Fancied Playfellow.

Michaella Uy
As a kid, I had a friend named Melody. Well, I just came up with that name three seconds ago because
apparently, I have already forgotten. I was six. Maybe roughly seven. I don’t know exactly, to be honest.

Melody was everything I needed. She was the funnest. She follows me around and does whatever I was
doing. Like she was trying to replicate my every move. To be fair, I was holding her hand, so it was not
entirely her-copying-me. It was more like, guiding-her-through-the-same-path-I’m-taking. Just so I
wouldn’t have to walk alone.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a narcissist. I loved her. To death. But don’t we all, at some point, want
someone/something to be with us, while walking down a dark alleyway? In some ways,
incomprehensibly, it gives us comfort in fear. Confidence in uncertainty.

So, we played together. Especially at sundowns. Because then, nobody would see us. We will mostly just
play chase until we run out of breath. And then sat down, back resting under the old mango tree my
great grandmother planted.

Melody didn’t know how to talk. Communication was not a part of our friendship. Kind of gnarled,
thinking about it now. It was a one-way street, yet ridiculously, it felt like one of the best friendships I’ve
ever had. She was always there for me. The only one, as a kid.

At six, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Or if there was one. Nobody gets me. Nobody even tries.
They all just look and laugh. As if me breathing, petrifies the f*ck out of them. Them, the other kids, in
my village.

Unlike Melody, they talk. And talk. And talk. They throw words that can cut through someone’s skin.
They say a myriad of claptraps. And make you feel like your existence limits their brain’s competence.

Melody never made me feel atypical, than average kids (sure, I had my own impression of how I am, as I
am). Disparate from those little f*cktwits. She listened through my unending silence and uncomfortable
maturity. As a kid. She never judged me, as society's standards can never poison her flawless skin. She
saw me as me. As raw as it could get. Not a blank canvas for blueprints, waiting to be engineered. I am
whole for her as she was for me.

What society deems as normal, doesn’t have levels. Not even a spectrum attached to it. As is. It’s just
“normal”. And if you don’t fit in. You’re weird. You’re a freak. You’re an alien. And I grew up, believing
they were my adjectives. Albeit, being a part of the neglected community, made me love those words
regardless of its structured definition. I had convinced myself it is not about their definition, but how I
will perceive it. And I refuse to connote these so-called deviant words with their toxic judgements about
me being less than the army of normativity.
I refused to be complacent. Stubborn as a f*cking rock. Not my fault the world was established this way.

A week after Melody and I became friends, she died. In my arms. And I weep through the night.
Howling like a lost wolf in the vast forest. It was one of my most debilitating lived experiences. She was
my best friend. And now, I have to accept that she bursted, like how a normal balloon would.

Now it’s time, yet again, to make another one. Another melody. Another friend, with flawless skin.

Fly high.

- M.U.