Seasons Of Love
0
tryin' out some romance...
Our love was like a wind that comes so quickly, and leaves so soon. It was a feeling that was so superficial, so shallow that it was bound to never last. A momentary joy we have made as a false document, now concealed under a pile of happiness we artificially created.
But now I wanted more…
∞
I stood up from the wooden bench and stared above the leaves of the maple trees, the falling brown sheets declining from the branches one after another. The smell of autumn has filled the afternoon air, filling my senses with the intensive reek of drying leaves. I looked down on my shoes and found it buried under the pile of lifeless things.
A powerful gust of warm breeze swept the pile away, and the shade of the leaves imitated the graceful rustling of the magnificent tree. I turned to my side and the wind has gently slapped my delicate face, the subtle leaves brushing against my fragile skin. A quick stab from the past has stabbed my heart, empowered by the gloomy ambiance around.
Oh, how can I ever forget that moment? My lips slanted into an involuntary smile as my mind revisits the first phase of our peculiar love affair…
I was the good man who finishes lasts. It was the worse afternoon when I absent-mindedly walked behind the school’s building, thinking about the long term commitment I cherished for the past three years. My girlfriend - now ex - has broken up with me for a chargeable reason, and now I am in the verge of attempting suicide.
But the thought of killing myself was too harsh for me, I thought that moment, because like I’ve said - I was the good man. I thought that all of it was good. Being nice to people, smiling to everyone, following the rules, meeting their expectations. All of it was me. That’s why when she said that I was so good to be true, that I was too good for her, I have fallen on my knees.
I was so busy thinking about my faults that my feet had lead me to the school’s backyard, where the grass was too green and the maple trees bordering the area was too brown for my sight. I swung the vodka in my left hand more freely, now that I found the perfect spot where I can mourn, cry and drink until this nightmare knock me off my feet.
I badly slumped on the ground and felt the immediate ache across the bones in my back, but it doesn’t matter, because the sting inside my heart was way more painful. I kicked my shoes off, threw my coat away, and lay on the pricking itch of the numerous grasses. My eyes are directed towards the orange sky, but any decent thought - let alone the beauty above - have failed to enter my foggy mind.
I opened the glass bottle and drank the vodka, but all the sticky liquor came running down on my sober face. It ran inside my nose and successfully entered my eyes, inflicting additional twinge before the end of the day.
“Arghh!” I moaned in despair, squinting my eyes so the stupid fluid can vanish before my sight. I propped myself with one elbow so that the gravity can help me drag this reckless predicament. The vodka glided down like simmering tears, and I had to blink considerable times to wash the sting away. I thought my eyes were drunk because it saw a vague human shape, and I knew I was wrong when the shape came moving and a voice boomed across the greenly field.
“You’re not drinking that, are you?” The shape was moving towards me with a graceful fashion. It was surrounded with an orange aura above, and it was both menacing and attracting. “You know alcohols are prohibited around the school premises.”
I shut my eyes completely because there’s still a searing heat around my pupils, the burning sensation running across my body. Then, the glass bottle slipped away from my hand, and I was sure the shape had stolen it away from me.
“Give me that!” I plunged myself towards an uncertain direction, eyes still closed. “Give me back my vodka!” I glared at the image and it’s just the time when my eyes saw a beautiful girl standing before me, her arms crossed, right hand with my precious vodka.
“I am Jessica McGriffin! President of the School Organization!” she declared. “I hereby arrest you for breaking the Article XII, under the rule of Alcohol and Drug Prohibition! Without a formal complaint, I shall require you to attend your hearing in the Principal’s Office tomorrow morning, at 9 a.m.!”
…
“Ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!” I crouched my vibrating body and turned sideways, like a fetus laughing hysterically. I don’t know how many times I punched the ground, but I could not just stop myself from doing it even my knuckles started to bruise and bleed.
“Why are you laughing, mister?” Her face was serious and sadistic. “That’s mandatory! I repeat; that is MANDATORY!”
“Oh shut up!” I grunted, and snatched my vodka away from her hand. I crawled a few feet away and seated, drank my remaining vodka with a sheer enjoyment.
“Haven’t you heard a word from me?!” She yelled from my back. I shrug my shoulders to irritate her, and continue gulping my luscious drink.
