(History: For some reason, this day made me think of my grandmother (from my mother's side). I never met her since she died rather young, and tragically at that. She went through A LOT. I know that. Living at a time where everything was arranged and there was no such thing as "making your own decisions", she clawed her way out of the earthbound hell she had been tossed in. For all that, I just thought she ought to be remembered by one of the many grand daughters she never met. To grandma Tangay: La, I've written your story...)
Margarita's Passage
She handed her beating heart
to a young man in high school,
who gave his own right back.
This at the young age of sixteen,
blossomed into a sublime dream
for two souls that thought –
I am his. I am hers.
Time seemed infinite
and their oneness inseperable.
By each other’s side they breathed,
hands enfolded so that their fingers
meshed like liquid gold,
as they basked under the fulgent sun.
Two figures sat unmoving on the azotea.
But the hands of change came
thrashing and raging unhindered,
to filter one from the other.
For of their destinies they had no hold of,
and their happiness was not theirs for the taking.
Daylight shifted into a semblance of something
unrecognizable, distant, and finally, was gone.
Her palms were pulled with force,
grasped tight in familial thorns
and another who cared wrongly.
Until finally, the delicate limbs
got caught in between wrought-iron wires
secretly marred by rust and a pungent tang.
She lost her smile that day.
A scar was carved.
Then another. Until pale skin
stood out, swollen and caked
in dirt and dried blood.
She cried for herself, and for him,
even as she bore the pain
of childbirth and a loveless companionship.
Such deep-seated torment filled her being,
that even the lives she bore gave no comfort.
Too much became unbearable,
and so the tortured ran afar
to scour for what had slipped away.
Thus dark was the walkway she followed,
riddled with moments of aimless wandering.
Then she met her past,
and the road that lay ahead seemed
brighter for a time.
But he was but a shadow
of what he was before,
just as she had lost that vivacity,
that once drew them together.
However different they both were,
let go of hopes they could not.
She stayed by his side,
even as he left her crying, rarely looking back.
He gave her glimpses and only that
for his heart had already been cut into three -
self-inflicted by a dulled razor.
She bore him gifts, and he sent her bread.
At times, he’d let her see him... touch him.
But they were wraiths of their former selves
slowly fading from this world.
She left soon after, mauled from her own life.
Her man hovered, only to finally follow,
with unseeing eyes and a dimming last word - You.
