No Homo (Cobalt Blue shorts #1)

A quick brush with deep-seated emotions and the art of staying in the closet.

Her embrace iced me in place. She was just a foot shorter than me. Maybe less, yet those black eyes stared back at me as fierce and depth-less as the void. She played music with her eyes that only I could hear. They spoke my language: The language of heartache.

“I love you.”

Three words. Two seconds. Inside, I lay in pieces. Echoes traced goosebumps on my skin.

For the first time, I was naked. I’ve forgotten the difference between being looked at and being seen. I tried to paint away the color of my heart, resisting with all my might the wilderness withheld. Alas, hope pierced through the farce.

Pray tell me there are flowers on Mars.

“I love you, too.” I stammered close to a wail.

A pause. 

A pitter-patter on my back. My body boiled with anticipation. What would she say next? Cold sweat ran down the sides of my jaw. What would become of us?

She transferred her hands to my arms and pushed me back. When the distance between us increased, my search for answers grew parched. However hard I stared, I could only see the empty deep in those eyes. A hollow nothing. The trimly cut bushes on a suburban lawn. I was the weed among the trimmings. I didn’t belong. I was the wilderness.

Nothing about her was wild.

Where were the stars in her eyes?

What made the darkness twinkle without light?

“No homo, bro!”

Three words. Two seconds. A wry smile and doomed realization.

She was jesting.

I panicked.

“Haha, Yeah! No homo.”

Blood surged through my ears. I clenched my jaw so as to stop the chattering of teeth. Rolled my hands into fists to keep myself from falling. Everything to keep the composed facade even if inside my heart was dying from its own blow.

Together, we took off wrought with amnesia. What transpired moments ago occurred in an alternate dimension. Who was the girl I was just then? Alone with a friend and yet a ghost. Bespoken and yet unheard.

My mind wanders to the memory of eyes that once enchanted me and now haunt me. She just wasn’t wild.

She couldn’t have the capacity to understand and it tormented me. She saw me, but could not see past the veil I used to mask my cobalt blue heart.

She was colorblind.
We walked until a fork in the hallway came into view.

“I have to go. See you tomorrow, Terry!”

“See ya.”

We parted ways. One staggered while the other strode. One rejoined other friends while the other waited outside in the dissolving dusk.
One of them slept while the other continued to dream of flowers on Mars.

(Fin)

The “Cobalt Blue” series laments the author’s encounters with her sexuality beginning from her famished adolescence, to the present. 

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Trivia#1: The original name of the first entry to the series was “No Homo”. Francess posted the story on lettrs.com, and then re-posted it at storybird.com where it quickly gained popularity among teenage readers. Because of storybird’s strict child-friendly policy, “No Homo” was taken down due to the mature content of it written style. Francess took it upon her hands to revise the story in order to get it hosted on storybird.com once again, while remaining true to the emotional impact of the original text. As a result, “Cobalt Blue” was not only a refined version of the text, but one that was more accessible to a broader spectrum of readers.

Trivia#2: Francess (under former alias“Terry”) collaborated with artist 025Geru to release a No Homo (Cobalt Blue) comic view-able on tapastic.com.