“So, you wanted things in the other way around huh?” She murmured, and I heard her footsteps scraping against the grass. I sip the last drop from the bottle when she snatched it away, and I saw a flash of anger and disappointment when she saw the empty bottle on her hand.
I lay my back again on the grass, and saw how the School President turned from a dignified woman to aggravated one. She sighed and murmured and grumbled, but it didn’t catch my attention. It was her hair, a combination of yellow and orange, which matches the afternoon sky.
“Have you ever loved and lost?”
“What?!”
“My girl broke up with me just a few damn minutes ago.” I said. “She said I was very handsome, that I reminded her of Brad Pitt. And told me I smell good too, and that my being intelligent is very admirable because it’s barely present amongst guys.” I can feel the line of tears forming at the edge of my eyes. “But that’s a total shit!” I shouted. “She was praising me and kissing me and then she’ll break up with me?!”
The line of tears was transformed into a droplet, a bead of tears that rolled down towards my soaked cheeks. “A total shit…” I cried. “Why does she have to make things so painful?” I glanced at her for a reply, and her face was now a little calmer.
“Well,” I saw her throat moved a little. “I say you’re lucky no one from the faculty caught you drinking here.” But her voice was proud.
I sighed because of her dim-wittedness and turned, flipped my body so that my face can kiss the ground. I gritted my teeth with a grass between it as the continuous flow of tears evacuate my aching eyes. I then sobbed, like loud hiccups travelling from my lungs up to my throat.
“Are - Are you okay?” she asked. I ignored her useless question and continued to sob, which became louder and disturbing. Then, I felt a warm hand pressed against my shoulder, and the heat from that exact spot ignited my whole body with a burning sensation. “You’re not trying to stop breathing, are you?”
I inclined my head. “Phew! I’m not a waste!” I shrug my shoulder to put off away her hands, and then I flipped back my body to face the sky. She was kneeling on the grass beside me, with an expression a mix of disgust and concern. “Well, not sort of waste that you think.” My eyes darted towards the empty bottle beside her.
“Okay then,” she shifted and sat instead, her body poised on the ground. “I’ll let you pass this time in one condition.”
“What.”
“Tell me your story.”
“I’ve already told you about it.” I rolled my eyes, and lay on my side to avoid my blushing cheeks from being seen. It was non-sense I know, but sharing the burden inside will probably help lighten the load. I turned back, and stared at her delicate face.
“Fine.”
…
“So, you’re girlfriend broke up with you earlier, is that so?” She asked, her tune considerably different in contrast of her entrance. “And you can’t take it because it’s too painful. That’s why you’re drinking.” She was swaying her head when she was saying this, which appears to me as a very girly way. I simply nodded.
“Gosh, you’re a goner.” She mocked, rolling her eyes with a nasty smirk on her lips. She looked back at me again, trying on an insulting face. “You sure you’re not gay?”
“Stop insulting me! I just had a break up, you know, and we had three damn years!” I stared back at her with the same insulting face. A wind blew and I was frozen under my white soaked shirt, and the chilling effect reached my face.
“Well, that’s just three years.” She looked up to the orange sky, and I just had enough time to catch a glimpse of her beautiful jaw line. “You have remaining 51 years, assuming that you’re 19, that is if you’ll reach seventy. I know a couple who shared a decade together, but ended up with a pretty great mess. Consider yourself lucky.”
She looked back to me, probably thinking that what she had said was a great help. Now is my turn to look up above and speak. “That was so easy for you to say.”
“Nuh-uh!” She shook her head. “Everyone will say the same things I’ve said. We’re young. I thought guys of your age are wild and free?”
“I am wild and free!” I scowled. “Before.” I looked back to her and saw the stunning details of her marmalade eyes. It was beautiful, like there’s a glowing torch behind her pupils. And her hair, when the wind blew the strands, sways gracefully like an afternoon dance.
“What are you staring at?” She caught me off guard. She stood quickly and gestured a protective stance, as if someone’s about to molest her. “You lewd! You pervert!”
“Stupid…” I mumbled. I stretched my arms and reached for my bag, and snatched a shiny green bottle away from it.
“No! no! no!” Her index finger was pointed on my face, panicked.”You’re not going to drink that this time! I’d let you off the hook before, but I won’t let you this time around!”
