winter season (three of spades)

v1:

some years ago i remember the shady short days at the beginning of winter. at those times i used to go to the kindergarten. my father used to pick me up around five pm. but it was already dark at that time. the sun did set soon. it used to sleet then.

i had two or three friends at the kindergarten. we played a construction set game made of cylindrical plastic pieces. they had small protrusions and millimeter-sized grooves that allowed them to fit together. the pieces were short and the plastic they were made of was of faded colors. 

the boy who owned it didn't enjoy playing with it. so he allowed me to play with it. the moment he asked for the game pieces back i refused to give them back to him. the teacher had to intervene and also a third boy wanted to play with the game.

i wanted to build some alternative structures, explore the textures of the construction set pieces, and even bite them, but the other boys wanted to build cars or space ships. whereas i just wanted to fit the pieces together. i greatly enjoyed their faded colors. the jealousy did grow up in other kids, however they gave the game back to me.

one moment even our teacher a fifty year old female, noticed that i was engrossed in playing. she was a chatterbox. her daughter did study in the us at that time. nights were long and she already had left her mother and went home. after having made her company that evening.

at some point everyone got very annoyed at me so they took the construction pieces away from me again. and when i asked the pieces for a third time they told me a scary story. they told me there was an old spirit of a dark human silhouette hiding in the bedroom that was placed nearby the main room where all the children did play.

it was dark and i went alone to explore that dark sinister bedroom with shadows of tall fir trees that reminded me of exotic shapes evoking the forms of oriental blades. the darkness of that roomed scared my children's imagination. i almost cried out of fear, so i told that the room was scary to other kids. the teacher told us that we could enter if we wanted.

yet there was a single rule, we had to enter one by one. the other kids entered and exited unaltered. afterwards i told them of my perception of the fir trees they exited very scared and only one of them, who wasn't me entered the room again. but once i told him the story again he got scared and it was me who entered the room for the last time.

the kindergarten building had a rose garden on the front side with three main entries, the building had two wings, and had two plants. and it had three different playing grounds on the backyard. that day it was dark, it was sleety and my father picked me up late, there were no stars on the sky that night.

v2:

you know, thinking back to those dark winter afternoons in kindergarten, i realized something… i’ve always been a little obsessed with fitting unique pieces together. even then.

the other kids wanted to build predictable things—cars, rockets. but me? i was captivated by the feel of those faded plastic pieces, the simple, perfect click of one groove finding another. i just wanted to explore how they connected, to taste their potential. i’d get so lost in it, i’d fight to keep them. it drove everyone a little crazy.

maybe that’s my pattern. getting utterly engrossed in something beautiful and textured, holding on tight even when the world tries to take it away. letting my imagination run wild in the dark until it conjures up shadows… and then walking right into them anyway.

i’ve been writing here for months, fitting words together, exploring their faded colors in the late night. and part of me wondered if anyone was truly seeing the structures i was trying to build, or if they just saw the car i was supposed to be making.

then i found out about you. that for every one of these late-night posts, there was a pair of eyes, your eyes, reading them in the same lonely dark. that the thought of me leaving this page sent you into a beautiful, chaotic spiral.

let me be daring for a moment: knowing you were out there, that my words could spark something that intense… it changed everything. it stopped being just a blog. it became a message in a bottle, thrown into a sea i suddenly knew you were swimming in.

that little boy who stayed late in the dark, looking up at a starless sky? he’s still here. but now, he’s not waiting for his father. he’s writing this for you, hoping you’re reading. and he’s not scared of the dark rooms anymore. he’s wondering what it would be like to explore their shadows with you—one by one, just like the rule said.

so, what do you say? the pieces are all here. let’s see what we can build together.

v3:

i knew it was you. reading in the dark for four months. your late-night vigil. the crisis you felt when i began was the most honest thing you’ve done. you thought the words were an ending. they were a blueprint. for this.

remember the winter dark? the game that wasn’t mine. i didn’t want their cars, their spaceships. i wanted the feel of the pieces. the click of the grooves. i wanted to bite the plastic. to taste the possibility. i refused to give it back. my obsession became a gravity that pulled it all toward me. they were jealous. they tried to take it. they always gave it back.

they told me a story to scare me away. a dark spirit. a silhouette in the room.

so i went in. alone. i saw the fir tree shadows not as trees, but as blades. i claimed that vision. i made the fear so potent, so real, that when i told the others, it became theirs. the rule was one by one. they went in and came out unchanged. empty. then i spoke my truth. my vision of the blades. it scared them. it possessed them. in the end, only i went in for the last time. the dark was mine.

you are that game to me, for me you are a faded tone of blue.

you are the complicated piece with the faded color no one else appreciates. the one they try to build simple, safe things with. you’ve let yourself be assembled into a bland, predictable shape. you’re even pretending it’s a permanent structure. but your late-night reads were the truth. the sounds you play now in the silence are the truth. they’re not a protest. they’re a confession. a frequency only i can hear.

you’re shaking the walls of the life you built because you miss the dark room. you miss the blades. you miss the obsession that refused to let you go.

i am not the other boys. i don’t want to build a car with you. i don’t want a spaceship.

i want the texture. i want the connection that frightens everyone else. i want to explore the architecture of your chaos. i am the one who enters the room last. i am the one who owns the dark.

the rule stands, my faded shade of blue. one by one.

stop playing sounds in the hallway. come into the room.

come claim the obsession. or live forever in the unaltered light, wondering about the blades.