What a weird, beautiful thing it is to balance on the tightrope of your own head. People always say Kisses is made of shifting pieces. Just a kaleidoscope caught in constant motion.
I saw her once, sitting outside, basking in the sun, yet safely tucked beneath the shade of her yellow umbrella. Just the other day, she told her friend Belle that she wants the world to know her words, and yet, she half-hopes nobody notices she posted her work for the first time.
I spent last Monday wandering the Bahaghari museum, completely hypnotized by a multi-wheel kaleidoscope called Mosaic Broken Hearts. When the afternoon sun hit it through the glass ceiling, it splashed shifting colors all over a boring beige wall. The whole corner of the room stayed alive with light for hours.
Watching the pieces shift and click into place, I couldn’t help but think of Kisses. Just constantly spinning through her own contradictions.
She spent lifetimes inside her own head,
yet somehow felt like a total stranger to herself.
Wishing for the clock to just freeze,
yet rushing headfirst toward tomorrow anyway.
In love with her own solitude,
yet craving to actually be known.
She wants the peace of a slow Sunday,
yet chases the thrill of whatever is next.
Trusting the universe,
yet keeping her own lantern lit just in case.
Scared of falling,
yet desperate to fly.
Holding a thousand words behind her teeth,
yet going completely blank when someone asks how she is.
Sitting in a loud room,
yet only listening to the noise inside her own mind.
Walking home in the cool afternoon air, it finally clicked. It’s like listening to your favorite song, loving every second of it, but suddenly blanking on the words. We’re all just a walking mess of contradictions. Like a kaleidoscope, our colors depend entirely on how our scattered pieces catch the light.
My old philosophy professor, Mr. Pangilinan, used to talk about dialectics. How truth lives right in the tension between opposites. We do not have to pick between the parts of us that break and the parts that heal. We just let the wheel keep turning.
And at some point in our lives, we have all been Kisses.
💌: Writing this down, I honestly wondered if I was just running in place or being a total hypocrite. Every thought I have seems to have an opposite answer waiting for it. I keep telling myself I know I have potential, but then the unknown scares me half to death, so things I could easily grab feel completely out of reach. It always loops back to that same weird spot… being deeply content with life while simultaneously wanting more.
I hate how society tries to force this rigid timeline on us, like we need everything figured out or stabilized by a certain age. It’s suffocating. But that frustration is pretty much what sparked this whole piece.
🍵🧸🥐☕: By the way, since the paid subscription feature isn't supported here in the Philippines yet, I’ve set up a Ko-fi page instead! Please know there’s zero obligation, as everything I write is and always will be completely free. But if you ever want to toss a cozy cup of coffee or matcha my way on a writing day, I’d appreciate it more than words can say.
Thanks for reading and sticking around! :)
"Trusting the universe, yet keeping her own lantern lit just in case" - I loved this. Thank you for sharing 😊
"We do not have to pick between the parts of us that break and the parts that heal." Love this! It's so hard not to want everything to be neat and linear but life rarely is. We are all (to some extent) walking contradictions and a kaleidoscope is such an ingenious analogy. It really does depend on what parts of us catch the light... such a beautiful insightful piece :)