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1 Footnotes. I think that they can be poetic, if you let them be. When you first heard about footnotes, you laughed and said that it's so funny to visualise it. Yes, the foot of the whole page, notes relegated to the bottom of the paper. The superscript almost like the toes, spread out beyond the demarcated line. You always told me off for writing long ass footnotes at the end of my essays because: “nobody ever reads them, YN.” Because to you, all there is to know is in the main body of the text. But in our story, I think there is much to revisit for me to retrace where we begin falling apart. It doesn’t really do justice for me to go back into our main story to pick it apart — i’d like to stay in tact. I’ll revisit us through these notes. An afterthought. An undoing of our tapestry at its seams. Maybe then I can find out why you decided to leave me.
2 Correction: you used to tell people that we met because you saw me first, headlonging toward you after I tripped on my shoes. The truth is that I saw you first and felt like the entire universe condensed itself into this singular moment. Hence, my falling. I saw you first, not the other way round. I saw you first, and last.
3 Your laugh used to puncture through all my worries, no matter the day. Now I am puncturing our story with these words.
4 I still remember you stumbling over your words when you asked me out for dinner for the first time. Your voice soft, as if you were trying to loosely stitch together all the words of this stupid language to present it to me. Your words floated in the air for awhile before tumbling down in the space between us. I said yes. Not because I felt bad that you embarrassed yourself in front of me. But because I saw you sitting next to me years down the road, having breakfast in our all-green kitchen, tired from a night of laughter and domestic silence.
5 We used to fight over which side of the bed we wanted to claim. Unlike normal couples that have a designated side, we kept each other on our toes when we snuggled into the other’s side when the other was in the bathroom. Never out of malice, no. We just couldn’t choose. The bed became a wrestling ground of space, and so became our dreams. We had always been slippery, perhaps.
6 Are you finally reading this, Anton?
7 I think the smell of chlorine is permanently infused into my nose’s DNA now from the days I spent sitting in that frigid swimming complex for you. I still remember your smug smile everytime you emerged from the water, droplets cascading off of your Greek structure. You used to doodle illegibly next to my notes on Greek sculptures: “hey thats me”; “tis me if i was greek”; “is this sculpture named anton”; “do u see me in dis yn”. It fascinated you. To answer your question, yes, I do see you in these sculptures. But not because of the similarities in physique. But because you withstood the test of time in the pantheon of my mind.
8 Did you realise that the spark in your eye began dimming everytime I brought up our future?
9 Was it here? When you came home late one day from an afterparty and couldn’t hold a proper conversation with me, complaining about being too worn out. When you used to barrel straight toward me after every victory, no matter the circumstance. But you begin spending more time with your team instead of coming home after your trainings. Unanswered texts, unoccupied spaces. I used to wait by our lovechair until my head lolled to the side. You never walked through on time.
10 You did apologise. Multiple times, in fact. And said that we could try again. And so we did.
10 There was one morning we went to the farmers’ market bright and early. Not that we had anything in mind to do there, you just wanted us to spend time together again. You had an obnoxiously huge baguette in your arms and I had bags of apples – the kind you loved – stuffed deep in my bag. Our hands were sweaty from holding onto each other through the crowd, as if the heat itself was trying mould us together. You were happy and I was too. “I wish everyday was like this”, you said.
10 Something particularly devastating about two people who could just not get it right, no matter how many fresh starts we got. Did we use up all of ours in the span of two years? Was there an expiration date somewhere that I missed that you scrawled out on your own in the dark when I was fast asleep?
11 Eleven footnotes too many.
12 I was the first person you always played your songs to. Even at the clunkiest, when your fingers would hesitate against the strings, or when your tongue couldn’t find it in itself to move. We went back to your papers and pen and started over.
13 We went on a trip once. You always slept in through your alarms and I was always an early riser. We got used to our rhythms by now, me with a book nestled next to your sleeping body, waiting until you stirred. The words on the page didn’t interest me anymore. I was watching you. Your fluttering lashes, how your chest expanded with every inhale, a merciful reminder to me that you were here. Even though we were 1268km away from home, you were here.
14 Oh, or was it this time when you came home late again and I stood by the door, eyes scarlet and dry from waiting up. You did not text me or anything, but the moment you saw me standing by the door, it was like something clicked in your mind. “Did I make you wait again?”
15 But the truth is, I would have waited forever. Even if it meant sitting through my grief, my petulance and my impatience. I would have rather sat behind that blue door we shared, knowing the exact way the floor creaked below your feet leading you back home to me, than to have not known it at all. Somewhere in between all this waiting, you decided to not make me wait anymore.
16 You thought of it as an act of grace. You, being merciful to me. But time had always been merciful to us, we just had to bend it toward us and not let go.
17 After you left, I wondered what I could do with all my waiting. All the time used up, waiting for you to come back to me. I prayed that the road we were heading down had a bend that we did not know of, or a roundabout where we would eventually bump into each other again at the same intersection, and we would laugh like we always did after mornings of badly-made coffee, our hands would naturally suture themselves together and we’d let our feet take our memorised route home.
18 Was it really mercy, Anton, that after you left, I saw your wide smile constructed through pixels, your elated eyes looking at someone else instead of me? That you seemed so fine when I am here writing my afterthoughts, combing through our story, as if I could fix language in itself. I can’t fix it. I know. And you’ve always hated my footnotes. I know that too.
19 But a part of me still hopes that you stayed and read through the bylines with me. That a part of you lay awake in the middle of the night, writing your own footnotes about us like I am doing right now. That perhaps your ultimate act of mercy is realising that you let time win and you’d finally decide to swim out of the circular ocean of unchanging numbers and not make me wait anymore.
20 Footnotes lay dormant, only coming to life when someone decides to read them. It is a form of waiting too. I am trying to resurrect us, even from the sidelines, can you hear me?
21 And if that is the case, I guess I can say anything I want as I hide in here. I miss you. And I love you. I’d throw away all the clocks in the world if it meant you don’t have to worry about me waiting anymore.
21 Doodle next to this note. Please. Anything at all. In your usual jagged writing. Even a dash of black ink from you would reignite every cell in me.
22 Is it ever possible to finish a story without notes? How can a body of literature ever be fully perfect and complete without the writer wanting to add? Do notes then provide structure, in addition to the predictable plot? Or do notes present itself as fragments? Fragmented thoughts amid a complete story. How do you even structure love after it has waned? Our love liquified at the very temperature that kept my heart beating and before I could gather it into a makeshift mould, hardened itself in the cracks of these letters.
23 Anton, do you remember singing me to sleep everytime my insomnia punctuated my nights? You’d cradle me and tell me that everything is all right. Your sacccharine voice dulling all my bittersweet dreams. Sing me to sleep one last time, please.
24 Have I bore you enough with my words? Did I keep you waiting?
25 Twenty-five footnotes for the twenty-five months we spent together. I can taste the ink on my tongue when I articulate the numbers. Twenty-five. I still miss you, at twenty-nine. I am beginning to think that there was never fault to begin with. Just like how numbers are chronological, letters naturally fall after the other, seasons come cascading without prompt, nothing I did could have stopped time from moving. Blame is easy when everything has already happened. Reliving our love through notes did not help, I was resurrected with every new comment I had but nothing more. None of these conjured you. I should put my pen down and walk away, I know. Resistance against what had been written cannot be fought alone. I’ll continue living our love through these scattered, pulsed ashes. Maybe you’ll find me here someday and we can tear up these pages and start anew. Continue writing the story without ever needing these afterthoughts. One complete story, one complete truth. I’ll continue waiting. It was the only thing I was ever good at, anyway.