Monday, September 28, 2020

An Ode to the Little Giant

There is not so much changes with you, with us.

We’re still the same, weather-beaten, rain-sodden us. We’re red dwarfs awaiting supernova implosion, burning through our last hydrogen atoms. We sigh into the onslaught by identical days. Far too exhausted for tomorrow morning stroll, just enough for waking up. Bound by tyranny of boredom and the confinement forced into us from some foreign, voracious, microscopic agents of chaos.

We are tired and sullen, the skeletal, spectral us.

As we get older, we drag our feet more. We started losing sight. A bleary vision. Stanzas of worry etched on our foreheads. The wound from ramshackle dreams latched onto our shoulders. Fragmented plans, shredded like the Oxyrhyncian trash heap.

The sun goes up and down like the most despicable clockwork. Older you be and you doubt more. (We all do, holding to that frail strand of hope that made thinner by day.)

Yet while I started giving up, you were always a snowdrop flowering at the first day of spring. Frigid wind above you, the small giant, adorable in your fortitude. Dawn gives you rain and you unfurl your petals, forever my raincoat for the storm.

Amidst all this cacophony you endure, you always manage to find some notes of symphony.

Today is the day when you get one year older, and us a year older. These days are dark, and there is no candle on the cake (there is no cake at all).

So come, let’s try be human once more. This I can offer you. Let’s sit together on the floor, imagining foreign places. Our banters be like fireworks. Let’s stay away from the edges of our bed. Let’s always fight for blanket, our nightly annexation game. Let’s exchange stories before dreams, before the day is done. Let’s eat badly, raw fish and third-rate rice wine and all.

Let’s cry, let’s curse, let’s... grow up together.

Let’s embrace senescence like an old friend. Let’s create a makeshift compass and a dim torch that guide us to each other.

For the day is dark, and there is no candle.

But you, you are always the only light that matter.