Miles Unclosed (1/2)

The sky was budding with color

As the sun stretched its nose above the horizon. I was nineteen then;

He was seventeen.We were still inseparable

Because I was the only face he had seen. He had not yet seen her face;

To him only I existed.

Because he had not yet met her,

The person who would wake him to society.

He was so comfortable living in the world I had built for him

That he failed to see anyone else outside of those fabricated walls -

Walls that existed around him and around me,

That could not ever be broken

Because they could only be seen

By the two of us.Walls that kept us close

But still so far apart. There was more space between those walls

Than I ever could have imagined.

The smell of alcohol permeated the early morning air. We had been drinking,

Drowning out the rest of the world as always.

Because while no one else existed to him,

I could always see above the walls I had constructed,

The walls that kept him enclosed and kept us connected.

I couldn't help but worry sometimes

Because he was so...flawless...

So perfect...

That I feared someone would steal him,

Right from my invisible wall

That kept nobody out -

That fell at her footsteps

And released him to the world,

Only to be hurt and destroyed and by it -

By her.

We had not slept all night;

We had been too busy talking,

Too busy breathing each other in.

I remember how light his laugh was,

How it seemed to float in the air

Right above my face

And enter my lungs with the nighttime air -

Refreshing and sustaining,

The very essence of this life -

My life.

I remember how soft the grass felt underneath our skin

As we lay beneath the sky

And watched the stars. We had walked miles away from the city;

We had never seen so many stars. So bright and so large,

They belittled us sweetly,

Singing us songs of wonderment and fantasy,

Reminding us of how insignificant we seemed

In comparison to the extensive galaxy that composed their songs. A moment of bitter recognition

All made sweeter by the sound of his laugh,

The tickle of his breath on the skin of my neck,

The stutter and stumble of his words about nothing,

His words about everything.

But what I remember the most

Is the closeness that was between us. His shoulder so close to mine,

His breath would find my neck every so often

And would make me shiver with an unknown and unexplored feeling of excitement. Our hands,

I swear they could touch.A space so small yet so vast separating our fingertips...

What was keeping me from touching his hands?

How I wanted to move just a centimeter,

Just a bit closer to him

So that our bodies would touch,

And he would feel my thoughts at the contact of skin.

But I only stayed on my side of the wall -

The wall that I myself had created,

But had created so poorly

That I forced myself onto the outside.I could still see everything behind it. And Woohyun,

Unable to see past anything and anyone,

Was left trapped on the inside,

Separated from me by millions of miles,

By mere centimeters I could not make myself move. Because I did not want to scare him away;

He meant too much to me.

As the night surrounded us and kept us hidden from everyone,

I remember holding my own hand

And pretending that it was his

To keep myself from becoming melancholy

And ruining such a wonderful moment.

But even now

I regret not moving closer

And not lending him my thoughts. For now the distance between us

Seems almost as great as our distance from the stars -

Infinite and ongoing,

Something we will always long to fill

But will never come close to doing so. And it seems to me

That the space between us has grown

Even greater than that.

And that is what frightens me most.

After what seemed like years,

Woohyun stopped crying.

Sunggyu was silently sitting on the bed

Looking only at Woohyun. Woohyun watched

As a final tear streamed down Sunggyu's cheek.

Only they existed;

Nothing else mattered.

As he took a deep, long breath,

Woohyun said:

"I'm...I'm sorry, Sunggyu."

"Why are you apologizing?" Sunggyu asked in response. He could not understand

Why Woohyun would apologize

When he had done nothing wrong.

"Because...because I...

I saw something...bad. It was very, very bad, Sunggyu! It was bad and not right;

I am bad and not right.It was wrong like me."

Feeling the gap between them growing ever wider,

Sunggyu got up from the bed

And walked over to Woohyun,

Finally decreasing the distance between them,

The cosmic opposites -

The dutiful Earth and the wishful stars -

Ever a mystery, ever in darkness. And Sunggyu suddenly realized

That after three lonely years,

He was finally covering

The centimeters he had left exposed

Beneath the scrutiny of the stars

Back when they were still young

And were still only living for each other.

Am I moving too fast?

The Earth must be turning slowly.

Is it too soon to move?

He might not be ready for me.

Am I being too selfish?

Maybe what I want is what he wants too.

Am I being too rash?

One false move

And I may break him forever.

I suppose that I will not know

Until I try to find out for myself. Otherwise the centimeters

Will always be opened,

And only to what?Empty space and empty promises,

Empty love and empty existence.

