LOL SORRY BB'S
THIS ENTRY IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE DEPT. OF CHEESE.
I'M SORRY THIS LOOKS LIKE ONE OF THOSE BAD STUDIO-PIC PICTURES BUT I SWEAR IT'S JUST IN MY FRIEND'S LIVINGROOM.
happy first anniversary, my one & my lonely, sleepyface! 365: the smallest biggest smallest number all of a sudden.
and maybe it's not like neruda says. one year is so short! and my love for you, my love: that's so long.
*
anyway, here is something something syrupy + something fluffy, like pancakes in bed:
yesterday was like this: scrambling to school late & sleepy, after staying awake fruitlessly for 17 hours straight, working on orthographic diagrams for design class. i think that this could be a metaphor. the fight for accuracy when you try to take real life measurements and put them into the small scales, millimeters and centimeters. in the morning cold i fold myself into a thick white sweater to stave off the shakes, i wear gray socks with yellow stripes that go to my knees. i wear boots with grass-stains on them that i will never wash off ever, partly because they are stubborn stains, mostly because they are stains from the grass on a hill on which (before we were together, before our mouths ever met) you breathed soft shh-hhmmh sounds over my hands to keep them warm, folding them into yours. later, on that same small hill, the roots of trees digging into our backs, we would kiss again, in a drizzle, in a rainstorm, cold and shivery and laughing, until the rain stopped. you are not a romantic but you grinned at me so widely then, "the rain stopped, i can't believe it, you kissed me and the rain stopped!" and thank you, you're silly.
in the classroom i am the first to arrive (early & bird are two things i'd like to be), and i smile at everyone like i always do, but nobody knows the reason why. nobody is really asking, but they don't know that it's different from the usual reason, but coexistent with the usual reason, which is you, most of the time.
when you come bounding into the classroom, 10 minutes late, you are wearing your glasses, and under your polo (a burnt patch in the front, from rushing through ironing) is a tshirt i bought for you in manila. it has cameras silk-screened on it, and while everyone and & their brother has it in my city, in this city everyone thinks it is the greatest shirt ever. you like the tshirt but you hate wearing your glasses; you only do it because i love them, you know i love them, and i want to tell you again, you look perfectly paired with any and all of my favorite books ever. you are not a big reader so i don't tell you this, but oh, your wide wide smile, your searching eyes. i want to tell you: yes, i am pleased. everything you have done, all the time you spend, shhh it's okay, it's paid off. my love, you owe nothing to no-one. every debt is paid in full.
at 12:15 you get a call on your cellphone; a confused look crosses your face and you leave class early & in a rush. you tell me to meet you on the sidewalk, on the corner in front of our school, and i am completely suspicious but agree because look at you! look how serious you are, secretface. ninjaface, trying to be stealthy.
12:30 and class is out for real, and i am outside and i see you waving frantically at a courier who has lost his way. your surprise was on the verge of being spoilt but luckily the courier has spotted me spotting you, saunters over to present me with the largest bouquet of lilies and carnations and yellow mums ever, it weighs four pounds in my hands and i can't put it down to put my arms around your shoulders and never let go. there is just so much that could be trampled under the feet of all these inconsequential feet of all these inconsequential people on this nothing nothingness of a sidewalk on a street in the middle of whocares and i love you. i love your silly face, i love you. i love your utter surprise at how good it turned out, your weak little are you surprised? and of course i am, you silly git, i am surprised i haven't just jumped you on the streetcorner and mauled you with my immense and untethered happiness.
we are walking towards our mutual friend's apartment to see them off on their thanksgiving-weekend trip. we see some people you know or i know, and they stop us in the sidewalk, or ask me on the bus, what are the flowers for? and your only answer is a sidewards look at me, a love-y look that crinkles at the edges of your eyes and oh how i want to punch you in the face sometimes, you are so so so good, how can you be so good? i look like an opera singer on her last performance, a ballet dancer at her opening night. the size of the bouquet obscures half my view but i hope everyone can see my whole wide honest smile. at our favorite afterschool sushi restaurant, the entire korean family who runs it has come out of the back kitchen in order to ask about these flowers. the daughter smiles and asks me where they are from, even though she knows the answer, winking at him. they think we are the funniest couple to ever walk through their doors and they know that whenever i am in a rush and ordering two vegetable maki, extra wasabi, i am not going to eat it myself but instead am taking it out to you somewhere.
