Perhaps… perhaps we were running, yes, running from something, who knows. It’s blurry now.
The police maybe? Maybe a monster?
No matter what, it was a scenario that induced my adrenaline, (it’s curious to see how both fear and excitement affects the heart), beating so fast I could hear it in my ears. Adrenaline, it’s both scary and addictive.
We forgot ourselves in that high; the risks of what we say, the result of our actions.
Is that’s why people often say ‘lost in love’ with the same weight as ‘frozen in fear’?
“
When we met, my ears were ringing, all I care about is getting out of there.
Then…. Then somehow, I met you.
What were we running from? I don’t know.
All I remember is that we both have similar goals, we both wanted to survive.
I felt a rush of fear then, not… just for me. But for this stranger, this stranger I met, probably ten, twenty seconds ago.
We held hand as we run, I pulled him in the right direction, maybe through an alleyway, maybe down a small road only a local would know. While he, the tech-smart foreigner (obvious with his darker skin and lighter eyes), would use his cooler head to find routes with his phone.
Huh… I was so scared I didn’t think about that.
Through it all, I remember vaguely how we held hands, squeezing each other tight, as if if we let go, the space between our fingertips will be permanent, and we cannot have that.
‘Here.’ You said, shoving the screen on my face. ‘We should go here!’
I nod then, pulling his hand again, we ran and ran, until the monster(?) was nowhere to be seen.
It was dark and damp under the bridge, the concrete floor that we stand on directly above the water is slippery with moss, but we stayed down there anyway, waiting.
Subconsciously,
I was making sure that he won’t be harmed, and him, making sure that I won’t be harmed.
‘What a relief.’ He said to me. ‘You’re such a smart guy, I wouldn’t have escaped if you didn’t know the city so well. And it’s so cool how you just… understood what I said! Where did you learn English?’
English?
Where did I learn English?
Nowhere, I remember failing that subject in school many times, I just didn’t care back then, and I still don’t care now.
English.
…He was talking in English?
His eyes bore to mine as my head tilted with brows that turned into a frown. Silence falls between us, then he chuckled awkwardly, thinking that I didn’t hear him.
‘I… uh, yes, sorry — was that rude? I was just wondering… since you’re a local and you understand me so well. Just curious to know where you learned — ’
‘I didn’t.’ I answered in my mother tongue, with my local accent so thick, even someone who learned my official country’s language for years would have a hard time understanding me.
It was the first conversation we had and we didn’t even realize it, now that we’re safe, now that our muscles have let go of its vicious grip on our brains as our survival instinct carried us to safety.
Now our brain is… well, thinking again.
It was my turn to frown, I realized this man, this foreign man, also understood me perfectly.
‘Where did you learn MY language?’
A moment, then two. His mouth dry, opening only slightly.
‘I didn’t.’
We stood there, as we realize that other people’s words that we passed through during our escape had sounded like gibberish.
And yet here we are, our tongue familiar, in language and in… other ways.
I didn’t understand the language.
I only understood you.
“
Of course, we understood each other.
We are one, you and I.
Or we were anyway.
But we know now, years later, that we cannot be whole again.
But at least, as tongue separates people and nations apart, ours only connects us in understanding (and with a kiss.)
If we cannot be whole again. At least I understand you.
At least. I know what my dear heart says, not the one under my ribcage, but the one across from me. In this helplessness of our physical separation, at least we could make sure that there will never be a space between our fingertips anymore.