“Of course I won’t drink it.” I rolled my eyes when I opened it. “We will.” I reached for my bag again and pulled out a couple of wine glass.
“And you brought wine glasses?!” she shouted in disbelief. “Is this a set-up or something?!”
“Hmmmp.” I poured a liquid to the first glass. “Today was supposed to be our Third anniversary.” I filled the other glass only halfway full. “But that didn’t happen, obviously.” I stretched out my arms. “Here, take this.”
“I’m not going to drink that!” She turned around, facing the biggest maple tree around, and then crossed her arms.
“Then don’t.” I sat, not wanting to spill the vodka again, and sumptuously sip the splendid liquid. “I’m going to finish this all by myself.”
A strong wind was accompanied by a momentary silence. As I enjoy my drink, I watch closely on how her hair seems to sway with the rustling leaves of the Maple trees. It’s like a scene in my favorite Japanese film, only the trees around aren’t Cherry Blossoms.
She turned around and looked down on me. “I’m going home!” She didn’t wait for reply and walked rapidly. The wind kept blowing and blowing, chilling my wet body, which irritated me more.
“You were like any other girls!” I declared. “So mighty-high. But you never get to prove anything actually! Just pure arrogance!”
The sound of her heels became louder. Then I saw her in the corner of my eyes, standing stiffly. When I looked up to her, she was dead-serious. She took her shoes off and loosened a button on her blouse, and sat closely to me with an eager spirit.
“Give that to me!” She snatched again the bottle away from my hand. “You’re going to eat your words! Bastard!”
I watch her throat moving as she gulped the vodka directly from the mouth of the bottle. The liquor is light, I know, but is enough to knock off a woman from her wits. She drunk it straight - she didn’t even breathe. I felt a bead of sweat rolling down my neck, simply amused by her great persistence.
“What’s that?!” She asked me when I hold out to her a wine glass.
“Uhmm…” I said, and I know I was smiling. God, I am smiling. “Etiquette?”
She looked at me like a lion and brushed her lips with her sweaty wrist, and made a wide, wide grin. “Who needs that?” She put the bottle on the grass, her hands still on it. “See? I’ve drunk almost all of it!”
“And you’re going to throw up a lot soon.”
“Screw you!” She drank the remaining vodka, and tossed away the bottle the moment she had sipped the last drop. She threw her arms in the air and slammed her back against the grass, her beautiful body lying on the soft ground. She glanced to my face and said, “So, what now?”
Her cheeks were burning red. Her lips were puffy and pink, eyes closed. Her hair was scattered unevenly across the grass. Her face, even weak, was subtle. She was the drunken Cinderella lying on the cold green grass.
“You’re staring at me again, aren’t you?” She asked, eyes still closed. “Well, let me tell you that I’m a black belter!” She gestured a movement with her hands. “Pow! Pow! My Karate chops are as powerful as a horse’s kick!”
“You really are drunk.”
“No, I’m not!”
“Oh my God the School Principal!” I shouted. She then rapidly stood up and plunged herself to grab her shoes. She looked around, and when failed to find anyone but me, she threw her heels onto my face.
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” I am holding my tummy because of the excruciating pain from the heavy laughter. “Did you just see how awful you look?!” I stood up and wiped my pants, the bits of grasses off my trousers.
“Get my shoes!” she said, and I did what I am told. When I held it out to her, she snatched it away like I have stolen it. “I’m going home.” She walked gracefully again, but returned to me after having a few awkward steps. “And Thank you for the drink.” She said, and walked away again.
She walked like a model on a Runway, her legs crossed as she does so. Before she can be out of sight, I shouted. “What’s your name again?”
She waved her hands but didn’t looked back to me, and yelled. “Ralph Roberts!” Her fragile-looking hands were still waving. “And don’t you tell everyone about this!” She tripled, but continued to walk anyway. I stared for long minutes until she was gone in my view, and my eyes caught nothing else anymore but the swaying leaves of Maple leaves…
∞
Your name is Jessica McGriffin. Such identification I will never forget. I picked one of the dried leaves beside my shoes and held it before my face. The brown Maple leaves, I dragged closer to my nose and smelled it.
Oh, how can I ever forget?
