The Wish From Heaven | ✓

chapter 1 : forever & evermore

PRESENT

09 July, 2019; Tuesday

The world passes me by without a backward glance.

It was like my position in this cruel flow of time. It seems as if I'm moving forward, leaving the sorrowful memories behind, walking into a new world full of fresh hopes and dreams. But in reality, I stand still on the day he died, as time passes me by unbothered. Too busy to wait, too busy to drag me along.

I can't turn back and run to the point of time he was still alive. And I have no strength or desire to move forward without him. So I keep standing in one place, and perhaps will stay so until the day I collapse, when time will take care of my end the way it took care of his.

Up in the sky, the birds are in a festive mood, flapping their wings and playing hide and seek amongst the cotton clouds. For them, the sky is the limit, and the sky is vast enough.

But down here, looking at the people around me, I recognize some who look as trapped as myself. For them, the limits were fixed by someone else from the time they first let out a breath. They will feel too drained and tired to fly even if they had wings. For them — for us — the designated place is a cage, the comfort is in a routine life, and the sky is a limit of vision, not a limit of movement.

And I see the other type of people, who are birds despite of being wingless. They lead their short and fragile lives with their own rules and limits. They sing their lungs out and loosely dance in a circle while their laughter echoes all across the busy streets. They run in the sunlight, get drenched in the rain, and have snowball fights with their family and friends. Their bodies are standing on earth, but their souls dominate the kingdom of the extending sky.

The brilliant, puffy white clouds would always remind me of the sweet taste of cotton candies. Even if I haven't had them for years, it's like the taste will forever remain in my tongue. A white aeroplane flies across and disappears behind the clouds. For a moment, the haphazard remix of city noises fades from my mind, and I stare at the unreachable sky with a hollow heart. A gust of wind passes by, carrying a sweet scent that I fail to recognize.

Enchanted by the vast expanse of the blue and the white, I wonder, if the heavens existed above the clouds, is he really there like they say? Perhaps he is still looking at me. I have been thinking that a lot lately. Because of him, the sky that once tantalized me has now become a source of my solace.

Or maybe no such thing exists, and people really disintegrate into nothingness after their hearts stop. Somehow, that makes life seems like too vain, too ephemeral, and too pointless.

Sighing, I enter the graveyard, a small bunch of white roses in my hand. Those were Dawn's favorite. I cross the hundreds of gravestones belonging to strangers and reach the huge apple tree, under which lays the only person I ever cared about in eternal slumber.

I put the roses in front of his gravestone and then sit down facing it. Closing my eyes, I inhale the charming fragrance of apple flowers. I think how it is indeed the most wonderful place to sleep forever. Somewhere faraway, a woman is crying like how Dawn's mother had cried almost a year ago, the sound muffled by the gentle song of the wind. Birds are chirping a cheerful melody, though it would do nothing to cheer me or anyone who comes to a graveyard. Cicadas are calling in unison, reminding me of how scorching hot of a day it is. Amidst the leaves and the branches of the tree, the blue sky shyly peeks, occasionally interrupted by the passing clouds. The nature is engaged in her own serene chaos; only me and my Dawn are sitting in silence.

I break the silence. "You know, Dawn," I say, crossing my legs. "A girl confessed to me today."

Long ago, Dawn and I had decided that if any of us gets confessed to, the other will be the first one to know. It was so we can decide together whether the person is worth a shot. However, such occasions rarely came, since everyone kind of assumed that Dawn and I were going out, given how we were always stuck together. Neither of us bothered to clear the misunderstanding, and sometimes we deliberately acted like a couple to give the girls the quality content they wanted. It was a fun little game for us.