Jamie Delos Reyes

I was seven when I first learned
That there is a kind of dirty that cannot be washed away

It’s a curious thing, how technology has transformed the way we say goodbye. I wonder if it’s still possible to truly forget and let go when it only takes an instant to access the online scrapbooks of everything that has gone before.

Sometimes, when I tell her “I love you too,” I am not sure if I’m not still saying it to you.

Don’t call me your lover. I don’t need you to promise forever. Just try your best, love, and it will be enough.

Maybe I could love you just a little more than a lot. Maybe I could do that when I don’t know too much.

It was tough love at its finest.

“Goodbye.” It’s been six years and I still can’t spell that word with the letters of your name.

I heard him ask for the drill and I heard it buzzing, but I didn’t feel anything. I remember that because I woke up two hours into my surgery with three hours more to go.

Sometimes you’re home and sometimes you’re a war zone.

You are hope and sadness and betrayal. You are coldness and emotion. You are forgiveness and absolution.

His time was running out.

Like if I happen to mess up hard the previous day, I’ll still have all the chances in the world to make things right when I wake up.

Maybe then you’ll be reminded of how I used to make your heart race.

Sometimes life is an absolute car crash. It’s a sunny day and you’re out for a drive, the light turns red but some idiot decides to floor it, and a perfect Friday turns into a dazed trip to the emergency room.

It doesn’t change the goodness in me. I am not depraved nor sinful because I like girls; it’s just a simple fact about who I am. If we were living in an ideal world, your answer to this would be “So what? Let’s eat, the potatoes are getting cold.”

I look past these people towards the flickering blue windows of homes and at the flashing lights of cars driving past. I think to myself, “There’s so many of us here. How many are truly happy? How many are lonely?”

“Feel it all.”

There are easy days and there are hard days. There are days when you’ll feel all the sides of your life are pressing in on you, and you’ll see no other way out. You’ll feel alone.