Part 1
AUTUMN
Our love was like a wind that comes so quickly, and leaves so soon. It was a feeling that was so superficial, so shallow that it was bound to never last. A momentary joy we have made as a false document, now concealed under a pile of happiness we artificially created.
But now I wanted more…
∞
I stood up from the wooden bench and stared above the leaves of the maple trees, the falling brown sheets declining from the branches one after another. The smell of autumn has filled the afternoon air, filling my senses with the intensive reek of drying leaves. I looked down on my shoes and found it buried under the pile of lifeless things.
A powerful gust of warm breeze swept the pile away, and the shade of the leaves imitated the graceful rustling of the magnificent tree. I turned to my side and the wind has gently slapped my delicate face, the subtle leaves brushing against my fragile skin. A quick stab from the past has stabbed my heart, empowered by the gloomy ambiance around.
Oh, how can I ever forget that moment? My lips slanted into an involuntary smile as my mind revisits the first phase of our peculiar love affair…
I was the good man who finishes lasts. It was the worse afternoon when I absent-mindedly walked behind the school’s building, thinking about the long term commitment I cherished for the past three years. My girlfriend - now ex - has broken up with me for a chargeable reason, and now I am in the verge of attempting suicide.
But the thought of killing myself was too harsh for me, I thought that moment, because like I’ve said - I was the good man. I thought that all of it was good. Being nice to people, smiling to everyone, following the rules, meeting their expectations. All of it was me. That’s why when she said that I was so good to be true, that I was too good for her, I have fallen on my knees.
I was so busy thinking about my faults that my feet had lead me to the school’s backyard, where the grass was too green and the maple trees bordering the area was too brown for my sight. I swung the vodka in my left hand more freely, now that I found the perfect spot where I can mourn, cry and drink until this nightmare knock me off my feet.
I badly slumped on the ground and felt the immediate ache across the bones in my back, but it doesn’t matter, because the sting inside my heart was way more painful. I kicked my shoes off, threw my coat away, and lay on the pricking itch of the numerous grasses. My eyes are directed towards the orange sky, but any decent thought - let alone the beauty above - have failed to enter my foggy mind.
I opened the glass bottle and drank the vodka, but all the sticky liquor came running down on my sober face. It ran inside my nose and successfully entered my eyes, inflicting additional twinge before the end of the day.
“Arghh!” I moaned in despair, squinting my eyes so the stupid fluid can vanish before my sight. I propped myself with one elbow so that the gravity can help me drag this reckless predicament. The vodka glided down like simmering tears, and I had to blink considerable times to wash the sting away. I thought my eyes were drunk because it saw a vague human shape, and I knew I was wrong when the shape came moving and a voice boomed across the greenly field.
“You’re not drinking that, are you?” The shape was moving towards me with a graceful fashion. It was surrounded with an orange aura above, and it was both menacing and attracting. “You know alcohols are prohibited around the school premises.”
I shut my eyes completely because there’s still a searing heat around my pupils, the burning sensation running across my body. Then, the glass bottle slipped away from my hand, and I was sure the shape had stolen it away from me.
“Give me that!” I plunged myself towards an uncertain direction, eyes still closed. “Give me back my vodka!” I glared at the image and it’s just the time when my eyes saw a beautiful girl standing before me, her arms crossed, right hand with my precious vodka.
“I am Jessica McGriffin! President of the School Organization!” she declared. “I hereby arrest you for breaking the Article XII, under the rule of Alcohol and Drug Prohibition! Without a formal complaint, I shall require you to attend your hearing in the Principal’s Office tomorrow morning, at 9 a.m.!”
…
“Ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!” I crouched my vibrating body and turned sideways, like a fetus laughing hysterically. I don’t know how many times I punched the ground, but I could not just stop myself from doing it even my knuckles started to bruise and bleed.
“Why are you laughing, mister?” Her face was serious and sadistic. “That’s mandatory! I repeat; that is MANDATORY!”
“Oh shut up!” I grunted, and snatched my vodka away from her hand. I crawled a few feet away and seated, drank my remaining vodka with a sheer enjoyment.
“Haven’t you heard a word from me?!” She yelled from my back. I shrug my shoulders to irritate her, and continue gulping my luscious drink.
