I Did Something Bad

Hold on the here and now, forget tomorrow and don’t worry about yesterday and all the mistaken steps that led us to this moment. None of it matters anymore.

The way mom saw the world convinced me that there was something magical about everything we experienced. That there was a future, which one day would become the past. Stories to tell. Lessons to learn and pass onto the lives she paved.

One by one, the droplets of rain came, attending, like the students wearing their uniforms and bringing their parents or guardians inside the gym. There was something beautiful about it, something cathartic and wistful. And I, once again, was a tardy droplet of rain. The rain started the downpour  but I was still on the clouds, hanging out with the water vapour. When I came, half of the gym was drenched. I still fell, I still fell velvety, maintaining all the remaining poise left in me, acting like rain. The chairs were bathed. Like the rain itself, I cascaded to the ground, shattering, every piece disintegrated. “Fuck! When will the droplets of rain learn? That whenever they fall, they eventually break, burst. How can they always forget to pack their own parachutes?” 

Tap-tap-tap-tap the sound of rain pounding the roof, the sound of rain muttering ‘take this seat’ . My rain heart swelled and burst and soused the empty chair next to familiar faces. I took a deep breath and settled myself, contained and ran my hands through my hair, feeling every strand of it.

What tardiness has taught me is that it leads to disarrangement that eventually leads to beautiful chaos and fuzzies and diary-esque moment. We shifted seats, slowly and stealthily, moving like an assassin,  a ninja, with me sliding to the other chair. There was no flash forward to it; we did it a couple of times until the emcee said to stand up for the prayer and the national anthem. And there, the madness and magic happened. No swift motions or stealth moves. There was just vacating, scrambling and walking fast forward to the designated chairs. Well, that ended up with controlled laughter and a moment of ecstasy.

One thing that tardiness taught me is that you should come on time and it’s never to late to be brand new. But what really sticks up to my head is that I did something bad that felt so good. That the bad things I did conjure the most fun I ever had and that if it’d happen again I’d do it over and over and over again if I could.

The candle lighting which I gave the embers of scorched dreams from my eyes to the fire in the night, burnt my defeat and struggles within its fiery flames, a composed yet beautiful chaotic mess.

After that, we watched the planes taking off to an unknown destination. Knowing all too well that we were stuck right where we are never moving forward, holding onto the past, to the good ol’ days when young stupidity reigned supreme and tomorrow never mattered.