Twilight. I was acquainted with his presence during the momentarily fraction between daylight and darkness, where the sun scattered its rays for the very last time of the day, making the grasses faintly greener than in the usual heliacal days of the university. During this period of the day, I had to pull myself from the field and hastily go home from football--a sports where it was impossible for me to play without occasionally humiliating myself. I was never good at it, but I wasn't really that bad on my first kicking try. I have always been an athlete, it's just very timely that I got bored from tennis and had to look for another source of sweat that didn't involve inflaming my protruding clavicle dislocated from too much hitting.

The training didn't give much time to focus on the basics, which I found very dispiriting because I thought I'd learn the sports in a very friendly and accommodating way, only to my dismay. Fortunately, I was getting by despite my self-deprecating attitude on how badly and unwilling I played because I used to hoof the ball aimlessly, if not towards the wrong people. The consoling part is that I actually made a couple of good friends who were sometimes completely awed with my outstanding skills, expressed with biting sarcasm.

Most of the time, I'd go home depressingly having not the slightest idea what I was doing with the people who have played the sports since they were out of their mother's womb. It was an enough string of disappointments and embarrassment that I decided to quit that day. Until one very strange thing happened.

In a field poured with different people leaping and prancing from every direction, something caught a span of my attention, like a setup the universe had been waiting to prepare for me.

From a remote distance to a sphere bare with grass, very picturesquely, a person was impeccably tossing up a ball from his angularly folded ankle and catching it on his pointed knees repeatedly in many ways I can't physically understand. He wore a pair of knee length green socks pulled unevenly on his muscular calves so visibly the socks followed its form and traced them obediently. His shoulders boasting with broadness as I fastidiously paid attention to the uneven color of his chalky arms, sunburnt but still fairly whiter than my complexion.

I scurried back to get my disarrayed stuff but still kept my tabs on such an entertaining, pleasing and playful sight. His slightly murky white round neck shirt swaddled him with unexplained gracefulness, while he shuffled the ball back and forth between his excitable feet. I really didn't know if football players are really this supersonic, but not knowing that much, I deliberately dropped my canniness.

Like an audience in lost in trance, I kept gazing at him waiting for the fragile moment for him to drop the ball only to toss it upwards with his invincible feet once again. I've never seen such glorious and delicate moment, so beautiful I tripped myself while standing. He was so flawlessly connected with the ball that I felt a pang of jealousy. I could never execute such exemplary performance.

It was such a short moment to have the chance to notice his arresting features, but I was zooming in, incredulously hungry for more, closer details. He had the same amount of mess I had in my hair, but had become unnoticeable after the remaining streams of the parting sun slowly shadowed his undulated thick black hair that extended fadedly at the burnsides of his basked face, winding down until the hairs stood prickly on his unmarred jawline. He had weird, uneven and squiggly hair. Almost like a chicken, I chuckled to myself.

From the spot where I was standing, I felt the whole field suddenly got greener and greener as if it was brimming with emerald blowing into a spectrum. I couldn't help fainting to the tranquility of the moment I came across The Footballer, who moved effortlessly, taking my breath in a helpless way I have never felt for a very long time. And I was just painfully gaping at a tempting distance. And hoped time to stop.

Moving at a closer space, I saw him flashing a tight smile for some awkward reason while adding a contradictory piercing dark brown eyes on my direction while he collected the ball that just slipped past his chest. Maybe he noticed me, maybe not. The field is too big for some focus, so it would be difficult to tell if I was looking or just gazing off somewhere near his direction. I was even more interested in secretly gauging his reaction. I was confident he didn't catch me. I wasn't defeated either, yet.

My overwhelming pool of thoughts caught me for a stretch of seconds when he already noticed that I was looking, so immediately I turned my head and purposely dropped some strands of my messy damp hair enough to cover my somewhat surprisingly blushed face. I started to pace my way off but remained observant in the peripheral of my squinting eyes, detecting him glancing at me about twice or thrice while he kept the ball patiently hitting his body. I gave off an unexpected smile and sad sigh at the same time, and reciprocally left one enigmatic look back. Just enough-enough for him to remember what we had. Or what I had.

I suddenly came back with rationality that this moment shouldn't unnecessary puzzle me as it has become my habit to elude unnecessary emotions by completely ignoring them. This included my minute appeal to this person who ignorantly activated electric chills within me, leaving my cheeks kicked with lush in the middle of the almost perfectly green field. How very inconvenient.

