Just a short something...

Being okay means you’re standing; tall, proud, and confident. Standing tall means you’re in the air, your confidence keeping you afloat. In the first place, being okay means you’ve managed to pick yourself up and are now climbing the stairs to go back up the platform from where you’ve fallen.

That’s precisely why I’m okay with not being okay. There’s no platform to fall from. There’s no sudden sinking feeling deep in your gut, no anvil dropping to the pit of your stomach because the floor isn’t going to disappear beneath your feet. How could it when you’ve already come crashing down a long, long time ago?

I don’t have to fall when I’ve already jumped into the hole headfirst.

I also don’t have to worry about breaking into pieces the moment I crash. You can’t break when you’re already broken, after all.

Really, what’s so great about being whole anyway?

“Tae?”

But I’ll lie, like always.

“Yeah?”

“How do I look?”

With a twirl, my eyes follow the flow of her crown woven from a starless sky before following the winking path of milky skin peeking underneath her blood-red dress. Then, she’s standing still again, those baby browns taking me captive. With her lower lip taken hostage by her teeth, she waits…but she knows my answer. It never changes.

“You’re beautiful,” I breathe out, my chest feeling too tight, with my little whisper now our shared secret. She blushes because she knows I wasn’t really referring to how she currently looks like and she smiles, so wide and so shy, and it reminds me again of why I lie. The life in her eyes is fiery, burning, and all-consuming but I know that not even embers will be left if I tell her the truth.

So I walk towards her, quick and almost needy, then she’s in my arms. She likes that she’s taller than me by a few inches because she likes that I always nuzzle my nose to her neck despite being so ticklish, so I do I just that.

I hold her for seconds that stood still before I softly began to hum the notes of a previously nonexistent melody, and we dance to the song, and she giggles and she clings and she’s happy and it’s all I currently want in the world.

We sway more, I hum more, and I fight the urge to hold her just a bit tighter because I know her. She’s not fragile but she’s sensitive. The slightest change and she’ll notice. She always jokes that she has a built-in radar attuned to me, and that scares me because the voice in my head can yell pretty loudly, especially when the sun has set and the curtains are drawn and she’s asleep beside me.

God, she should never know.

I want her to keep on smiling. That beautiful smile. It’s the very reason why I have a soul.

“I adore you, you know that, right?” I whisper to her ear, but she doesn’t respond. That’s okay. She’s probably tired and sleepy. Movements like this always did soothe her.

We continue to sway…except, she does respond and she does it so silently. But the weight ripples into my being. Her arms around my neck tightened for a second, her hold becoming firm, and I immediately noticed that she was doing it out of this desperate need…it feels like deja vu.

My breath catches in my throat and I almost choked not because I can’t breathe, but because…

…does she actually knows?

So I gave in to my own desperate need and began to untangle myself from her arms in order to ask. Her eyes could never lie to me. But she doesn’t loosen her hold and she goes back to swaying again.

When did I stop?

All she did was leave a kiss on my temple, then, “Dance more with me, Tae-Tae.”

I knew then she wasn’t referring to our swaying. So I chuckled and nodded, then sniffed.

“Can you lead us this time? I can’t see properly right now,” I admit and came with it were the thorns that were previously hugging my lungs. I went back to nuzzling her neck with my nose even if the skin was already wet with my tears.

“Of course. I’d be more than happy to,” she replies back, sounding so at ease, so relaxed, and so…permanent. I don’t think she’ll ever leave. For so long…

“I adore you too, Tae.”