(Song: Dancing with your ghost by Sasha Alex Sloan)

________________________________

❝Chilly like that in the autumn,
When leaves shed in pale,
Red and Auburn;
Not a moment that feels warm.❞

Life is hard. I always repeat that and I was actually feeling that. Things are always a little different from what we expect them to be. And not to mention, I was always so different.

Yet today, even through pain, I felt light. My heart had been holding things I couldn't tell and my cardiac surgeon brain wasn't answering the plays of my heart.

I laughed at my own thoughts. I was a failure being a cardiologist, a surgeon who's having a hard time understanding themselves. My brain was joking with me and I didn't know what I was blabbering.

But one thing that I knew was, I was finally going to meet you. I knew you would come to my chamber today and sit with me. We shall talk and talk, and keep on talking the whole day until our voices were sore and I needed to chug down a bottle of water only to start again.

Or maybe, I'd be silent. I will maintain silence, yes, because your voice is a melody my ears are yearning to hear.

❝It's like I'm floating on that gale,
In the ravishing skies
That end on no horizon
But in the middle of heaven
And the frightening hell.❞

I don't know what has happened to me. My heart flutters everytime I think of you but never have we ever got the chance to see eachother as much as I dream of us to meet eachother.

I know... I know I'm not yours. I know you're not mine. Yet I want us to be something, something as little as acquaintances.

We're two strangers in a war where we don't know what we're fighting for and even if it's worth the battles. But I'm a sojourner who hops from horizon to horizon, who has no positions in neither heaven nor hell.

❝Tomorrow, tomorrow...
Just the word that I've been 
Singing all this while.
It's not broken
Yet not glued together.❞

I have always loved to see you, loved to see you among all the other doctors when we meet on the days, we don't miss the elevator. That day, you were there too. That was the day when I first fell in love with you.

Your eyes have a different charisma. Your eyes can make a gay man go nuts for you and since I've never seen the orphic beauty you hold below that blue surgical mask of yours, I promise, I have already gone mad for you.

But you know, I never tried to even stand close to you or start a conversation. You have always been something I have adored but I am weak. Even a cardiologist's heart is weak.

❝You know what I fear?
A day when I won't see you
Around.
So I followed you
Wherever I heard your sound.❞

I honestly was afraid of nothing. There was a time when the school girls would tell me that I was the bravest of all. Oh! Did I mention I was the one who took the initiative of beating my family system?

But to you, this was nothing, wasn't it? Look at you, you're so brave to pursue your position. I still feel my nerves shiver when it comes in contact to cold bodies like mine.

But I'm sure, it'll be easy for you. You have given the perfect results everytime and the way everyone respects you so much for that... Ah! I wish I did something as great as you. The only surgery I ever did, that was also a failure. Just like me to the society.

But when I see you, I have this sudden eruption of confidence and courage under my breast. I am so brave again, that I actually followed you everywhere you went. Everywhere I could see you when you weren't in the hospital.

❝That day, when you were
With that other guy,
I felt a shriek in my heart.
I saw him use you
Just for fun.
Sigh, I was possessive
And picked up the gun.❞

You got me insane for you. You made me so dare devil that I followed you after that party you attended with your team lead. I wish I hadn't.

Then again, if I hadn't... I wonder if it was for the worse than me dissolving into my own translucency. But look again, this is what will bring you close to me, even if that's for some time.

You will touch me, you'll come to me. Maybe you'll be able to recognise me too. Maybe you'll not love me as much as I do but maybe you'll consider uttering my name, even for once.

But I'm insane. I'm mad. I did it.

❝I... I did it, I shot him

But where do I hide
When I had committed
A crime?
I knew, you wouldn't want
Me,
So I again shot him.❞

But I regret it a little. I did it bad, I did it wrong. But... Does that matter if it can get us close?

I hope it doesn't for I won't survive with the pressure of you being seen with a killer, a psycho. I can't make you be seen with a criminal.

So I shot him again, in rage, in pain.

❝He wasn't dead,
But he died
And the day next
You cried.
I made you cry.
O' where do I hide? ❞ 

Yet I hoped that they'll not know who it was that killed him, afterall I could still manage to get the evidence away. But I was afraid if you'd like that.

And just as I thought, you hadn't heard of it until that friend of yours told you. And then I commited the biggest felony of my life. A tear rolled down your cheeks and then you cried.

I didn't know you actually loved him but then again, how could I let him go away just like that when he was nothing but a fraud who had killed that patient of mine.

