Alessa

Some wiseguy on crack once declared that two people in love have their souls merged in an otherworld plane no one can comprehend or see, enveloping themselves as closely together as possible and distancing themselves from others. He proclaimed it was a phenomenon just like gravity; so little people understand it, yet everyone is affected by it. They said love is in the air, and he said, just like gravity.

There was no rebuttal, no snappy comebacks, for most people knew he was not joking at all. He was on a crusade to make his point and went to great lengths and depths to point them out. For one, he drew a Starry Night, with a man on the sidewalk with a vacuum cleaner, trying to suck in the stars and turned it in for the arts festival. The reason for this he explained, was that vacuum is not an instrument of love since it is essentially nothingness, and thus no relationship can exist in nothingness.

Alessa aroused and tormented him each time they were to have a conversation. She was a mean, petite frame of about five and a quarter feet, whose eyes stares motionless into any objects of interest in her line of sight but him. She earnestly questions her surroundings without a care for what the answers to her questions meant. It was exactly what tormented him so much, yet the whole discussion seemed fruitful at the time they were both intensely speaking and making their points worth every breathe it takes to spout such nonsensical gibberish about why, what, how, when or where. It aroused him so much that Alessa could spare time and thought, as though she was keenly dissecting his mind for his innermost thoughts about subjects he held a deep profound passion for. It further dawned on him, most nights when he was alone, that he would reflect on the healthy conversation that he just had with her that it was never filled with topics about her own fulfilling life. Courtesy gets in his way of spilling about how he will one day make this world a more fulfilling place.

Fulfillment never took priority in Alessa’s eyes. She never tries too hard for anything. She never tries too hard to study, to play the violin, to dance, to learn and least of all to understand him. She never tries too hard to excel either, but she does; in all of them. She was a mass of unknown matter, nurturing a benign smile to harness a graceful exuberance that was there for all to see. But that was all that was known, since her personality is almost an enigma to those who dare not confront her.

No one saw or appreciated her more than him. No one would empty their pockets faster than he would; to get her roses unharmed that would prominently go unnoticed when others emptied their pockets as well for the year’s Valentines special. He was most disconsolate about this, much like he was disconsolate about being in the same vein as the people around him, only able to merely refer to her as an enigma. His consolation comes in the fact that no one else has a better idea of who she is.

He had an articulate talent for producing meticulous and vivid drawings and paintings, none more vivid than his lucid imaginations of Alessa ponderously overdressing for his sake. He was good at drawings and paintings, but no better than his wondrous daydreaming. He was tipped for greater things in the future, but was in no position to alter the state of the world he has not come to understand. He was as discontent with this present state of things as he was about not knowing much else about Alessa, where he found that he was good in whatever he did, but not well enough, yet in consolation, not many people were better than him in whatever he does either. He was a walking contradiction nine-to-five on weekdays, while on Saturdays and Sundays he was too tired to contemplate any contradictive circumstance. All the thinking in the world he did, he did it in two intervals of fifteen minutes; while bathing and the fifteen minutes before he dozes off laboriously to sleep.

For all the momentous gazing he affected to her, he had hoped to find gravity within eye contact. He earnestly hoped that gazing at her from afar would somehow bring him closer to her. He never quite figured it out until one day Clarisse caught him staring into the clear skies in disdain, as if he was looking for atonement for something carelessly gone wrong.

“Are you going to lie there all day staring blankly at the sky?” she demanded to know, without trying to mask the notion that perhaps he was goofing off far too much.

“As far as I know, I’ve got nothing much to do.”

“You would might as well wait for the stars to appear at night here,” she said as she slipped beside him with her lunch on one hand, and some in between her teeth sealed by her soft, sweet lips that no one has ever come close to before; at least not boys and strangers.

“The stars are there alright, you just don’t have the imagination to see them.”

“And you do?”

“I could get all the stars I want here,” he claimed, holding out scrap pieces of paper in his hands.

“And no one would have the imagination to see them there too.”

“Only you,” he scoffed, mildly grinning without her noticing. “I could do much better than your imaginations.”

“Or much worse.”

“I don’t have much affinity for the stars.”

“Or anything else.”

“I don’t have much affinity for the stars, when I’m looking at it with you.”

“Or anyone else. The sky’s clear anyway.”

“The stars are there alright.”

“And you can see them?”

“I know they’re there.”

“The stars are there alright. But can you pick one out?”

“My eyes can’t pull the stars to your level.”

At that instant, he thought to himself, nothing could. It then occurred to him that merely gazing only brought meaning to himself, for Clarisse and himself were looking at the same sky, talking but not communicating. It felt entirely futile, his whole conversation, the irritation he was trying to inflict to the seemingly impervious girl next to him, her face shaded by the glorious trees around them which concealed her attractive features. All the thinking in the world, which he usually saves up for the times when he was bathing or preparing to sleep, he was doing it now. What price he would pay to have Clarisse substituted by Alessa, with the mere thought left him smitten by the analogy of what if, and began to picture her in his mind, his secret unspoken conversations with Alessa commencing that very moment.