koi no yokan
"A poetic Japanese turn of phrase that expresses the feeling of knowing that you will soon fall in love with the person you have just met. It’s not love at first sight so much as an understanding that love is inevitable."
DELISTRATY
OCT 17, 2014


Sehun (세훈, 吳世勳, and everything in between),

Though I can't quite pronounce it, I do believe that the phrase itself, koi no yokan, is expressed more with the heart than with the lips - or maybe that's just me being lazy. You always called me lazy, though it was not in the form of complaint but rather in the phrasing of endearment, and the smile that clung onto the edges of your face were more than enough for me to willingly accept the title. The years never seemed to wear down upon the shine in in your eyes, but the light wasn't there to be there - it was there to cover the underlying sadness that came in waves, crashing over you, consuming you even when you braced yourself for the shock. Sometimes, I couldn't seem to save you from sinking, but I tried my best. I really did, and for the time being, it seemed as if that was enough for us. Because shifting underneath sea foam, whites, and irridescent sapphire was as wondrous as it was taunting, and the shades of the seas would never dare taint you.  Love dreams in color, but not in blue or black. It dreams in the bronze of laughter, the silver of whispers, the gold of silence. Though to some these tones may mean a certain place or medal, in love, there is no ranking - its either one or none; quite arbitrarily, some may break this ideal, and just so often they are disqualified from it all together. But who is to call another a cheater in this game? Life isn’t fair, and love certainly isn’t.

While the chimes of your laughter caused the air itself to shiver, mist enveloping you like a soft, translucent cotton blanket, it was no match for the cruelty of time. Just as time brings things together, so it pulls them apart, and no matter how hard it may have to rip, in the end, it always wins, doesn't it? It is concurrent, able to be stunning ecstasy and absolute terror, euphoric rapture and indefinite sorrow. It leaves you deaf and mute and blind, stripping you of every sense until you are left not even with the common one to shield you from collapse.

Some view love as something that makes the eyelashes flutter, the heart beat faster, the pink hues dance upon bright cheeks, but I know better. Love leaves broken trails of thought behind, secrets so fragile yet so able to shatter and tear and destroy until drops of opaque crystals find their way down onto the smooth corners of cheekbones, relentlessly jarring against the marble floor beneath. It takes and erupts not in butterflies of the stomach but splinters of the spine, ripping notes onto a page that is already filled to the margin with ache. It creeps, playing quiet notes that twirl and divide, making its way into a sonata; an exposition, a development, a recapitulation, before bursting into a symphony so sorrowful that it sings along the heartstrings of the heart, plucking some strings with too much force, as if to break them, and others with too little, as if only wanting to save the parts that are damaged beyond repair. Unsure of what was to come, you hid behind the strength of others, as if all the spirit someone else had would ever be enough to heal the cracks that came with the tiredness etched as shadows underneath your twinkling eyes.
 

We saw it coming, but never anticipated that he would carry through with it. Leaving - it was a part of our vocabulary, but itself at the backs our dictionaries, on a page forbidden, never to be flipped through. He left, and took the bright lights of our hope, glimmering amongst a sea marked with our names, leaving us in swirling, confusing darkness. But it was not as if the dusk had not already been there, no. Rather, the abyss simply had waited until then to drag us in. When it all began, you whispered to me, amongst the fading streetlights lining hidden alleyways, that you were afraid of what would happen next. The predictions you breathed didn't mark the end of the world, in itself - just the end of our world. You were always right, and, as you said, I was always lazy. I gave in too easily, to false promises, to the bitterness that hid itself in a sweet shell, to you. But that is the beauty of it all. Of the many lessons we both had to learn, this, I have come to find, is the most important - The ending does not define you if you don't want it to.

Love is suffocating, but I want to breathe.

I don’t mean breathing in a conventional sense – an empty breath in, a lifeless breath out. All the things lost, unremembered. We watch moments fade, twinkle incandescently, never to return. Breathing in, as if breaking through a surface of ice so thick that hope could barely be seen glittering past the endless black, glowing into a beautiful white.

But at the same time, I want to have my breath taken away.

By the person at the counter, gorgeous the way a sculpture is, and by the very people I interact with every day – in the bygone years, quite simply, it was you - those who make me so joyful I cannot seem to catch my breath, who have such old, wonderful souls that the very instance of their presence is enough to make me bow over in appreciation.

Love can be riveting, I must admit, but I want to be amazed.

I want to feel the wonder course through my veins, the pastels of sunrise running through my very being. The brilliant streaks that paint the sky are worth more than the heavy stones we hold in our hands that we call valuable, but rarely do we find ourselves paying attention to the things that cannot be kept for extended periods of time. More time is spent capturing moments with the things we have created than is spent enjoying moments with the things we were born with.

I wish to experience many things before my breath runs out.

But perhaps my most earnest wish is not to to breathe.

Love is blind, but I…
I want to see.


And I know that this may break you,

but I also know that someone will be there to pick up your pieces, and no matter how jagged your edges, he will love you for each and every shattered fragment.

OCT 10, 2014