“I wish I could be with you all,’ I responded, getting all worked up myself over someone I had almost entirely stopped thinking about. Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.”

“Absence is more,thorny on the soul,than however dulcet,presence can be.Apparently,I have missed you,more than,I have ever loved you.”

“The beauty of the sea is that it never shows any weakness and never tires of the countless souls that unleash their broken voices into its secret depths.”

“What if it’s as simple as one moment? One tiny thing, like that kiss on the rocks? What if I’d kissed him a little longer? Would he be alive right now? Or what if I’d stayed with him Friday night, what if I’d been with him… wherever he was?”

“Ah, ya, omong-omong, aku sangat merindukanmu. Apa kau merindukanku juga, mmm?”

“I will be waiting for you at the end of every blind alley, under the lonely streetlamps of a city that will no longer be ours.When the wind grows colder and the huge piles of settled leaves sit there for a week or two, unshielded from the curious gaze of passersby, I will be waiting for you.I will be waiting for what could have been and for what will never be;For the letters that never arrived, the letters that were never sent, and the letters that will never be written.”

“His absence is so big it’s like he’s there.”

“I reached down and picked up a baseball bat at my feet and I flung it as hard as it could. It circled and arced high in the air until it slammed against the side of the dining hall with a crack and fell.I sat down in the dirt. Then I lay down in the dirt.Because not only was there no trail to follow, there was no evidence he’d ever been here.There was no evidence any of them had been here.”

“No matter how much he talked, she never answered him, but he knew she was still there. He knew it was like the soldiers he had read about. They would have an arm or a leg blown off, and for days, even weeks after it happened, they could still feel the arm itching, the leg itching, the mother calling.”

“sometimes i don’t know, which momentwhich cool gust of wind will come,and enchant metousling my hairand my heart, stirring…that familiar ache of poetry, which drop will kissthe old wrench in my soulreminding me, all over againi miss you better in the rain.”

“Usually time alters and affects everything, but when someone you love dies time cannot change that, no amount of time will ever change that, so time stops having any meaning.”

“The stars are brilliant at this time of night and I wander these streets like a ritual I don’t dare to break for darling, the times are quite glorious.I left him by the water’s edge,still waving long after the ship was goneand if someone would have screamed my name I wouldn’t have heard for I’ve said goodbye so many times in my short life that farewells are a muscular task and I’ve taught them well. There’s a place by the side of the railway near the lake where I grew up and I used to go there to burry things and start anew. I used to go there to say goodbye. I was young and did not know many people but I had hidden things inside that I never dared to show and in silence I tried to kill them, one way or the other,leaving sin on my body scrubbing tears off with saltand I built my rituals in farewells. Endings I still cling to. So I go to the ocean to say goodbye.He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my headand though he said he’d come back one day I know a broken promise from a right onefor I have used them myself and there is no coming back.Minds like ours are can’t be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay.I turned away from the oceanas not to fall for its pleafor it used to seduce and consume meand there was this one nighta few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewellsand just like now I stood waving long after the ship was gone.But I was younger then and easily fooledand the ocean was deep and dark and blueand I took my shoes off to let the water freeze my bones.I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but still I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I had not yet learned how the task of moving on is as necessary as survival.Then days passed by and I spent them with my work and now I’m writing letters I will never dare to send.But there is this one day every year or sowhen the burden gets too heavyand I collect my belongings I no longer needand make my way to the ocean to burn and drown and start anewand it is quite wonderful, setting fire to my chains and flames on written wordsand I stand there, starring deep into the heat until they’re all gone. Nothing left to hold me back.You kissed me that morning as if you’d never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss like chains wrapped around my veins,and if you see a fire from the shore tonightit’s my chains going up in flames. The time of moon i quite glorious. We could have been so glorious.”

“Only God knows how much I missing you. When you do not talk to me, I feel like I was dumb.”

“Little did I realise how much I would miss those ten minutes, those ten minutes in which I lived an entire lifetime.”