FEATURED STORY: It's Just Oblivion by Jelou Galang

To My Dearest Nala,

How are things going?

I’m sorry for the two weeks and three days of interrupting you in between those hospital walls; I know that you had enough of the dead air scent and it was bad of a move to raise some elated vibe every single time you woke up. I was one big ball of annoyance, eh? I can still take a trip down retrospect: When we were fourteen, you already hated that kind of set-up. Whenever I woke you up with an eerie expression on my face, I received a throbbing skin torture from your infamous slaps and squeezes. Ha ha! But on a less sidesplitting note, don’t you think it’s amazing how you can still be yourself—the you I’ve always loved—even after what happened? You’re still you, and you don’t even know.

But I know that soon, you will. My hopes are as high as the ache I’m feeling, but don’t worry.

On the days of my hospital visit, I asked you to draw a line for me, because I know that only through that you can remember what you used to feel. I’m sorry for interrupting you of my shivered hopes and crashing desires. I’m sorry for eating up your senses somehow, for occupying spaces sandwiched by your estranged hours, making you weave circles and triangles and elliptical galaxies and zigzagged borderlines which seemed to have killed you more than ever. I’m sorry for unintentionally adding bulk on your bruises.

Yet I hope that I would soon stop holding on to the verity that I’m just a screeching stranger to you. The only thing I would love you to have is a recovered memory filled with flamboyant hues and innocent pigment splatters and your old smear of smile—the one you used to wear whenever we went on to different routes, drinking shades of ROYGBIV and eating broken lines from our local artists, for the only thing we knew was we had hungry hearts, and art was the only one to fill our starve. 

I’ll not be in your hospital room today, but I hope you can promise me something. 

Amid the dead air scent and array of unfamiliar thingamajigs and suffocating white walls, can you please draw your favorite shapes again? You still have a pile of sheets left on the table. Scribble your heart out, Nala, know the self you had just left. And oh, you can always start with the line. Don’t rush.

You are my art, Nala. And you are the art worth coming back to.

Who knows, amnesia would get annoyed at all your beautiful attempts.

Let’s do this together,

Dexter