because -
I saw the most riveting and fascinating future unfurl, as I watched you sleep.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Last Station: Leo Tolstoy's Last Days

Image
I can't claim to have impeccable taste in movies. I have paid to watch films like Karate Kid 2 (oh-my-gawd) and Going the Distance, after all. But once in a while, I stumble unto something intelligent AND watchable --- a feat increasingly rare in today's films. You will not have learned of this movie. It didn't even show here in the country. Sige, aaminin ko, the only reason I even bought this film is because James McAvoy is in it. And maybe because Helen Mirren was nominated in this year's Oscar's for Best Actress. I'm thankful for this 2 very shallow reasons though because it led me to finding a movie that, in my opinion, competently portrayed the conflicted life of the famed Leo Tolstoy. As a litgeek, of course I know who Leo Tolstoy is. I could name his novels and essays, and maybe, perhaps, infer on a couple of reasons why he was such a big man in Russia. But the truth is, I haven't read War and Peace. It makes for such an excellent doorstopper that I h
Read more

Stephen King says Stephenie Meyer Sucks

Stephen vs. Stephenie, the fight is onnnnn! :) Guess whose side I'm on? I just read this in yahoo mail and I had to IMMEDIATELY blog about it out of pure joy that all the faults I found wasn't just in my head. Somebody else who has more authority to speak about it, agrees. Meyer sucks. She just purely does. She was saved by finding a really great story, one she didn't do much justice, but girls will read anything with a hot dude in it. We are not all Stephen King fans, but I respect this dude (botoxed face and all) coz he writes. And even if his stories are creepy, he writes them well. I don't always like what he writes about (i.e. What's up with that The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, huh?), but at least he tells it well. And for those who say, well, Meyer's an amateur, get this: writing Twilight makes her an amateur. Did we see improvement in the next books though? At all? No. It even got worse. One word: Renesmee. But I've said all this before. Let me just qu
Read more

Not an Average Love Letter

Lately, I have been hinting heavily at my boyfriend that I would “appreciate” receiving a love letter. He’s been spot-on so far --- big boxes of chocolates, scouring shops and shelling out the bucks for my “craving of the month” munchies, flowers in vases and fluffy stuff to clutter my bed with. Everything except the Letter. See, some girls dream of breathtakingly expensive proposals, some of big fabulous weddings, and some fantasize of babies in a twin carriage. But ever since I was young, I only had one romantic notion and that is to receive one heck of a searingly honest, non-sappy, ultra-passionate love letter. The kind of letter that bares the soul and seals in ink the reasons and unreasons of Love --- so real it makes all other literature pale in comparison. I guess on the off-hand, it sounds like a tall order. I can imagine litgeeks balking at this request. And my guy, who like my sister believes that reading and writing are things you suffer through only for a perfectly iron-cl
Read more