It’s pouring outside, it’s pouring with troubles. And you are the only part of that picture that’s untouched by the torrential rain, you are the only part of this sinking ship that’s perfectly placed in frame, your body perfectly carved into its model shape, your face unscratched, your hair always fixed in place. When the wind blows against you, against all of your hopes, you stay unmoved, silent, the epitome of unwavering, obedient, lethargic perfection.
You don’t need the perfect hair in the rain. Too many of us walk through cataracts of everyday tragedies with no drop of worry on our faces. Too many of us are insulated from the cold of our own skin, from the snow that finds its way through the cracks in our hearts. Through the gaps of open wounds left unhealed. Some wounds don’t have to heal. There is no amount of antiseptic that can keep the infection of love from spreading. Disappointment is just the metastasis of love sometimes. You can try to cover it all up with pasty white make-up, you can try to paint that faded smile with red lipstick if you like.
But scars are permanent tattoos, and you know it.
They are memories engraved on your guts, piercing right through you when flashbacks strike like lightning.
A lot of things just happen while we are all just watching clocks tick, while we are all just drifting into the chaos of our self-constructed universe. While we are all just trying to make time stop by stopping ourselves from moving forward.
You can perfect your pace if you want to, how fast you take each step in life, how far you are willing to travel each time. And timing, just like time, has its value. You can perfect when to skip through certain stages, how long to mourn for those ghosts you can’t even see, when to stay at someone’s house until the stars are ready to see you both dancing in the moonlight. You can perfect how slowly you sip your tea while you watch your past burn in that perfect fire of momentum. You can teach yourself to pick the right time to sail to new cities, the right sunset to lie by the sea, the right sunrise to climb up the mountains you have to conquer.
But time, time is a different matter. While you are trying to capture all your angles in the mirror, the world keeps turning and you keep turning with it. You can never catch yourself at a moment of stillness. There’s always a cell mutating, a piece of skin that feels softer or drier, there’s always someone invading a part of your mind. Time is always a smarter traveller than you’ll ever be inside your own mind.
Too many of us were taught to grab, choke nothingness in our hands, dress it up, call it perfection, chase it till we drop dead, till we forget that no crown was ever made out of thin air. Too many of us curl back into foetal position, covered in light blue scarves, fragile glass boxes, those stone-cold walls that we think we can melt down when we want to. Everybody thinks they can break free when they have to. But ice turns to stone if you spend too long, trapped, trying to imprison yourself into the body of the perfect adult.
You don’t need the perfect hair in the rain. You don’t need to be the perfect adult. Your smile is perfect, even when you are not smiling, even when your lips are too numb to move, even when your smile is drowning in tears.
I love you because none of us can stop time, because none of us could ever stand alone, the perfect sculpture defying the rules of nature, transcending time. I love you. In the strongest, most enduring way out of all the imperfect ways to love that I just happened to know.
Rational Artist 