“If my heart can ever open again, there would be space for the two of us. Maybe in another universe we could’ve wished upon all the shooting stars. Maybe the skies would’ve been as iridescent as your eyes, reflecting away all the worry in the world but refracting my image. Maybe we could’ve had a son, or a daughter, and we could’ve combined our quirky name ideas to create a name that stood out from the register but not enough for them to be bullied. But I hope you’re okay. Well…you should be anyways…so I hope I’ll be okay. I’m freezing in empty space; I have gone through many cycles since I last felt your warmth. My days are too cold for me to move and my nights are too hot for me to rest. Yet if you do get my letter, I hope you sleep well…since in that case; at least one of us can get closure. And I’m not bitter, you’ve showed me that there is a sweetness to life, and although sometimes the lemons can get Sour, biting down and moving on can be good for you. We were almost perfect, like the moon. Yet our love sank into the depths of the craters and the gravity of our circumstance tied us down and cut our wings. I’ve realised that maybe none of us were to blame, maybe sometimes it just isn’t meant to be, maybe it was our circumstances that bore guilt. With that addressed, I want you to know that whether you read this, or my heart goes into the trash again; I’m glad we, at some point in time, were significant in each other’s life.”

Love, in the most amicable way – j

//

I saw you through rose tinted sunglasses

You burned so bright it hurt to stare

And I wanted to be there for your burnout

But by then you no longer cared;

I was a moth among butterflies, braving through bolden lies

They cocooned me, forcing me to see you through different eyes

And I noticed the psychedelic dance of their wings but I was deaf to your cries

But when the white noise subsided, so did our highs-

//

The orange glow burning through the rose on my curtain is extinguished by the silent tears of the heavens. The clouds huddle around the graveyard of withered sunflowers and dahlias, whispering a silent prayer, as if they knew the flowers’ expiration was not worthy of publicity. I try paying attention to the table in front of me. I look at the clean metallic surface. I look around for her favourite sticker, hoping it can still hold my words and heart together long enough for her to see it. My eyesight blurs. On the maple-coloured mahogany surface, I notice a blue Iris paper flower sprouting out from withered roots, the corners teared up when she teared up. That had been the last time she ever cried. I realise that my left eye has been shut for a minute now, and that my right eye is sinking slightly; gently caressing a single broken blue crystal as it floats and bursts onto the wooden planks on my feet, next to the lonely wine bottle I drained the life from yesternight. I uprooted the blue Iris and reapply the glue onto the dried-up layer from our last times. I’ve tried. I’ve really tried. I’ve tried. The glue refuses to stick. I rush to get the stapler and slam its fangs shut into the envelope, this time it does not open back up.

I put on the hoodie she used to steal; it is now tight around my neck. “Doesn’t fit like it used to,” I sigh to myself, the collar strangling the front of my neck. Hiding under the hood, I brave the gentle pitter patter and shut the door quiet to not disturb the funeral.

<<The world is a black and white movie: I walk along the zebra crossing, crooked by the potholes and the decay of the road. I feel like I am constantly swerving traffic across the North-South; my head is whipping back and forth, my neck twisting through mental gymnastics when suddenly – it ricochets and jolts straight up with a sharp pain into the area above both my ears. This is just a distraction however, as I notice my left foot bent into an L, leaning against crumbles of jagged asphalt, ankle deep into a depression. I HAVE TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD. I step out of the depression, my foot snapping itself back into position as I did so. I see a Rolls-Royce Ghost heading towards me to claim my soul. As it wraps around me, I feel a numbness to my face, with both my eyeballs focusing on the “Just Married” sign impaled through my nose and out my skull. I HAVE TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD. My eyes refocus on what is in front of me – an Everest of broken debris leading to a bright light penetrating through the grey cloud. I gouge out the blood between my heart to paint the staircase so I see the path ahead. I drag my feet up the staircase; with the higher I go, the greater distance each step was to the other. There I finally see it, a golden mailbox, guarded by two heavenly angels with sharp fangs. Despite how paralytically petrified I am, I HAVE TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD.>>

I blink.

Suddenly, the letter floats away from my hand into the mailbox, with my heartstrings as contrails. I breathe out. As I breathe in again, the colours and saturation of the world seep back into frame as the funeral of the flowers end with petals of fireworks levitating into our atmosphere.

Despite the thundering of the fireworks, I hear a warm whisper behind my neck, gently stroking and dancing its way into my perked-up ears. “Almost. We were almost perfect. We were almost forever. We were almost limitless and infinity.”

By Jensen Chuah