I wrote this poem when I was on my way home from a gathering of hopelessly hopeful romantics and broken people.

I wrote this poem while I'm sitting in the jeepney as it smoothly flew along the expressway. Using my right hand to type this in my cellular phone while the left was covering it from the view of the person beside me.

I wrote this poem while I'm trying to hold myself intact. With a song entitled Hospital Flowers playing in my earphones, with a thousand fires burning inside my chest.

This is for you, who can stay, but you did not.

To the Boy who did not stay, the first time I saw you, I'm honestly not interested in you. I never noticed your pretty face, your brown eyes, your seemingly large nose, and your sun kissed skin. Now, in a crowd of random people, your face is the only thing that I want to see. Your face became detrimental to my eyes. Your face became the source of my troubled mind and heavy chest. Your face became the reason why I want to be able to forget a person entirely.

To the Boy who did not stay, the first time we held hands, we were sitting in the library, and I never expected that. I drew a caricature of your face with a ridiculous exaggeration in your nose. We were so tensed, and in the little space between you and I, you open your right palm and looked at me. I was excited, nervous, and sweating, and conscious. Conscious with my hand, with the books silently observing us, with everything! Slowly, covered by your stare, I give in. For the long run, holding your hand was one of the things I am most willing to do. But the holding did not last long enough. You get tired of holding on to my hand. The spaces between your fingers became tight and unwelcoming that my hands are ashamed to try to hold it again. Our hands became the basic human part and holding on to one another turned into an action we never know. Our hands became strangers to each other, and so do we.

To the Boy who did not stay, do you still remember my scars. The scar on my left foot. The scar in my arms. In my knees. Well, since you left I gained more. More and more scars. In my lips, in my ears, in my neck, in my chest, in my tummy. In my arms and even in my legs. I am left with all the scars from your touch. Scars that will never leave the way did. Scars that will remind me, that no matter how long you've been away, I will forever be marked by you. Forever.

To the Boy who did not stay, I wrote this poem to remind you that no matter how long we've been away from each other, you were always be, that Great Perhaps. The only man who held my hand in the middle of a sea of people.

To the Boy who did not stay, I'm still fatally in love with you.