this is not a love letter

Dear M.

it’s funny how your initials could mean a lot of things - and people, too.

first, it’s the first letter of my father’s name.

second, it’s the first letter of the name i call the person who loves me the most - Mom.

and for all the right and wrong reasons - it’s also the first letter of the pronoun i always blurt out whenever people take my stuff away. i shout, “That’s mine!”

i also find it really samok when i realized your initials are MM
dude, that is so unfair. M&M’s are like my childhood.

and yet…I met you in my childhood.

only in my childhood.

unless the universe allows us to meet once more, thereby adding into the equation all the “fake” meetings conjured in deleted messages (i don’t know about you but at least i did), and trailing conversations, and pahabol comments that you sometimes make on the photos i aesthetically choose to include in my social media feed.

unless the world around us will form into one super-continent and remove all the distances or rather the wide-spaces, the ones devoid of you and i

unless the oceans, the nautical miles, and the time-zones (i used to ask you how many hours you are ahead… four? maybe five?) that exist between us will all crumble and disappear — bidding goodbye to all the hurried hellos and goodbyes because one is already sleeping while the other just got home

unless you tell me the truth and stick to your promises while i am held captive by snide comments of you wanting to tour our motherland together (i never really understood the laughing emoji at the end of your invitation)

then maybe i would meet you again.

then maybe i don’t have to buy M&M’s just to give it to my siblings in the end because its letters play a joke on me

then maybe i don’t have to skip Makonnen’s songs because every time i hear his voice it reminds me of you dancing freestyle (you insist it’s not choreographed) which would ultimately take me back to moments wherein you would ask help just to find the right shot for her

but you know what?

even if i did forget your name or your initials,

even if i would meet you or not, in the future (that’s a pity i know because the universe frowns on me doing these sketchy things)

somewhere along these lines, or somewhere in this reality that i live in

i am surrounded by your name because i remember the struggle in how to call you by your own name (i am used to single-syllables you see)

not because it’s beautiful — your name, i mean

but because your name happens to be that of the Exodus hero’s as well

and how could i not remember that?