“So, you wanted things in the other way around huh?” She murmured, and I heard her footsteps scraping against the grass. I sip the last drop from the bottle when she snatched it away, and I saw a flash of anger and disappointment when she saw the empty bottle on her hand.
I lay my back again on the grass, and saw how the School President turned from a dignified woman to aggravated one. She sighed and murmured and grumbled, but it didn’t catch my attention. It was her hair, a combination of yellow and orange, which matches the afternoon sky.
“Have you ever loved and lost?”
“What?!”
“My girl broke up with me just a few damn minutes ago.” I said. “She said I was very handsome, that I reminded her of Brad Pitt. And told me I smell good too, and that my being intelligent is very admirable because it’s barely present amongst guys.” I can feel the line of tears forming at the edge of my eyes. “But that’s a total shit!” I shouted. “She was praising me and kissing me and then she’ll break up with me?!”
The line of tears was transformed into a droplet, a bead of tears that rolled down towards my soaked cheeks. “A total shit…” I cried. “Why does she have to make things so painful?” I glanced at her for a reply, and her face was now a little calmer.
“Well,” I saw her throat moved a little. “I say you’re lucky no one from the faculty caught you drinking here.” But her voice was proud.
I sighed because of her dim-wittedness and turned, flipped my body so that my face can kiss the ground. I gritted my teeth with a grass between it as the continuous flow of tears evacuate my aching eyes. I then sobbed, like loud hiccups travelling from my lungs up to my throat.
“Are - Are you okay?” she asked. I ignored her useless question and continued to sob, which became louder and disturbing. Then, I felt a warm hand pressed against my shoulder, and the heat from that exact spot ignited my whole body with a burning sensation. “You’re not trying to stop breathing, are you?”
I inclined my head. “Phew! I’m not a waste!” I shrug my shoulder to put off away her hands, and then I flipped back my body to face the sky. She was kneeling on the grass beside me, with an expression a mix of disgust and concern. “Well, not sort of waste that you think.” My eyes darted towards the empty bottle beside her.
“Okay then,” she shifted and sat instead, her body poised on the ground. “I’ll let you pass this time in one condition.”
“What.”
“Tell me your story.”
“I’ve already told you about it.” I rolled my eyes, and lay on my side to avoid my blushing cheeks from being seen. It was non-sense I know, but sharing the burden inside will probably help lighten the load. I turned back, and stared at her delicate face.
“Fine.”
…
“So, you’re girlfriend broke up with you earlier, is that so?” She asked, her tune considerably different in contrast of her entrance. “And you can’t take it because it’s too painful. That’s why you’re drinking.” She was swaying her head when she was saying this, which appears to me as a very girly way. I simply nodded.
“Gosh, you’re a goner.” She mocked, rolling her eyes with a nasty smirk on her lips. She looked back at me again, trying on an insulting face. “You sure you’re not gay?”
“Stop insulting me! I just had a break up, you know, and we had three damn years!” I stared back at her with the same insulting face. A wind blew and I was frozen under my white soaked shirt, and the chilling effect reached my face.
“Well, that’s just three years.” She looked up to the orange sky, and I just had enough time to catch a glimpse of her beautiful jaw line. “You have remaining 51 years, assuming that you’re 19, that is if you’ll reach seventy. I know a couple who shared a decade together, but ended up with a pretty great mess. Consider yourself lucky.”
She looked back to me, probably thinking that what she had said was a great help. Now is my turn to look up above and speak. “That was so easy for you to say.”
“Nuh-uh!” She shook her head. “Everyone will say the same things I’ve said. We’re young. I thought guys of your age are wild and free?”
“I am wild and free!” I scowled. “Before.” I looked back to her and saw the stunning details of her marmalade eyes. It was beautiful, like there’s a glowing torch behind her pupils. And her hair, when the wind blew the strands, sways gracefully like an afternoon dance.
“What are you staring at?” She caught me off guard. She stood quickly and gestured a protective stance, as if someone’s about to molest her. “You lewd! You pervert!”
“Stupid…” I mumbled. I stretched my arms and reached for my bag, and snatched a shiny green bottle away from it.
“No! no! no!” Her index finger was pointed on my face, panicked.”You’re not going to drink that this time! I’d let you off the hook before, but I won’t let you this time around!”
