PAVEMENTS

Everywhere Is a Waiting Room

For people who have been waiting for something but don’t know what it is.


1:oo PM

His first wave of consciousness was a dull thud in the deep recesses of his mind, an infinite vagueness of who he was, an almost grasping of memory but not quite. He found his memory all jumbled up funny, foggy, or maybe forgotten was the right word. Slowly, he came to, opened his reluctant eyes, as if from a hundred years of sleep.

The first thing he saw was a young woman’s face staring openly at him, unabashedly curious. “You snore too loudly,” she said.

He sat up quickly, sending a nauseating stab of pain to his temples, pins and needles on the arm he slept on. He stared about wildly, not recognizing anything in his surroundings. He found himself on a bench on a sidewalk of some unknown street. I don’t remember a thing.

She rubbed his back with one hand in a comforting gesture. Too intimate, he thought to himself.

“You look horrible. Let’s go to the cafe. It’s just around the corner. You probably need something to drink. I’m Ana, by the way.”

Well, it looks like we don’t know each other. He managed to stand up, but his legs gave out with the first step. He groaned. Ana was suddenly at his side, holding him up as they walked. Crap. Trust me to end up in a godforsaken place, not remembering anything, and needing a woman to help me walk.

They were rounding the corner now. Astonishingly enough, there seemed to be no one else around, no one on the streets, no cars on the road, no noise from the shops and restaurants. It was just him and the woman, Ana.

The cafe was a cozy little place with an eclectic charm: mismatched chairs, whimsical droplights in the form of airplanes, and a bright blue sky painted on the ceiling. But best of all was the smell of coffee. Ana was already behind the counter, fixing him up something to drink as he seated himself on the nearest chair, a dumpy red one with a low back, like a little child’s chair.

From his perch, he observed Ana: straight hair just skimming her shoulders, wearing a shirt with a cartoon he didn’t know, almost like a kid save for the remarkable depth in her dark eyes.

As if on cue, she turned and pinned him down with a gaze, “So what’s your name?” She sauntered over with drinks in her hands.

“Jake,” he rasped, surprising himself with his memory.

“You mind if I smoke?” her hand already taking out her cigarette pack. Instinctively, he reaches into his shirt pocket and finds a Zippo, a basilisk engraved on its back. He lights her cigarette.

Sipping some of his coffee—black, how does she know?—he recovers a little. “So. Why—how did I—do we know each other?” he fumbled.

“We do now,” Ana smiled.


2:00 PM

Her first wave of consciousness was a light touch on the back of her left hand. It tingled, and then she was awake, her eyes snapping open. The first thing she saw was the bright blue sky. She lay on a red picnic mat in a garden she hasn’t seen before.

To her left, a young man no older than twenty-five sat lazily, eating a bunch of grapes. She didn’t know him, or at least not yet, she thought.

About three yards behind him, something slithered in the grass.

He turned the dial on a nearby radio, his silver ring glinting in the sun. It was on his ring finger. A wedding band, she thought.

The man looked over, “Oh, hey Ana, you’re awake.”

“Who are you?” she mumbled sleepily.

“Jake,” he held out his hand, the one without the ring.


2:30 PM

His left knee jerked at the sound of a distant rumbling of a broken speaker. In his sleep, he shook his head violently, hands forming balls. His eyelids fluttered the slightest bit as he fought for precious sleep.

“Fr. Jake, only thirty more minutes,” a soothing voice murmured.

And then his head dipped under the cool breeze again, the back of his head touching a red picnic mat in a garden he didn’t know.


2:45 PM

She could hear the roar of a blender, and just beneath it, a child’s singsong voice. Her mind was slowly waking, stretching its arms.

Someone tickled Anabelle’s left knee with a gleeful laugh.

And then she was back again, to the smell of black coffee and cigarette smoke. Her eyes were filled with the bright blue sky of a ceiling she didn’t know.


3:00 PM

Fr. Jake awoke with the nurse’s light tap on his shoulder, “The treatment’s done, Father.” He could feel pins and needles in his left knee. He tugged on his collar wearily and pulled down his pant leg.

The nurse helped him down from the bed and onto his wheelchair. “Your appointment next week will be same time, Saturday.”

“Thanks, Darlene,” he felt his old age as he wheeled himself out to the waiting room. Mass in a few hours. Adam and Lia’s wedding tomorrow. The baptism next— “Good to see you, Father,” a warm voice interrupted his thoughts.