Am I doing what is right?

My heart deems this right,

So I will continue.

I will close;

I will love.

Sunggyu sat down next to Woohyun

And wrapped his arm around Woohyun's shoulder. He could feel Woohyun's body shudder

And his breathing become heavier. He could tell that Woohyun was feeling uneasy,

And he soon worried that he had acted too soon.

"Woohyun, why is your body shaking?

What is making you feel this way?"

Woohyun hung his head. He was ashamed of the answer

And was too afraid to tell the truth.

"You...you would hate me if I told you."

"Woohyun, I could never hate you. You know that.

But...Woohyun...

I think...I think it's time that...I told you something.

Something I've been waiting to tell you...

For a very long time."

And while Woohyun's head hung in shame of self,

Sunggyu prepared himself mentally and emotionally

To tell Woohyun the truth -

The truth he had been hiding for so long

In the open space between them,

Out in the open, always there,

Never seen, not clear enough.

Ready to tell;

Ready to be lived.

I still remember the first kiss we shared. There was a forest of trees -

Not very great, but not small either -

A few miles from where she lived. We walked all the way there,

And once we got there,

She started off into the forest -

Covered in darkness,

No light to guide her way. So I followed behind

Even though I was scared

Because I didn't want anything to happen to her -

I wanted to protect her.

I stepped on a massive tree root and looked at my watch.

It was midnight; a new day had dawned. I was trailing behind her

Because it was hard to see what was in front of me.

She was glowing up ahead of me,

But I was too far behind for her light to reach. I still do not know how she moved so fast and with so much agility

Through that tangled wood encircled by the hands of nighttime. I think that she could feel my fear and frustration as my clothes caught in branches and vines

Because she would turn around to look at me and pause to let me regain composure. She thought I was funny for being so uneasy,

And being the lighthearted and free spirit she was,

She would joke about all the unlikely but terrible events

That could happen to us while we were walking without direction or purpose.

"What if a wolf jumps out from behind that tree and traps us and eats us?

Or what if a hungry bear suddenly appears behind us and scratches us to death with its claws?

Or what if there's a crazy murderer hiding in these very woods, and the moment we step close to his hiding spot,

He jumps out of the bushes and slashes our throats without a word,

And our cold, dead bodies rot here, forgotten and lost, forever and for all eternity?"

But I was only half-listening to her,

Because all I could think about

Was how much I wanted to kiss her.

I had wanted to kiss her for a long time,

But each day I decided that it was time for me to do so,

My desire seemed to disappear as I got closer to her face.

Perhaps it was because she wasn't just any girl:

She was stronger, more mystic, more mysterious than any other girl I had ever known.I did not know where she came from;

She never spoke of her family or friends at all.

She only talked about me, about her, and -

Above all -

About us.

She never showed weakness and never yielded her own authority;

If anything, I was the weaker and she was the pillar of strength and support.

Because she never seemed to be afraid, or sad, or dependent, or lonely,

Even though I never heard her say anything about anyone other than me -

Other than us.

She always spoke in riddles and pictures, in poems and songs.

And she always spoke about abstract concepts and fated meetings,

About how she had heard me say the very same words before

And felt my skin in the wind one morning as she walked to see me

Only a few hours before I held her hand for the first time,

And she knew that my hand would shake after I took hers

Because she knew that I had always been nervous and unsuspecting when it came to love and being loved.

She was different from any girl, from any person I had ever met before,

And that is what made me attracted to her so terribly. Her natural strength that seemed so much greater than mine

Made me hesitant when it came to the pursuit of love and happiness.

But I didn't mind living in her shadow

Or having her lead me by the hand,

Because at least she was always around,

And it felt like she would never leave me.

But that night, as I stepped over branch upon branch

And saw nothing but her back view

With the occasional glimpse of her face in profile,

I felt ready to finally be bold and be the stronger -

To kiss her lips and show her the magnitude of my love.

Almost as if she could read my thoughts,

I remember her stopping in the middle of two twisted tree branches,

Turning around and facing me straight on,

And saying to me with a smile and a gleam in her eye:

"You know, Woohyun,

A man has to be courageous. If a man does not have courage,

Then how will he be able to leave his home

And live out the rest of his life? If he is not courageous,

He will never leave his parents

And will always be a child -

Ignorant and sheltered,

Always reliant on other people. But a courageous man

Is a man who is not afraid of experiences,

Of failure after success

And disappointment before contentment. A courageous man

Is a man who does not wait for life to find him

But who goes out and takes her by the horns,