13.1.23, or the accountability of chains
sunny summers and their somber outcomes that cast shadows upon my face, every season is summer in this town; I walk my little brother to the subway and we say nothing. we had a stupid fight before leaving home.
and everything burns, from the bottom of my shoes to the tips of my eyelashes, and it sucks, but it's all we've ever known. our city's confines, the pretty palm trees and the godawful rivers turned sewers. I love it here, I keep on saying, even when it makes me cry.
you see, I'm the worst of daydreamers, the kind who was promised greatness if she behaved nicely, and I did. I fucking did.
(but greatness is reserved to the rich kids who have nothing to lose and everything to gain, the ones that giggle behind your back in high school cafeterias and have reunions without you. you say you're glad. no one buys it.)
I'm the kind to romanticize the equatorial fall during spring in the sunburned leaves of a mango tree. I open windows for the dry breeze to come in and turn up thunderstorm sounds inside my room. and when I look everywhere to only see the same four colours, I'm your perfectly good girl. I save my tears for the night-time shower.
I see so many who live just to leave and I just don't know where to leave to. when my grandparents have been each other's new year's kiss for the past 52 countdowns, and my past 19 resolutions turn out being quiet tears swirling through the midnight ocean, I fear me - and how I managed to lose myself along knowing faces.
every January that comes wraps me up and I see these bright sets of eyes I carry with me every boring, mundane, oven-hot place I go. I see they grow, I see they change, and I see how I remained the same.
and I tell myself they need me too much. I tell myself I should stay.
and I do.
subway doors open, I drop my brother off and I send myself back home. it's summer again. every season is summer in this town.