a love story; our story

Eternity ● is a long time                           

Myungsoo died on a November evening. The skies were blue like the ocean’s eyes, storming abrew, illuminated like spiritual mischief. Suzy had been holding his hand. She had smelled of blueberries and warm cinnamon; Myungsoo had joked that she ate too many desserts. “What will it be today? Vanilla pudding or a chocolate mousse?” Myungsoo had nudged her playfully as they reached the peak of the mountain where the watercolor horizon met the sheltered mountain tops with a kiss. Those were his last words. And then he fell off the cliff into the sky.

He wished he could have heard her answer.

It was long fall. Everything was made of unmoving silence: the bounded white clouds and transparency of the fog that tightened his ribcage like stardust fluttering about. Then he sank into somewhere in-between, somewhere beyond his understanding, past the clouds and stardust, somewhere beyond the empty sky and intangible possibilities. There was a chime of celestial bells and then Myungsoo awoke from his insomnia. He awoke to vacant airs; he awoke to something missing.

Transience ● is a shortcoming

Myungsoo liked writing letters. When he was four, his father bought him a typewriter from a lost era and he chattered away on the metallic buttons like a bluebird building its nest. Words became him and he began to talk in rhythms, with clicks of cadence, and poetic imagination.

Suzy liked receiving letters. His letters. She would press her cherry red lips to the envelop seal and scatter the words into constellations across the vignette skies. Sometimes she would tape them onto her bedroom wall, next to the glow-in-the-dark stars and post-it-note dreams, and Myungsoo would beam until his cheeks hurt.

And she never threw away a letter. Never once.

He fell in love with her on June 1^st. Summer honeydew afternoon and flower chain headdresses. He was her window pane boy. He watched her from the window, as she braided daisies with her ebony black hair swept to one side, and he made her life into a poem – five stanzas of innocent first love. 12 months later, she finally noticed him. She tapped on the window pane one day and Myungsoo fell off his chair. He fell off his chair and he fell in love with her.

She said her name was Suzy. And that was all he needed to know.

Forever ● is taken for granted

The stars trickled pixie dust in the corner of his eyes and Myungsoo was shot back into the sky. He knew that when the sky flickered in lurid indigo lights, it was his time to grab his brown satchel.

It was a long route – to the in-between that was. It was miles past starfish ocean tides and gentle dandelion troves. All the way, he walked, until he reached the fields of honey wheat blades and transparent diamond skies – a place of tainted reminiscence where laurel green grasses caressed his sea-dreamer lips as he parted his way through the field.

 He felt life and death between his bones, an electrical cord connecting both worlds into a becoming of intensified emotions. He felt it all. He felt the fallen letters on the ground, crumbled in their golden trim envelopes, and the way the earth shook from the impact of words unsaid. He also felt the memories. The happy ones and the sad. The periwinkle love letters and their final regrets.

The mailbox stood over his shadow. Its red flag was peaked up high with diligent patience. Its contents poured out like an avalanche of castles built on air: letters with coffee stain rims and others with clean-cut stamps – a postman did not discriminate. But there was one letter that caught his eye particularly. It smelled of homemade cinnamon rolls and read Dear Myungsoo.

Dear Myungsoo, What does the sky look like from above? - Suzy

Myungsoo smiled. That was his favorite question. It wasn’t long ago when the sky had looked like distance. Like a bruised ribcage of stars sailing on salty ocean tides, of morning ghosts and evening bloodshed. But then he had remembered back to when he was a child, of grassy hilltops and sky-gazing. His eyes had created cityscapes and white bunnies in the clouds and it was from that moment on that he realized imagination was a funny thing. The sky was merely a mirror - of watercolor emotions and spectrum-ignited paint drops. The sky was a canvas. Where reality was in-touch with its inner fairytale. Myungsoo closed his eyes. And sometimes, he wasn’t just a writer; he was an artist.

And just as an artist never forgets the past, he would never forget Suzy.

Momentary ● is our blessing

The tree limbs above shook with memories of a candle light autumn and Myungsoo disappeared into the past. 782 days back. October 10^th, Sunday afternoon. Strawberry jam jars piled on the pasty kitchen counter and tournesol speckled wallpaper with a jagged torn. He got his first letter from Suzy. It read like spoonful of sugar. Will you celebrate my birthday with me? Suzy always asked questions. Myungsoo always had the answer.

And that answer would always be yes.

It was 3pm, 1153 days back, Suzy put a daisy chain headdresses over Myungsoo’s head and told him he was internally potential, energy that was. “And I am internally kinetic” She whispered in his ear and pushed him down the playground slide until he crashed into the woodchips with a rosy bruise centered on his knees. Myungsoo had later returned home to write Suzy a letter telling her to contain her energy because he was afraid that next time she’d push him into the cement concrete. Suzy wrote back in her messy hangul. She tossed a letter into Myungsoo’s windowpane and even the softest sound had woken him up. Are you okay?

Yes. The answer would always be yes.

Sometimes forgetting was easier then remembering. Especially when the memories were of serenity: when he had discovered heaven on earth. It was in Suzy’s eyes. And her smile that lit the city boulevards brighter than the bleeding neon lights at night. He knew there was something about her that was everlasting that made up - tantamount - for the dying pavements and gravestone incinerations. Something that balanced out the peaks with the valleys and the torrid desert heat with the glacial poles. He knew she was a medium that kept his feet on the ground. That put the sense in his perception beyond fallible words and deceits. She was more than a catalyst, more than a trigger setting off on a gunshot wound; she was his connection with life. And with her, he was merely a lingering ghost.

Ephemeral ● is our fairytale ending

Myungsoo had worried about this day when he would write his last letter to Suzy. He would no longer be her window-pane boy. The words Dear Suzy escaped his lips and spiraled down into the northern lights and deeper into the winter tangle along with the December snowflakes who held an appreciation for temporary things. Like his sea glass breath that suffocated from the world’s acceleration. He had drifted way that November morning, no longer able to keep up; he had never made it to the . And he fell from the mountains into the sky in reversed singularity and the angels tore him into dust.  And his last words to Suzy were silence and a palette of cerulean quandary. But that, was a matter a single letter could change.

The key to longevity was in one’s last words. Suzy had told him on a churning thunderstorm evening when her grandfather had fallen into the sky’s insomnia; his breath slipped of nature when the ocean waves swallowed him whole. Her grandfather had spoken of the sun drenched in revolution before his fingers turned pale. And Myungsoo wanted his last words to be of the sky. Their brilliant colors and passionate inferno. The beauty of abandonment and ascendancy of tangible matters. And how a single boy and girl had a love that transcended its encage-ment .

A love that transcended the sky. Myungsoo and Suzy.

He let the letter fall from his hand. His last words tumbling down into the sky.

 Dear Suzy,

It took me three minutes to fall in love with you. 2 minutes for my heartbeat to crash into your eyes. And the last minute, to fall back into the sky.

Myungsoo.

^"i threw the stars out into the cosmos & used my fish hooks to hang the moon too; hide the sun from wanting eyes beneath the zaffre mountains (look how they sleep) painting the night (wisteria) with such grace."

inspiration: "magnolia nighs and ivory stars" a poem by littlemoonboots