the thin line between everything and nothing

 

If you came to think of it,
there is a thin line between
nothing and everything.
One second you have plain
black walls —
as in plain, dark walls that you can
mistakenly call as blackholes —
then the next
you have paintings and wallpapers
and decorations,
and somehow, they lit up your room
making it a universe of your own.
One moment you have blank sheet
of paper and then the next you’ve got
letters and sentences in between
the blue lines that were ones
filled with nothing
but white spaces.
Yes, really.
There is a thin line between
nothing and everything.
Everything, nothing,
nothing, everything
nothing.
It’s just an endless cycle.
Just like when you have the world
at the cracks of your palms,
holding it so dearly to your chest,
and suddenly
it disappears.
You had it all with you —
your favorite cat,
your worn out copy of Wuthering Heights,
your favorite tv show you watch every night,
your hope, your dreams,
your love and your life.
I remember you as a shy girl
sitting at the corner
at the farthest table
and I watch your eyes spark
as people come towards you.
You were the happiest,
as you found yourself
inside the sphere of bliss
because you were so sure
that the people around you
are like your favorite coffee —
you can’t get enough of them;
you can never run out of them.
At that moment, you had it all.
But what you never think was that
what you have kept inside your closet,
what you have cherished inside your brain,
and what you have collected in your
pocketful of feelings in your rib cage
will disappear like the bubble you once blew.
And just like the decors of your dark-painted walls,
the people you’ve cared for so long
will remove themselves from being clutched into you,
making you tear down your walls
as the black hole swallows you whole.
The writings on your once blank sheets
no longer hold meaning
like how you see your life now.
Because, really.
There is a thin line between
nothing and everything.
Everything, nothing,
nothing, everything
nothing.
It’s just an endless cycle.

 

— © emg, 2016

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art details:

Artist Name: Juan Jose Calva
Tumblr: jjclv.tumblr.com be.net

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The City and Its People

 

I enter people’s lives the way I walk around the city. It’s like entering that unfamiliar coffee shop, full of doubts and hesitation that maybe their latte doesn’t taste as good as the one I’m fond of. It’s like the way I ask for directions from strangers on how to get to that mall, giving them awkward smiles and whisper a soft ‘thank you.’ It’s like roaming around the bookstore, browsing through book titles, slowly scanning the back cover and thinking if they’re worth reading.

I am fascinated by people the way I am fascinated by the city. I stare at their eyes the way I stare at the night lights, enthralled. I listen to their life stories the way I listen to my favorite song being played on the radio, intently, as if their words are the lyrics. I look up to them the way I look up at the skyscrapers, wondering how they reached the top, how they stand still even when it took them years to get there, and how can I build my own.

I leave people the way I leave the city. It’s always forced, like a child tugging at his mother’s sleeves, begging not to leave the playground yet. It’s like before migrating to another place, savoring the sight in front of me, wondering when will I walk through the same streets again, wondering if everything will be the same or that a new store will open or that the familiar bookstore will close down, turning it into a night club I will never visit. It’s like how my favorite band took their final bow but I never wanted the concert to end yet.

 

/ note: gif used above is originally from Tumblr. /