Published by: Zenie Lynn Caguing
Date Published: October 10, 2025
Time Published: 3:48pm
Category: Prose
Theme: Feeling the desire of always wanting to leave first.
In the fridge sits a half-empty carton of milk. It’s never expired, but never quite fresh either. It gets switched and poured out just before it sours. Not because anyone drinks it, but because in letting it spoil lingers a feeling of negligence.
The shoes kept by the doorway don’t gather dust, but the laces are always left loose. They sit facing the door, as if the body that wears them learned how to move before it learned how to stay. Beside them, a suitcase stays just right at the corner, closer to the door and half-zipped, a mouth rehearsing an unfinished goodbye. It’s never empty, always with fears folded in between shirts and socks that never wear thin, for they’ve not seen the miles.
The room is filled with temporaries, a waiting room without names on the walls nor frames with captured laughter. The clock ticks in a cautious rhythm, counting not the hours forward, but measuring how close the present is to an ending. And so, the morning slips by uncelebrated—laughter arrives but doesn’t linger; it’s dismissed like a song skipped before the chorus, for what if silence follows close?
While standing on guard against the fall, the climb becomes a blur. What should be a wonder at the crest turns into quiet rehearsals for the break; the mind is filled with pictures of scraped elbows and the sting of gravel. The air at the summit is crisp and rare, worthy of being treasured, but gets forgotten as the heart moves ahead, practicing the sound of breaking bones, bracing for the inevitable collapse.
Life, with its small offerings, is never held onto with hunger. Each hug feels half-held, and words feel half-spoken, like letters that never make it to the mail. Moments that could have been bright lanterns get dimmed, extinguished by the persistent hand ready to store them away.
A strange way of living—always ready to leave, yet never truly arriving. A life lived with braced muscles and eyes watching the floor for cracks instead of the sky for stars. So, the heart, dressed in its shiny armor of foresight, forgets what it means to beat without trembling—forgetting that somehow, the fall is worth the fight.
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