Stories, and then Some...

his eyes had a secret color that can only be seen on either dawn or twilight: that magic moment when Light and Darkness grapple with each other in their never-ending dance for supremacy. his eyes then would have the color of the palest cinnamon, glowing ember brown the more you stare at it, like how the number of stars in the sky burst the more you observe them.

and when the ...

at a gas station convenience store waiting for a break from the rain, a voice.

"... and so because i want your demon-infested brain to cool down a bit, and well, because you asked for it, i give you rain. non-stop for three days. make that four.

"i give you cold, cuddle-conducive nights, lazy mornings better spent in bed and afternoons best with hot choco and a good book.

"i'll also give you cold-as-zero-below showers; cold enough to freeze ...

like every kid, i once dreamed of blasting off toward the skies in a rocket ship, away from everything else that festers inside gravity's oppressive grasp. i wanted to pull myself away into those distant twinkling promises of a new grounds to land my feet on. i wanted to explore each patch of sky, constellation by constellation, for civilizations where i might belong.

and now that i have somehow grown up, every ...

nostalgia became the fuel for a conversation that attempted to capture nine years worth of lives lived and lessons learned. friends from way back, back when the world was simpler, and smiles still did not have any reservations behind them...

recollections of places and people and how everything was. overlapping memories; a collage of the present and the past. everything set in that little place we now ...

nursing a broken heart, he went back to that place that circumstance once almost forced him to call home; that place where people's skins were darker than their eyes. he wanted to once again find solace in their wisdom and their uncanny ability to reduce reality into simple, somber sentences.

it began not too long ago. coming home from work, his heart began to beat irregularly. dancing on its own arrhythmic beat, he had it checked by a cardiologist who said that he was having heart ...

"if that was what puppy love's suppose to be like, then the puppy really took it's stupid time to grow up."

"yeah, i guess so..."

"besides, if it *really* was puppy love, it should be dead by now. what, eleven years? dogs die after eleven years, you know."

"uhm..."

"'uhm...' what? what's that look on your face?"

"how come i still hear it yapping every now and then here?" ...

and i finally saw a shooting star streaking down on that piece of sky one sweaty summer night.

"was that life or love?", i asked him. i knew he was there. his visits have become frequent of late. and we talk at that time when the city gets tired and calms itself for the day after.

he showed his face, a silhouette in the dark, and gave me what could have been a sheepish smile. he knew the answer, but was not allowed to reveal it to me.

"you ...