574 words flying in a 5-minute cage clothed by French songs I do not understand the lyrics of: I was talking to myself.

It feels like forever since I last saw you here. I thought for once you were never gonna come back. I often wondered if you ever felt the urge to tell me things in detail again, even if it gets confusing—even if your train of thought gets lost in its way at times. But now you’re here. You’re here one more time, and my hope is quickly being resurrected from the dead, like a phoenix who has now been brought back to life after burning in flames. You’re going to tell me things again. You’re going to tell me, whether in metaphors or straightforward sentences, like a storyteller, how you suddenly felt the urge to cry one early morning on the way to work, when you, for a second, swiftly passed by an ancient tree and felt so very grounded by its presence. You pondered for a minute or two how old the tree might be. Maybe it’s much older than your ancestors. It’s certainly older than the sky-high buildings you’re more used to being around every single day. You wondered what the bygone tree would’ve told you if it ever saw what your life is like. What would the trees, the clouds, and the oceans give you as advice? Are they listening?

I know you tend to romanticize life in the hopes of softening the rocky, hurtful areas. On your way back home after an eight-hour or more shift with wearisome, physically and mentally exhausting commute situations, the moment you sit on a blue, worn out by time, lonely but not alone bus, you look out the window and start to cry, laugh, or simply smile, but you do it in your mind. You sigh and sigh and sigh until it feels lighter in the heart because, once again, you have survived another day. It’s another day you went through, and that... is saying a lot sometimes. That alone could feel like a whole lifetime’s worth of achievement. As you tell me this, I see you tearing up. I’m so proud of you. Sometimes your tears serve as your medallions.

While on the bus, stuck in the daily heavy traffic, you have this habit of playing one of your favorite songs that has the mysterious power of bringing you to the Italian Riviera in 1986. Not that you were already born in 1986. Not that you have ever been to the Italian Riviera. But, for some reason, through that one miraculous song, you get to be there, in that place, at that time, even just for a couple of minutes... and it feels good. It feels poetic, even. It feels like life romanticized. Then, in what feels like a minute, it’s late at night, and you put yourself to several hours of sleep and do it all over again.

Does doing it all over again help you not get lost? I see there’s a building maze on your mind, and soon it will cause you to be trapped. What is it that you’re so unsure about? What is it that bugs you at times when you find yourself thinking without direction? What is it that you wanted to speak about but could not find the voice for? Anyway, you avoid this path of questions. You turn the other way. And you do it all over again. And you leave. And I know it’s gonna feel like forever before I see you here again.