I had seen back then too. But didn't I tell you that I was a courage-less freak who feared everything? I couldn't let that happen to you.

❝I knew it was too late.
They had the gun,
They'd find me soon enough
But you know what?
I couldn't help myself
And forget you,
Leave you 'lone.❞

I was afraid. I lost my courage yet again. I tried to run away and forget about you because you'd never want me. Would you want me?

But no matter where I went, your fragrance followed me from leaf to leaf, flower to flower. On every branch, on every corner of the world I went. Yes, I took a leave and tried to run away.

Then I again came back and saw you on that elevator. Our eyes met again. But those other 13 medical personnel and doctors who entered it with us, blocked my sight.

I could only see you sometimes. Guess my heart was clouded by the moisture of my dried emotions and feelings. What a cardiologist I am, ain't I?

❝So I took another step,
Bolder than the previous.
I know you'd have it all
Figured out when you know the date.
I know you'd have nothing for me
But hate.❞

But I could see you suffering the pain sometimes. You tried to talk to me but I couldn't dare to utter a single word in my defense. I couldn't reveal everything.

I knew I had to save you from that. You still roamed around me and tried a chance to speak to me. So I did something, that would separate me from you.

That would completely understand your security and yet, I'd be able to look after you. This wasn't easy. This was hurting me more.

But, atleast this is what will make you come to me. This was bolder than anything I have ever done.

❝But I try my best.
I always tried my hardest.
I entered the very elevator,
I saw you the first and
Thought of you the last.❞

I have always been different and that always wanted me to be the best. I always did my hardest. I always did more than I was capable of.

Yet my dear, I was ready to do anything for you. Anything to keep you safe.

So I tried my best and took that elevator, where we first met. It was a different time so I couldn't manage to see you but I thought of you. I always thought of you when I took that lift. And I again thought of you.

❝I love you, Amore Mio 
And you'll never be alone,
Because I'll age no more
And make you my home.❞

I made a promise to myself to keep you safe as I reminisced down my memory lane, full of you.

I have always hidden my identity from you, but now I will no more hide. My life is a mess, I have always been the daughter they never wanted. I am trash but my love for you, I ornamented it with all of my heart.

Kalopsia, I always believed that everything was beautiful when it wasn't. I was homeless. I had a house, but not all houses are home. I found my home in you, in your eyes.

But you became my hiraeth and no matter how much I want to return to you, I can't. I don't belong to you.

"Aspettami a casa,
Life won't be Kalopsia."

Forever yours,
Your secret admirer
Dr. Nerissa Marino

....

"Dr. Caputo?" Dr. Peninnah Caputo smudged the cascading streams of tears and forced a toneless smile on her lips, and turned to look at the nurse who had been standing at the door way.

"Yes?" Dr. Caputo replied.

"The team is ready to ship Dr. Marino's body to the lab." Nurse Esen informed.

"Alright."

Dr. Caputo stared at the cold carcass of Dr. Marino who had jumped off the terrace of the hospital at the tick of midnight and nobody saw her until the break of dawn when she enters the hospital.

Dr. Caputo has always tried to talk to Marino, but the later never tried it, just how she wrote.

Caputo had left the hopes of knowing the woman she would only see sometimes but Marino's letter in her pocket, had made her stop thinking about everything else. The woman sacrificed her life just so Caputo needed not face the society with a lesbian friend. Little did the dead know that her love loved her more.

"And you still have the audacity to stand infront of me?" Dr. Caputo's voice trembled as the faint figure of the tall woman in a white lab coat stood facing her.

"I was planning to tell you someday." The figure smiled.

"Nerissa?"

"I escaped to see you again. Look, I finally spoke with you."

"I hate you."

"All that I wanted to hear. I love you, Peninnah, my Kalopsia."

_________________________________

Hey Rosairises!!

inky_jin, I hope I could make a story you wanted. I don't know if that's what you had thought of but I couldn't help but change it.

Also, thank you for the cover!!

Now for knowledge, Kalopsia means a delusional feeling of thinking that everything is beautiful when it actually isn't. This can be used to express times that a person compromises to the wrongs of this world to maintain a particular image, relationship or any sort of bond.

For Caputo, everything was beautiful, her abusive relationship with her boyfriend, her fear of being rejected; just so the people didn't know.

For Marino, the trials of life seemed beautiful but it was all just a treachery that was hurting her.

I hope you understand the reason.

And... The poem belongs to me.

Kay Bye!!!