Zogu

Written by: Orest Ormenaj

Cold Open: "Everything changes and nothing remains still; and you cannot step twice into the same stream.” —Heraclitus

Scene V: Resolution
Coming to terms with the ending of an experience is a terribly demanding task. Particularly so when it was a connection formed out of artificial attachment. The most hurtful of those begin with wistful attraction, because there was never a proper foundation anyways. That person is then forever split from your own beaten road, and that’s that. Gratefulness is the key to understanding, accompanied by the overflowing of emotions that underscored all those potent memories the both of you once shared. As such, the other person gets returned to sender, and their importance in your life reaches an expiration date. Vintage rose-tinted glasses half off at a clearance rack of sentimentality.

Raindrops fall on your bottom lip when you stumble forward. Death to Plato, then burn the remains of the Lyceum. Fluorescent lil’ thing, but your flame turned from red to a dour maroon. You want brown sugar, but I want to choose if the fruits of our shared tension meant anything was true. There was a time when I wished I could have been the one turning my back on you. Two similar spiders spinning silk for our opposite cocoons.

Scene IV: Ending
Do you delete old playlists when they remind you of the shared times you had with someone else? Is it fair to act like the remembrance of the person you shared intense emotion with is all but gone? Shedding all traces of someone may help with immediate closure, but does that make it wrong to reminisce over the rose-tinted scenes the both of you shared? A perfect middle ground is like attempting to convince someone that a cake should be made of salt. Why keep all your old pictures if they remind you of possibility? Is it not better to prove that the absence of their presence does not affect you? Hit them where it hurts, send little digs to their friends over social media, and act all courteous in public. Mess with their head and give them false hope. Do not finish sentences—finish cursing at one another. Deride deride deride.

Let my heart be punctured. The physical pain is temporary. ​​“I got two versions. I got twooo versions…” Word to Frank Ocean, aka the poster child of heartache for a generation weaned off of accountability and steady communication. I could just dye my hair green and stand in a shower but my side profile isn’t nearly as attractive.

Scene III: Climax
I feel that I am always searching for someone I haven’t met yet. A mortal whirlpool where the water is the self-pity I begrudgingly let myself wallow in. I wake up with pains that prickle my chest cavity. My eyes often droop, and any sparkle is exhausted the moment I acknowledge my reflection. The hair near my forehead feels drier than normal, like a flower deprived of its nutrients. Conversations with others in my household are blunt and neutered. The syrup that drowns my plate of pancakes is bitter and watery. Bedsheets remain undone. Laundry remains strewn all over the floor. Time dryly courses by. Seconds, minutes, hours. There hasn’t been any movement in quite some time.

Existence before essence. Moschino Cherries get their color from being dyed with Red Allure.

Scene II: Beginning
The way you perceive others based on their beauty can feel almost unfair. Whether it’s the way their smiles crinkle or the warmth that their eyes translate with just a gaze, there’s just something very spellbinding about it all. Attraction very soon turns to allure, but can easily throw everything into disarray. It feels as if this captivator of yours is put on a permanent loop inside your mind, one where their existence is reduced and their agency stripped. This cruel ideation morphs a person into an object of desire. Everything must mean something, right? You begin to overread every reaction, and overestimate every tender moment. However, it appears that those most discontent with their own influence, their own being, are those most susceptible to the erroneous beckon of desire masquerading as the solution to inner tranquility. They desire something, not someone, as this particular feeling they attempt a grasp at cannot be eked out by mutual love or some farce of a relationship. It is not found in another, but rather, from within. Self acceptance is often the last domino to fall.

“Your pride, my pride, bleeds out of my eyes. So don’t hold your breath waiting, I’m someone else anyways.” —Coraline

Scene I: Prologue
Hey now, wait, who just walked through the door today?
They feel so close and yet so far away.
Caterpillars turn to monarchs in my stomach’s crevice.

Tag Scene: In the end, I would rather live with the consequences of bearing my feelings than the regret of keeping them enclosed.