• It was a theatre around us, a medium sized room of comedy and drama. The walls by the front were filled with rhythm and rhyme, a group of youth singing to the strums of a guitar. At the back was a wall of laughter, a pack of self-made jesters performing a lampoon to the tune of the voices up front. At opposite ends of the chamber, sentiment and humor climaxed; and in between, within the clashing of the two emotions, there sat in silence, the two of us.

    Distance of a few meters were indeed miles apart when I felt a pull of gravity drawing me to the other side. You at the left, me at the right. Opposite poles, different worlds. There was a force that caught my attention, strings being pulled by an invisible playwright, lifting my head from my lap unto the diagonal direction to my left. I willed to look away to the front where the chorus continued, as a sense of shame filled me for assuming of witnessing a scene that might have not existed. But the strings are pulled once again toward your direction, and this time I was more than sure I indeed beheld a sight as lovable as it is unbelievable. There was nobody beside me but a lone audience whom I have half-listened to. And the cause of your familiar glance was, if self-gratification was to be constantly purged, of great bewilderment. I have repetitively denied my intuitive impression that I was not the only one of witness to this phenomena but the apparent twisting of your neck to your southeast was as tense as my wondering. There were less than twenty bodies in the room – the jesters behind me, the singers before me, the one-man audience beside me – all preoccupied except you and me. It was the end of time, and I was consumed in thoughts of farewell and new directions while you were implanted in your own world of fancies. But we, being confined in our own distant worlds, were quite ironically vulnerable to the depth that has surrounded us from within.

    It was unmistakable. No matter how I criticized my senses, all analysis, all mental re-enactments, have ended with the same burning nerve-racking suspicion. I was trying to imprint into memories this moment of farewell. You were perhaps in harmony with the beating of your thoughts and your ears where immune to the distractions around you. Why then did you glimpse back? You could not have heard anything, could not have felt a vibration even if the jesters laughed in comic sounds and the singers plucked the strings with enthusiasm for you were indulged in your own haven. Why then have I caught the sight of your tormenting eyes for innumerable times? Each time your neck twisted back to your body’s supposed vantage point, it seemed more of disregard than cowardice. As if each look was a taunt made to baffle my already confused mind that can no longer determine a history from a fantasy. Perhaps you were a scheming jester in yourself. Perhaps you were the one who pulled the strings, to put me in a field I am least adapted to, to make fun of me. But if there was a plot behind your actions, why then would you even care to begin with?

    I have no answers. I am not even certain if there should be questions. This all remains a mystery to me. You are my unsolved mystery, the failure of my heightened talent. That moment of less than half an hour is simply known to the two of us. No other soul has ever known about this humiliating secret of mine, of ours. This theatre is a sacred place in my memory and only the two of us has the key. Else, if there were no strings, no playwright, the door is only enterable by me.

    These words have been embellished but the true essence lies within. If I have not been the only witness, indeed, if I was not the only character, if there was truly a depth at the left wall of the chamber between the jesters and the chorus, sitting at my north-west, then these words would paint a picture, a setting that only two people would ever remember. If there was a glance, a sequence of glimpses beyond plain curiosity, then indeed, I have entered a realm that is not my territory and it would be the making of a force traveling through a string tied to the other pole of the other world.