when you go off to your afternoon class, i take a nap at the apartment. the mattress is lumpy but 17 hours of orthographic drawing will slay anyone, and i am out like a light. i wake up to the sound of your phonecall and i run downstairs to let you in. the apartment is on the twelfth floor, and i want to tell everyone and i want to tell no-one, elevators are our favorite places. i live on a fourth-floor unit, you live on an eleventh-floor one, and we are always trying to hold our breaths or keep our eyes closed (or kiss) until the exact moment the doors open, if you stop too soon, you lose.
i like being delicate about certain subjects; let's just say that being alone in a room with you is like discovering arson and switchblades and cure-alls and a talent for graphed math we thought we forgot after highschool. it's like finding lost socks in the dryer and drinking water in the desert, all at once.
afternoon disappears in a haze of catnaps. we sleep and wake and sleep and wake and sleep and wake hungry.
at night we go out to the supermarket, where we buy whole pineapple to eat later, with nothing but a hunting knife to cut it. but for dinner we decide on chinesefood instead, broccoli and stir-fry and oolong tea. we seem to have a thing for asian foods when we are celebrating occasions, and i find that funny. our fortune cookie fortunes don't make any sense and we ignore them, and i want to say we make our own destiny but we don't. we are just living / loving and it's suddenly a cooly quiet night and the wind whistles through my hair when we walk back to the apartment.
we play truth or dare but get bored (what don't we know? what don't we already do?) so we play hangman until i have to head home; i get words like "plurality" and "octagenarian" while your little stick figure swings and swings from the gallows and we find this funny. i have the smartest girlfriend! you whisper into my temples, like you want to tell it straight to my brain, and i laugh and protest, come on, let's be honest and you say, okay, i have the smartest prettiest best girlfriend.
you jerk! stop being so cheesy in real life so that my journal entries will be less shmoopy.
who am i kidding, i do all of this romanticizing in my spare time. with eyes closed. one hand behind my back.
*
my love, no matter how bad it might get, in the future, in our fights and long nights, i hope we remember: our small simple days fit like catching oranges in mid-drop. how bright and how fragrant and how easy, to fit something so sweet in the palm of your hand.
I'M SORRY THIS LOOKS LIKE ONE OF THOSE BAD STUDIO-PIC PICTURES BUT I SWEAR IT'S JUST IN MY FRIEND'S LIVINGROOM.
happy first anniversary, my one & my lonely, sleepyface! 365: the smallest biggest smallest number all of a sudden.
and maybe it's not like neruda says. one year is so short! and my love for you, my love: that's so long.
*
anyway, here is something something syrupy + something fluffy, like pancakes in bed:
yesterday was like this: scrambling to school late & sleepy, after staying awake fruitlessly for 17 hours straight, working on orthographic diagrams for design class. i think that this could be a metaphor. the fight for accuracy when you try to take real life measurements and put them into the small scales, millimeters and centimeters. in the morning cold i fold myself into a thick white sweater to stave off the shakes, i wear gray socks with yellow stripes that go to my knees. i wear boots with grass-stains on them that i will never wash off ever, partly because they are stubborn stains, mostly because they are stains from the grass on a hill on which (before we were together, before our mouths ever met) you breathed soft shh-hhmmh sounds over my hands to keep them warm, folding them into yours. later, on that same small hill, the roots of trees digging into our backs, we would kiss again, in a drizzle, in a rainstorm, cold and shivery and laughing, until the rain stopped. you are not a romantic but you grinned at me so widely then, "the rain stopped, i can't believe it, you kissed me and the rain stopped!" and thank you, you're silly.
in the classroom i am the first to arrive (early & bird are two things i'd like to be), and i smile at everyone like i always do, but nobody knows the reason why. nobody is really asking, but they don't know that it's different from the usual reason, but coexistent with the usual reason, which is you, most of the time.
when you come bounding into the classroom, 10 minutes late, you are wearing your glasses, and under your polo (a burnt patch in the front, from rushing through ironing) is a tshirt i bought for you in manila. it has cameras silk-screened on it, and while everyone and & their brother has it in my city, in this city everyone thinks it is the greatest shirt ever. you like the tshirt but you hate wearing your glasses; you only do it because i love them, you know i love them, and i want to tell you again, you look perfectly paired with any and all of my favorite books ever. you are not a big reader so i don't tell you this, but oh, your wide wide smile, your searching eyes. i want to tell you: yes, i am pleased. everything you have done, all the time you spend, shhh it's okay, it's paid off. my love, you owe nothing to no-one. every debt is paid in full.
at 12:15 you get a call on your cellphone; a confused look crosses your face and you leave class early & in a rush. you tell me to meet you on the sidewalk, on the corner in front of our school, and i am completely suspicious but agree because look at you! look how serious you are, secretface. ninjaface, trying to be stealthy.