Seated on the couch was a woman with gray hair just skimming her shoulders and a remarkable depth in her dark eyes he knew all too well. A small girl with the same eyes, bounced happily on her left knee.

“And that is how you make pumpkin soup,” beamed Bobby Flay on TV.

Eager Angels

It was the dead of the night, and the streets were dark. Cain was running fast, trying to outrun the growing fear in his heart.

And then it happened.

The sky was suddenly filled with a bright light of stunning softness. And all at once, countless orbs of light started falling, flying, spilling gracefully onto the earth. Everything, everything was lit up, bathed in gold—no, warmth!

With a cry of surprise, Cain felt it pouring onto his head, circling his waist, tickling the backs of his knees. He laughed like a child, head thrown back in abandoned glee. It was the light or perhaps, Light—the very one that filled the entire sky. It was on his skin now; in his heart, pulsing a beat utterly new to him.

The Light, in all its frightening glory, was in him.

He looked down at his quivering knees and was shocked to see his entire body glowing in fierce brilliance. As he looked to the sky in wonder, Cain could only make out the subtle shapes of wings, fluttering too fast for his eyes. In that moment, he alighted an inch into the air and ascended steadily.

He turned to Abel, a few feet below him, “So, this is death.”

Abel smiled, “No, brother. Joy.”

But Cain was too far away to hear now.

The necessity of leaving

Of putting down the knife, the fork; folding the now stained table napkin and casting it aside; standing up, the chair screeching on the floor; walking out and closing a door, another, and the gate— without so much as the slightest look back, as if to say you have eaten your fill; it is finished; there is no reason to remain any longer.

On healing

There has been enough blessed space, full-bodied duration, time; enough for me to make peace with this scarred, awkwardly beaten shell; enough to say that it is time for beginnings, new things to hold, to devour, and to relish.

I say this with as much vindictive air as possible. I have arrived.

07 of the Letters to Entities Unlikely to Respond Series

To flight,

I will.

Hopefully,
Ais

05 of the Letters to Entities Unlikely to Respond Series

To my past, present, and future loves, across time, change, and every single damned thing in our paths,

It was, is, and will always be worth it. Not you, with all your imperfections, but love— love is always worth it. You have taught me this yourself, and you will continue to teach me more things in my years to come, and I am grateful, very grateful for the mere ability to lay myself down at your feet, give myself fully, and love, love, love.

I speak of past loves, not to say that you are past, as if you have simply passed through my life like some insignificant, forgotten toy, no— I speak of past loves, to say that you are of the past, that I have loved you since, still do, with just as much fervor, and will continue to do so until such a time comes, if at all, that my heart would forget how to love.

It is very possible to love more than one person, that ardently, simply because there is always more with love, if it is true love; one becomes utterly infinite. The idea of how the self diminishes, how one becomes less, as one gives of oneself in love, is absurd. We are not consumable beings, to just waste away and fade into nothing, unless of course, we would intentionally turn ourselves into nothing, out of defeatism, or sheer frustration— that, is not love.

True love deems us timeless as we are infinite. There is no time. We love, always. There is no past tense. Love simply is. Past, present, and future all converge in the axis of duration, the length of one’s life, but not time. There is no accurate measurement for time, precisely because we only measure it through change, through the things that happen to us as we experience it, as long as insufferable pains, as short as flashing epiphanies, or as slow as pure joy, light flooding in from the windows at sunrise.

Where we are, quite literally, there our hearts will be also. I speak of the present, the delightful present, where everything happens, and every event is revelation before our very eyes. This moment can be nothing less than blessed, sacred even, for what is it to be present with divine creation, with the unfolding of life itself? What more is it to be able to participate in this creation of life?

As living, breathing human beings, it is in our nature to move and be moved as the present moment reveals itself. Life’s fullness unrelentingly invokes us to love, love, and love some more. Love inspires life. Life inspires love. The two are intricately entwined. Such is the hope of a full life, living by loving, and loving by living, with all of oneself.

I love you, yes, with all of me,
Ais

04 of the Letters to Entities Unlikely to Respond Series

To the person I will be married to,

I love you. I say this now, not knowing who you are, before your very arrival. I know this to be true because I am preparing myself for you, no one else, even now— as early as now, that I may be good and right for you, when you do finally arrive.

I trust you are doing the same.

Let us not make each other wait any longer when we finally meet. I hope we’d have grown up enough for each other by then. But until then, I wait for you with good patience and anticipation, for I am—

Yours, even now,
Ais