S w e e t H o n e y L e m o n

11:03 PM

Isn’t it beautiful?

When we read each other’s hearts and minds, but on the outside we pretend nothing’s going on.

It’s somewhat a secret; a silent joke. We look at each other and we know, but we don’t say a word. What’s left written in black and white, we don’t mix with our colourful world. It’s all too complicated to handle in real life anyway.

We know. But we keep silent. It’s our tiny little secret.

the other day it was just me and him in the kitchen waiting for a pizza to cook and I asked him "If you could go overseas, where would you go?" and he said he wanted to go to U.S., specifically, he mentioned New York. "Tau New York tak?" and I nodded, smiling. "Best dowh, kalau pergi New York." before I could ask him what he would do there, a customer came in. and continuously, it was always that; work, people, time. things that stop two people from just talking, dreaming.

so i was out with an old friend that i haven’t met in five years and i told her “you wanna know something weird? i love those knives that have that rigged part on the back side” and she was like “yea we saw that in frozen when they cut the ice” and i’m like “yea maybe it has like a better cutting effect like the back-pull will cut the ice more evenly?” and she was like “this is very weird elyna, having preferences to knives” and i just realized that all these while my mother told me that i was weird? it wasn’t our generation gap. it was just me.

i wanted to look at the back of his head and his face.. his nose, his eyes, how his eyebrows were slanted and his cheekbones protruding and his square jaw and the lines of his neck and back… but he turned so i had to look away. now all i can remember is the shade of brown of his shoes when he stood next to me.

As I reached for the familiar glass bottle filled with dark liquid from the door of my fridge, I started to wonder if all cough syrup addicts start like this. First, it was just to get some sleep. Then, they start getting dependent on it. Soon, they can't pass a day without a bottle full. Maybe this is how I'll start intoxicating my body with medicine I don't need and get into hospitals for over dosage.

But I knew it wasn't gonna happen. Because before I took a spoon of the thick dark liquid (not the pink syrup like I read and had taken when I was younger before we knew it was addictive) I whispered "Bismillah".

Dammit fiction seems so much more interesting than real life. How did my brother do it? It feels like i've been stamped and delivered to the good girls' boarding school for life.

I didn't realize what I was really feeling about certain things until I talked about it with her. "I never really understood when those people say they have to put on a mask when they go out," I told her. "I didn't feel like putting on a mask so that everyone else likes you was necessary. But later I find out that putting on a mask doesn't just mean you're pretending to be someone you're not, it's to--"

"--hide what you actually feel," we said simultaneously. Smiling at something like this felt sad. It felt like it was something we can't change, therefore we both agree against frowning about it and smile instead.

Labels: drabble. ideas, editor speak, slice-of-life