ramified poetry

“Hello?”
“Chris? I know it’s you. Don’t hang up, please. Let me just get this one out. I know I’ve promised you many things, promises I just couldn’t keep. I don’t know how to say I’m sorry, but I am. I really am.”
“Tell me it’s not you, Jim…”

God knows how much I wanted that conversation to stop. I couldn’t stand it, the pain his voice brings. I can barely remember his face, but flashbacks from my yesteryears gave me a glimpse of how he looked. He was from long ago, a very long time ago. My name was still Tin-tin back then. We were two young souls growing in the hustle-bustle of Paranaque. He was my playmate, my friend, and a little time later, my first love. They say first loves die hard. I guess it’s only true when you remember him with joy, happiness and love.

“Tell me it’s not you Jim. Please. It’s not the same anymore.”
“Chris, it is me. I want us to be back like we were before.”
“There is no us, Jim. There never was. I only made it up.”

Throughout my high school life he was there; my confidante at times my teacher embarrass me at classs, my researcher for my assignments, my constant lunch date, even my streetcrossing companion. Maybe that was when I fell for him. In college, there wasn’t much I could do to tell him what I felt. One time or two, when he was drunk, he would tell me things I’d rather him say when he was sober. In anyway, it still made my heart jump.
I loved him then. I remember now. I did. He was the world to me; he was everything that mattered. The day he said he loved me too was the sweetest day I could remember. My birthday didn’t even come close. It was a day I thought would last forever. Regrettably, it didn’t.

“There never was an ‘us’, Jim. I created it out of my own imagination. I pulled it out of the clouds. You were never there.”
“But Christine, there were just too many things I couldn’t handle. Things both of us never thought would happen.”

The next scene that flashed before me was something that squeezed my heart tight. It was almost Christmas, my first Christmas after college. My life was perfect then. I had a good job, I had a good apartment, and I had Jim. And I had the perfect gift for him that Christmas. Yet, that day was the day that his knife struck my life. There was just cold ice in my stare on what I saw as I opened his apartment’s door. It was some other woman wrapped around my man’s arm. Jim. My Jim.
That was the last I saw him. That day left a mark on my heart so indelible that hate was hardly the word to describe what I’ve sown and tendered into full bloom. It made a scar so deep that no amount of time could ever heal it. I had the perfect gift for him, wrapped by my body.

“No, Jim.”
“Chris, I know you could find it in your heart to forgive me. I love you Chris. I know you still love me too. Just give me another chance. Please, I’m begging you, please.”
“Six years is long enough. I’ve already turned the pages, Jim. Leave me alone.”

“Why are you crying, mommy? Who was that?”
“Nobody, sweetie. Nobody.”

I had the perfect gift for you, Jim --- your son.