I remember that scorching midday. It was seven years ago. I have no idea who took the picture because I don't remember that particular lunch very well. Yet I know why I kept the picture, and it had nothing to do with the Press Conference or the wacky poses of my colleagues. At the end of the frame, I can still remember that dinner- two men sitting together in some hole-in-the-wall, soaking wet, and having a surreal moment. What should have just been a whirlwind tryst in a far-off city didn't stay that way. If it weren't for your bright yellow shirt, you might as well disappear against the stillness of the night. You looked young then for the shades that covered your deep-seeded eyes. You wanted to be formal, but you couldn't. You still wore the black camouflage trouser and bunched your dreadlocks with a smooth leopard fabric. I much admired you in your gray bullet belt and hemp jewelries that glinted into the scintillating lusters. The crowd always wanted to see you as you walked towards the center stage and beat the last string. Anyone looking at this picture would not have seen anything- never guessing at what else was going on between us.

I haven't realized the depths of your words. I just accepted them, but I haven't considered their full weight. Besides, saying "I think I might be in love with you" wasn't the same as saying "I love you".

The hunch might not have been magical, but running out in the rain and acting on a rash, foolish impulse had still been a chance encounter in its own right. You might have insisted that your distaste towards your parent's plan to betroth you didn't mean that you're gay. But you didn't protest when I dragged you to bed after we met again the following night. I would have been surprised, actually, since I would be glad to have you chance to experiment and then get back on living my normal life when that window of opportunity closed again.

I was stupid not for discounting the true nature of your heart but for not having ever stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, it might not have been such a bad thing to allow myself to reciprocate the feelings you had for me. You, I mean, I, would have been so happy, then so full of life and so full of delight because we were away from the cloistered world, and spending time with the person we wanted most to spend with- not just in a bedroom.

Cracks began to form in the glossy surface of the photograph. My fingertips touched the remains of it. This one, somehow, had been burnt nearly half, and the rest of it had suffered near total blackening. I tried to remember what it had been a picture of, because I wanted- no, I needed to remember what the precious memories were. It might well be all that had survived the fire, and I needed to keep it.

It was just an hour ago when the fire died out. As I wandered the burned rooms of the apartment, somehow, it all still felt fresh to me. What had once been our home was now a scarred shell. With nothing to vent my frustrations at, I have nothing to blame but fate. If the cause had come down to something like having left a candle burning or having the stove on, I could at least blame myself.

My hands were already smeared with soot after I sifted the ashes. They left dark smudges on everything they touched- not that it mattered, since the place looked like almost everything had been touched by the fire's wrath. At least I found something to rescue from before I had to clear the place for good. A shoebox.

It was the box I almost certainly wouldn't want to open. Still, by the time I got it out of the closet, I had already gotten back down onto my knees. And without thinking, I pulled down the lid and looked at the sheet of photograph curling inside. It slipped in against the side of the box, and so the fire had left more of a mark, burning of the corners. That burnt part consumed all the faces of my colleagues, leaving the two of us playing around the remains of it.

The photo slipped out of from my fingers. Then, I slumped forward, elbows on my knees, face on my palms. And so on, I began to weep, remembering the empty apartment in the wake of your departure, the opportunity I missed to admit, the loss of trying. I tried to hold back but I failed. Again, I picked up the picture of you, of us.

I never said anything. To this day, I still didn't know why. Years earlier, I'd followed things you didn't even know- out of a restaurant just because of some hunch and had stolen a kiss from you because I thought I had nothing to lose by trying. Then, after all, when I had someone that I knew really, truly cared for, I had done nothing, and left the moment through my fingers.

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