“Of course I won’t drink it.” I rolled my eyes when I opened it. “We will.” I reached for my bag again and pulled out a couple of wine glass.
“And you brought wine glasses?!” she shouted in disbelief. “Is this a set-up or something?!”
“Hmmmp.” I poured a liquid to the first glass. “Today was supposed to be our Third anniversary.” I filled the other glass only halfway full. “But that didn’t happen, obviously.” I stretched out my arms. “Here, take this.”
“I’m not going to drink that!” She turned around, facing the biggest maple tree around, and then crossed her arms.
“Then don’t.” I sat, not wanting to spill the vodka again, and sumptuously sip the splendid liquid. “I’m going to finish this all by myself.”
A strong wind was accompanied by a momentary silence. As I enjoy my drink, I watch closely on how her hair seems to sway with the rustling leaves of the Maple trees. It’s like a scene in my favorite Japanese film, only the trees around aren’t Cherry Blossoms.
She turned around and looked down on me. “I’m going home!” She didn’t wait for reply and walked rapidly. The wind kept blowing and blowing, chilling my wet body, which irritated me more.
“You were like any other girls!” I declared. “So mighty-high. But you never get to prove anything actually! Just pure arrogance!”
The sound of her heels became louder. Then I saw her in the corner of my eyes, standing stiffly. When I looked up to her, she was dead-serious. She took her shoes off and loosened a button on her blouse, and sat closely to me with an eager spirit.
“Give that to me!” She snatched again the bottle away from my hand. “You’re going to eat your words! Bastard!”
I watch her throat moving as she gulped the vodka directly from the mouth of the bottle. The liquor is light, I know, but is enough to knock off a woman from her wits. She drunk it straight - she didn’t even breathe. I felt a bead of sweat rolling down my neck, simply amused by her great persistence.
“What’s that?!” She asked me when I hold out to her a wine glass.
“Uhmm…” I said, and I know I was smiling. God, I am smiling. “Etiquette?”
She looked at me like a lion and brushed her lips with her sweaty wrist, and made a wide, wide grin. “Who needs that?” She put the bottle on the grass, her hands still on it. “See? I’ve drunk almost all of it!”
“And you’re going to throw up a lot soon.”
“Screw you!” She drank the remaining vodka, and tossed away the bottle the moment she had sipped the last drop. She threw her arms in the air and slammed her back against the grass, her beautiful body lying on the soft ground. She glanced to my face and said, “So, what now?”
Her cheeks were burning red. Her lips were puffy and pink, eyes closed. Her hair was scattered unevenly across the grass. Her face, even weak, was subtle. She was the drunken Cinderella lying on the cold green grass.
“You’re staring at me again, aren’t you?” She asked, eyes still closed. “Well, let me tell you that I’m a black belter!” She gestured a movement with her hands. “Pow! Pow! My Karate chops are as powerful as a horse’s kick!”
“You really are drunk.”
“No, I’m not!”
“Oh my God the School Principal!” I shouted. She then rapidly stood up and plunged herself to grab her shoes. She looked around, and when failed to find anyone but me, she threw her heels onto my face.
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” I am holding my tummy because of the excruciating pain from the heavy laughter. “Did you just see how awful you look?!” I stood up and wiped my pants, the bits of grasses off my trousers.
“Get my shoes!” she said, and I did what I am told. When I held it out to her, she snatched it away like I have stolen it. “I’m going home.” She walked gracefully again, but returned to me after having a few awkward steps. “And Thank you for the drink.” She said, and walked away again.
She walked like a model on a Runway, her legs crossed as she does so. Before she can be out of sight, I shouted. “What’s your name again?”
She waved her hands but didn’t looked back to me, and yelled. “Ralph Roberts!” Her fragile-looking hands were still waving. “And don’t you tell everyone about this!” She tripled, but continued to walk anyway. I stared for long minutes until she was gone in my view, and my eyes caught nothing else anymore but the swaying leaves of Maple leaves…
∞
Your name is Jessica McGriffin. Such identification I will never forget. I picked one of the dried leaves beside my shoes and held it before my face. The brown Maple leaves, I dragged closer to my nose and smelled it.
Oh, how can I ever forget?