No One

Your mind turns blank when he walks around. Your lips utter a stutter of resignation, betraying the thundering heartbeat inside your chest. Control yourself, your inner conscience tells you. Remember that you are a black sheep covered in cloudy white wool.

And no one can see the real color beneath your skin. Not unless you deliberately show them.

Your hands reach out, attempting to touch the other without your brain’s consent. Although you know that the mask will be broken once you break the barriers, you still try. You ache and yearn for the recognition of that special someone, and hopefully… Just, hopefully, he belongs to the 4% of the world’s population that you can show your true colors to. That he’ll accept you for being you.

Mid-way, your hand stops. Your heart accelerates even faster, but now the time has gone to pass. He walks away, not even noticing your presence. You feel downtrodden, defeated, but you lug your heavy feet to your next lesson. Remember, your conscience says. Your life is planned out for you. You’re going to get married to a beautiful girl and have little children who’ll laugh as they run around the playground screaming, “Daddy! Daddy! Look at me!”

Sometimes, you wished you could just slap Conscience in the face for being such a bitch.

As you lay awake beneath the heavenly moonlight, staring at the white ceiling, you imagine a life together with him, with matching tuxedos and ringing bells. You imagine waking up to his smile as he looks at you adoringly. You imagine caressing his lustrous hair in an endearing manner. You imagine. You imagine. And then you begin to dream.

But, as they say, dreams turn into nightmares when you wake up.

In class, you hear sounds of mockery as stormy thoughts brew amongst those who could care less about your kind. You painfully support them, for who else would become friends with you? You’re hurt, but you cannot cry. You’re sad, but you have to fake a laugh.

You wished he was there to make it all better.

Whenever you see him walk by with a girl, there’s something in your heart that tugs at you. It was not fear, nor anger, nor hurt, nor jealousy. Perhaps, it was a combination of all of these emotions, thrown into a bowl to make rojak. And you swallowed it whole.

No one could understand that these emotional qualities are true. No one knows as you hide behind the lockers everyday pretending to be part of the scenery when you were actually trying to follow up on his everyday conversation. No one knows that whenever you were free, you admire the words he uploaded onto his blog.

No one can know. No one.