tell tales

Everyday, there are a million of stories that never get told.

I have a fair amount of that lot. While I have shared, albeit in bits and more often that not, in puzzles, stories that I find worth revealing to a willing audience, there are those that remain untold – a pile of drafts aborted halfway through, stories with stillborn metaphors, original and clever mental constructs that make no headway, and other unused silly anecdotes that are past beyond its shelf life.

In my head, these stories are beautiful and perfect. So it is rather frustrating when these works do not emerge as perceived and planned; even more so when they remain abstract – withheld from, or possibly missed out on the chance to impart it to the intended person.

Like that particular instance I ventured up north to meet a crush.

"Kinakabahan ako," I gleefully confided. My understatement of the year.

"Drop a coin in your shoe for good luck. It'll help you with your nerves as well," a colleague suggested.

I laughed at the idea but secretly, I did slip a five peso coin in each shoe. I didn't think it'd kill me, anyway.

But I was wrong.

Three hours more than what was set, a half-eaten brunch and a hearty conversation with my companion after, in between smiles and stares, and all I can think of is that I have a freaking coin in my shoe! It didn't kill me, but it made me so uncomfortable.

Of course, the crush never knew of this.

On my way home, the crush sent a message and made arrangements for the next hang out. My feet pressed hard against the coins as I contained myself from shrieking. It would be one for the laughs. I remember thinking. Should this work out, I have something amusing, embarrassing, and cute to tell the crush.

I never got to laugh about it with the crush though. The infatuation fizzled, along with the notion that I needed lucky coins to have a great date.

Like the rest of the untold, will this be forever consigned to the bottom drawer, filed under temp works, with the hope of laying them out perhaps, half a lifetime after, or will they just dissipate into the vague recesses of the mind where all abandoned and long forgotten memories converge?

I wonder.