|of verve and valiance|

So N and I stood by the peeling parapet wall outside our lecture hall and talked about the ideology of romance.

'I don't think we're meant to stay together with someone all the time,' he said, drawing deeply on his cigarette, the amber-ash glowing, a putrid point of emphasis.

I shrugged sadly. Am I that obvious―am I carrying my wounds and my weariness around like a rusty badge―how is it that two classmates who never really talked before, who used to skirt around each other with the patronisingly polite fashion that becomes all of us, stood together by accident during a self-permitted break from our pseudo-academia, and our first point of conversation is 'I've broken up with her, you?'

'Maybe not at our age,' I replied, slightly defeated. I didn't, and I don't, want to believe that. A part―a tiny, but persistent―part of me is still stuck somewhere between modern romanticism and the old, glorious Cinderella dream: if you love, and if you love hard enough, you can. You can conquer. You can be more. You can be better. You can be happy, fulfilled, at peace. You can―can you?

All this, after the little men I knew and know have left their little momentos behind. What makes you different? The Voice had asked before. Now I know. I'm not any different, I'm not immuned against heartbreak, and when it happens, I bleed. All my cynicism, all my staid insistence of needing to be strong―they all merge and blend into a silent, sterile, scream.

N looked quickly at me. It's not difficult to see how my emotional exhaustion are now purple-bruises under my eyes. Cleverly guised with the genius of make-up, yes. But if you care to see, you would. 'We are romanticising romance,' he said. 'We've been fucked by all that we've seen in the movies. You know it's not like that.'

I didn't want it like that. Stardust and fireworks. I never believed it. I never really wanted it either, except in moments of stupid melancholy, which come and dissipate, like the acrid lure of N's cigarette smoke. I didn't want it like the movies. But it still didn't work out.

'Men are bastards,' he concluded. Ah, his guilt. His own demons, unlocked by mine. How kindred love can be. People who never knew each before, people whose past conversations were limited to plastic hellos and chirpy small talk, can now cut through all that social-bullshit and hit their pain straight home. And like an insipid tennis-match, we bounced our pain back and forth, back and forth, until he ran out of fags, and we had to go back to class.

'You'll be okay.' His voice was a dry bolt of certified doom, his boyish smile was grosteque, mirthless.
'So will you,' I smiled back at him, clapping him on his shoulder, wondering how can two people talk with the verve of a wisdom not quite young for their years, and too old for the life they had yet to live.

***

Valor is deciding not to cry anymore. Valor is knowing when I must stand aside. Valor is being able to be quietly passive. Valor is saying goodbye. Valor is faith. Valor is my cross, my trial, the fleeting shadow of sunshine.