12:30 and class is out for real, and i am outside and i see you waving frantically at a courier who has lost his way. your surprise was on the verge of being spoilt but luckily the courier has spotted me spotting you, saunters over to present me with the largest bouquet of lilies and carnations and yellow mums ever, it weighs four pounds in my hands and i can't put it down to put my arms around your shoulders and never let go. there is just so much that could be trampled under the feet of all these inconsequential feet of all these inconsequential people on this nothing nothingness of a sidewalk on a street in the middle of whocares and i love you. i love your silly face, i love you. i love your utter surprise at how good it turned out, your weak little are you surprised? and of course i am, you silly git, i am surprised i haven't just jumped you on the streetcorner and mauled you with my immense and untethered happiness.
we are walking towards our mutual friend's apartment to see them off on their thanksgiving-weekend trip. we see some people you know or i know, and they stop us in the sidewalk, or ask me on the bus, what are the flowers for? and your only answer is a sidewards look at me, a love-y look that crinkles at the edges of your eyes and oh how i want to punch you in the face sometimes, you are so so so good, how can you be so good? i look like an opera singer on her last performance, a ballet dancer at her opening night. the size of the bouquet obscures half my view but i hope everyone can see my whole wide honest smile. at our favorite afterschool sushi restaurant, the entire korean family who runs it has come out of the back kitchen in order to ask about these flowers. the daughter smiles and asks me where they are from, even though she knows the answer, winking at him. they think we are the funniest couple to ever walk through their doors and they know that whenever i am in a rush and ordering two vegetable maki, extra wasabi, i am not going to eat it myself but instead am taking it out to you somewhere.
when you go off to your afternoon class, i take a nap at the apartment. the mattress is lumpy but 17 hours of orthographic drawing will slay anyone, and i am out like a light. i wake up to the sound of your phonecall and i run downstairs to let you in. the apartment is on the twelfth floor, and i want to tell everyone and i want to tell no-one, elevators are our favorite places. i live on a fourth-floor unit, you live on an eleventh-floor one, and we are always trying to hold our breaths or keep our eyes closed (or kiss) until the exact moment the doors open, if you stop too soon, you lose.
i like being delicate about certain subjects; let's just say that being alone in a room with you is like discovering arson and switchblades and cure-alls and a talent for graphed math we thought we forgot after highschool. it's like finding lost socks in the dryer and drinking water in the desert, all at once.
afternoon disappears in a haze of catnaps. we sleep and wake and sleep and wake and sleep and wake hungry.
at night we go out to the supermarket, where we buy whole pineapple to eat later, with nothing but a hunting knife to cut it. but for dinner we decide on chinesefood instead, broccoli and stir-fry and oolong tea. we seem to have a thing for asian foods when we are celebrating occasions, and i find that funny. our fortune cookie fortunes don't make any sense and we ignore them, and i want to say we make our own destiny but we don't. we are just living / loving and it's suddenly a cooly quiet night and the wind whistles through my hair when we walk back to the apartment.
we play truth or dare but get bored (what don't we know? what don't we already do?) so we play hangman until i have to head home; i get words like "plurality" and "octagenarian" while your little stick figure swings and swings from the gallows and we find this funny. i have the smartest girlfriend! you whisper into my temples, like you want to tell it straight to my brain, and i laugh and protest, come on, let's be honest and you say, okay, i have the smartest prettiest best girlfriend.
you jerk! stop being so cheesy in real life so that my journal entries will be less shmoopy.
who am i kidding, i do all of this romanticizing in my spare time. with eyes closed. one hand behind my back.
*
my love, no matter how bad it might get, in the future, in our fights and long nights, i hope we remember: our small simple days fit like catching oranges in mid-drop. how bright and how fragrant and how easy, to fit something so sweet in the palm of your hand.