another beautiful piece of jewelry tarnished

the one about losing colour

Last morning, I was looking through my little jewelry boxes and found a beautiful bracelet adorned with metal hibiscus flowers and pearls along a double-layered chain. The same one that has haunted me for the greater part of this decade. The beauty was too much for itself—it lost all of its shine within a month. I remember almost crying, looking at it then. But now it occurs to me that it wasn’t the beauty of the bracelet but me finding it beautiful. It became a symbol in my life for all the colour that ceased to exist in the years that passed by and the ones to come.

The same afternoon, I pulled out the crochet of a ribbing for a sweater I was making. The sweater was for my dad. It was supposed to be a vest, like the other cream one, but this was a mild chocolate brown like the pigment of the earth in October. It’s funny how I’m talking about it in the past tense even though my fingers have memorised every movement like a choreography. But truthfully, I want to burn everything I know—the yarn, needles, stitch markers, patterns, and the Pinterest board I had made, I want to forget it all. You know, the time when everything comes crashing down after an argument—the things that are said, the kind you wish you could take back. They hang between these walls and my family’s roof now, like it’s their home too. A hobby that consumed me for months had been touched by a memory that had paralyzed me. And as the strings weave into each other, they mockingly remind me of that Thursday night—and the string of words. Now, everything is dull like a street after the holiday season.

Today, during sunset, I was listening to a song, one I haven’t listened to in a long time, and everything around me slowed down. This song had lost all of its warmth because it reminded me too much of my time with a friend, whom I no longer know. It is like a polaroid from eighth grade, while she and I were sitting on the swings, sharing things we hadn’t told anyone before. It captures the orange skies, notes that we slid to each other in the middle of class, and conversations about our favourite show, the one about girlhood and matching bracelets. I sat there smiling, but a part of me still aches that we never had a fight, an argument, an ending, or a goodbye. I still hope for some kind of closure. But it’s a story without an epilogue because it ended while losing all of its shine.

Every night, I sit on my bed and stare at my white wall, the one I had told everyone I’d decorate once I went to college. I graduate in a year, and the wall is as bare as ever, looks whiter than it did three years back. I don’t exactly know why I never did it. There were times when I used it as a reward. I told myself that if I got through this finals season, I would spend the summer printing out posters. I made it through my junior year but I never made that Staples trip to pick out poster papers and wait by the printers. I just never did it. I don’t think I will. It’s like my bracelet, a symbol for all the things I fail to put colour back in. A clean white wall.

Tonight, I’m still sitting by my pale wall, but in the pinkish hue of my Ikea floor lamp, it looks warm. It is physics after all. Usually, the light I’m seeing things under is cold and sterile, like the kind used for surgery. And I’m blinded by the facts under these harsh, glowing bulbs, failing to notice colour around me. I know the bracelet might never shine again. The sweater might never be finished. The friendships will never be the same. But I carry them with me in a little box in my heart. And I like my wall; maybe I should turn on my warm lamp often, though. Maybe, then I’d see everything in a softer glow. And maybe, all the tarnished jewelry would shine again.

Lub’s note: well this just felt like the perfect july post. beauty once lived becomes once lost, and somehow all of it always happens in those in-between days—somewhere between may and august. thanks for reading :) (attached the song i mentioned in the essay below)

I hope to see you around.

until next time

Lub

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