Sauntering slowly downward from the hill leading towards Warren Street, a funeral procession passes by, adding a tinge of gravity to maelstrom of thoughts and myriads of speculation, each one like a rain drop beating on the boy’s unfledged consciousness. The dawn breaks within the distant horizon, and as much as brilliance of the Helios’ fire darting chariot expels the chilliness of the early autumn morning, its warmth only offered a bodily sense of comfort to the boy, apparently lost in the temple of mind. A stray, still form leaning against the rusty fence enclosing the playground, the boy reaches for his phone and opens the messenger app with eyebrows tightly knitted together and mouth twitching with bitter poignancy.
An instant message pops up, it’s from his best friend Emily, who ironically doubles as the boy’s relationship advisor despite her own inexperience with love.
“I think she is only using you to gain more experience. The whole jealousy thing, especially about Joice scares me. I am sorry that I pressured you into this relationship.” She is right, it has never worked out for him in the first place. This is potentially their fourth argument this month and it is only spiraling downward.
Reminiscing on the time they spent together, it’s hard to believe that their friendship has gone down to the gutter in a matter of few months, and for no obvious reason. Perhaps, it’s jealousy, the source of all distrust and magnignance. Perhaps, she simply didn’t like him from the start and only mistook their intimacy as friend for the adolescent love typical of teenagers at their age. Even then, they thought they were intelligent, beyond their own age’s worth. They thought they could overcome the hardships, the differences that divided them. At the end of the day, they are strangers, passerby their respective life.
As the age of eight, the boy first experienced what his mother referred to as loneliness. The boy was lonely even though he had plenty of friends at school, whenever he comes home, he always felt alone. The feeling slowly gnaws away at his heart and it fills him like his growing shadow at dusk. The boys grows taller with time and so does his shadow. The loneliness he felt never leaves him completely and he is stuck with it no matter how desperately he reaches out.
The boy idealizes love. It is wonderful, isn’t it? Just like all the movies he has watched, love will surpass all adversity and salvation awaits. Thus the boy took the bait, a poison known as love and now he is miserable, intoxicated with love: content whenever he is with her and remorseful when he is not.
“I want it to work. I really do, but I don’t know how, or even why it is like this.” The boy responds to his friend’s message and promptly turns off his phone, lest she convinces him to give up at such an early stage.
Sitting down on one of the rotten wooden benches, the boy watches in silent as the kids enjoy a break from the funeral procession. From top to bottom, they are dressed in black blazer, white collar shirt, and matching slacks. One of the kid trips as he runs after the ball, for they are playing kickball before the funeral starts, and scratches his hand against the cemented driveway. The leader of the pack runs back to the house, apparently seeking the guardianship of an adult. Soon a woman of the age forty shows up and orders the kids to return to the house after bandaging the wounded kid. The boy sits there in silence, motionless as he waits for his girlfriend, who is emerging from the doorstep of house painted in a faded yellowish color. Seeing her figure, the boy feels content. The darkness that has piled up along the single path suddenly melts away like frosty snow on a summer day. Walking on sheer momentum, the boy approaches her and his final doubt is expatriated at the sight of her seemingly incandescent smile. The boy grabs her hand and they start walking toward the bus stop. Behind, their shadow seems to retract into its shell at the brilliance of the risen sun.