Of Tinted Future on Taunted Past

Paris, 2020

Paris, 2020

This wasn't the first weird dream that I had in this lifetime. To be frankly honest, it wasn't the weirdest of them all. It doesn't even compare to my dreams of talking to sea creatures when in fact, those couldn't even speak a word.

It wasn't the first time that I have dreamt of being a princess because I always did and it wasn't a dream, it was more of a nightmare since I have never really wanted a tea time with princesses or sing along with birds.

It wasn't the first time that someone died in my dream. I actually have way worse when I was eleven when everyone just started losing their breath and I was left alone on Earth.

The dream wasn't the first weird dream I ever have but it was certainly the first dream that felt so real and pained me so much upon opening my eyes.

My head was throbbing. I tried massaging my temples to calm myself down.

The smell of the gun powder turned into something familiar-books.

I was sitting on the university library with students of three or four. The clock read three in the afternoon and I have my next class by four.

I still have Sage's rose with me though it lost a petal. How could I just slept on the 14th day of February when perhaps, almost everyone is outside the hallways waiting for chocolates and flowers?

And so, as Paris, not a princess of 1700 or a woman stuck in the middle of the war in 1950s but just the school queen bee wearing the world's imaginary crown, I strolled my way outside where I should be.

It's where I received more than just a rose. It's where every person that saw me, greeted me at least a "Happy Valentine's" or a "Hello".

After all, my name was from my mother and was given me to remind her of the place she met my father, the love of her life.

I saw mine today. He was standing there in the middle of the crowd filled with so many people excited about this day. And this wasn't even in France. This is just another small town with people who believed to be closed to each other but actually far from one another; where the man standing right in front of you felt like worlds away.

The color of his eyes hides behind those thick glasses but I know, for sure, they were just as taunting as the eyes I have seen in my dream. It was the same eyes that told me so much than what his lips could utter.

He was the same prince from 1770 who was bound to marry the queen and the same soldier that was killed right in front of me.

Scared that he might fade again, I hesitated but I took a step closer anyway.

So did he.

His left hands were gripping an inkless pen and his right palm seemed to have something drawn in it that I really want to see.

In the back of my mind, I wish it was me.

He took a step again and so I did.

We are still on the same place under the same skies and I wonder, perhaps, if this is the right time and he is the right person-not the places I was stuck and not the two that I have met in my dream.

But how do we know if it's the right time and the right person anyway? How do we know if the person standing right in front of us is our counterpart that Greeks told us we are bound to find? The one connected our red strings to?

If only we could tell upon just looking at their face, our hearts wouldn't probably ache for so many times upon loving in the wrong time or upon loving the wrong person. But, what's love anyway if it doesn't hurt?

I heard our names called from a distance-he by a friend, perhaps, and I, by another man that I forgot the name.

Our eyes were still fixed to each other. It's like an imaginary embrace that we never want to stop.

But, we have to.

He hid his left palm on his back just as when I felt a hand holding my right arm.

My Claudius Valentine, turned his back away from me just as I turned away mine from him.

For the third time today, I lost him. We lost each other again. Minutes ago, from a dream and now...for real.