The Time Traveler

By the threshold I leant, looking into her two wet eyes. My hands trembling, my head dizzy, my quiver lips let me utter no words. I kept looking at her sitting on the corner of this small chamber with raised head. We had enough reasons to be together; yet we had enough reasons to fall apart too. We had been through this for so many times, yet, we always found a way to reunite. This time, I felt something different in polemic; I somehow did not think we could settle this down anymore.

At that time I had so many things to say, but all my words were just stuck in my throat, allowing me not to say anything, but silence. Amid the awkwardness and conflict between us, I looked at the golden key suspended from my neck; suddenly, my thoughts were just flying back to the very first time when I buried my heart into hers. I almost could not recall how I loved her; it was just like a moment between two heartbeats. I saw her completely different from whom I used to see years ago, just like a black hole that sucked my dimly-lighted heart into. I could not resist, but meekly allowing myself to go gleefully deep inside the blackness that possibly killed me.

I could have gone back there to start everything all over again. I wanted it, but it was just the fear of making mistake that could change or even erase all her good memories of me –or us in her mind. But no…no… I could not put her at the risk of losing every best moment in her life if I had failed in the past that was so perfectly knitted with both of our hands. I just could not repeat that perfect moment.

Then I looked into her wet eyes; the tears went slowly down her cheeks like the stream in the spring day, released all the remaining frozen particles from the former winter. I could see her happy without me, flowing in the great stream of the river of life, free from all the particles burdened her; she is going to be free, independent, and happy.

In the silence, I thought I could have gone forward to the future. I had thousands burning questions in my mind, like, ‘What will she do? What will she be? Will I still be with her? And… so many more.’

But I did not think I want it, I actually wanted to feel all of the feelings I should felt.

It is so complicated.

An old man with a golden key suspended from his neck was once told me that life was like a novel; we could either go back to any specific page, or go forward to see the ending of the story; but once we did the ‘page jumping’, we would get used to it, kept doing it, and eventually lost the meaning of the story itself; trapped between the past and the future. It’s definitely what the cowards always do; anyway, the choices they always thought of when they were in trouble were to which corners they would run and then hide.

That night, the breeze danced beside me when I was sitting under the sycamore tree, glancing at the incinerating laboratory. I felt sore in my eyes, perhaps some cinder went inside my eyes; the cinder of the fading past and the darkening future.

Now under the night sky blanketed by the luminous stars, I read the novel page to page. I neither know what will happen in the next pages; nor can I change the bygones. I enjoy the reading with all the surprises and suspense I may bump into. 

This is the short story I wrote about a year ago and—luckily—won a writing competition. I know this is not really a good story; yet, this is one of medium through which I could express --maybe--some ideas and feeling in my subconscious mind.