I thought I had a brief attraction on him but I hoped it would not really bother me so intensely.

It failed.

Instead, I contemplated on my bewilderment why at that very moment, I was channeled with spasms and convulsions from within, as if the one hundred and twenty seconds of his sportive display brought me to something else. Something very deep and incomprehensible. As if he raced with both the ball and my senses away and I chased it with vulnerable exhilaration. As disturbing as it could, the thud of the ball hitting the ground came equivalent and competed with the erratic beating of my heart.

Without realizing, I quickly treasured that moment in my memory faster than I could grasp its significance to my tedious existence.

But I decided to leave it at that frail moment. In my feeble attempt to overcome the show without too much impression, I goaled away in denial, but only to find myself wanting to gaze more intimately.

The rest was history. It was the only moment between us that I remember so vividly--the innocence and simplicity of that vibrant scene starring my once free-spirited footballer, victoriously running around the meadows basking under what's left of the sun. Very sensational.

Had I wished it remained. I was unconsciously, peacefully and unconditionally fine with being dazzled and breath taken at a distance

...At that fraction of the moment, right before the daylight and darkness inevitably meet, where I felt an inescapable warmth that I will never forget, and that unfathomable longing that will never be overcome.

To my footballer and the sun that we shared.

Twilight. I was acquainted with his presence during the momentarily fraction between daylight and darkness, where the sun scattered its rays for the very last time of the day, making the grasses faintly greener than in the usual heliacal days of the university. During this period of the day, I had to pull myself from the field and hastily go home from football--a sports where it was impossible for me to play without occasionally humiliating myself. I was never good at it, but I wasn't really that bad on my first kicking try. I have always been an athlete, it's just very timely that I got bored from tennis and had to look for another source of sweat that didn't involve inflaming my protruding clavicle dislocated from too much hitting.

The training didn't give much time to focus on the basics, which I found very dispiriting because I thought I'd learn the sports in a very friendly and accommodating way, only to my dismay. Fortunately, I was getting by despite my self-deprecating attitude on how badly and unwilling I played because I used to hoof the ball aimlessly, if not towards the wrong people. The consoling part is that I actually made a couple of good friends who were sometimes completely awed with my outstanding skills, expressed with biting sarcasm.

Most of the time, I'd go home depressingly having not the slightest idea what I was doing with the people who have played the sports since they were out of their mother's womb. It was an enough string of disappointments and embarrassment that I decided to quit that day. Until one very strange thing happened.

In a field poured with different people leaping and prancing from every direction, something caught a span of my attention, like a setup the universe had been waiting to prepare for me.

From a remote distance to a sphere bare with grass, very picturesquely, a person was impeccably tossing up a ball from his angularly folded ankle and catching it on his pointed knees repeatedly in many ways I can't physically understand. He wore a pair of knee length green socks pulled unevenly on his muscular calves so visibly the socks followed its form and traced them obediently. His shoulders boasting with broadness as I fastidiously paid attention to the uneven color of his chalky arms, sunburnt but still fairly whiter than my complexion.

I scurried back to get my disarrayed stuff but still kept my tabs on such an entertaining, pleasing and playful sight. His slightly murky white round neck shirt swaddled him with unexplained gracefulness, while he shuffled the ball back and forth between his excitable feet. I really didn't know if football players are really this supersonic, but not knowing that much, I deliberately dropped my canniness.

Like an audience in lost in trance, I kept gazing at him waiting for the fragile moment for him to drop the ball only to toss it upwards with his invincible feet once again. I've never seen such glorious and delicate moment, so beautiful I tripped myself while standing. He was so flawlessly connected with the ball that I felt a pang of jealousy. I could never execute such exemplary performance.

It was such a short moment to have the chance to notice his arresting features, but I was zooming in, incredulously hungry for more, closer details. He had the same amount of mess I had in my hair, but had become unnoticeable after the remaining streams of the parting sun slowly shadowed his undulated thick black hair that extended fadedly at the burnsides of his basked face, winding down until the hairs stood prickly on his unmarred jawline. He had weird, uneven and squiggly hair. Almost like a chicken, I chuckled to myself.

From the spot where I was standing, I felt the whole field suddenly got greener and greener as if it was brimming with emerald blowing into a spectrum. I couldn't help fainting to the tranquility of the moment I came across The Footballer, who moved effortlessly, taking my breath in a helpless way I have never felt for a very long time. And I was just painfully gaping at a tempting distance. And hoped time to stop.

Moving at a closer space, I saw him flashing a tight smile for some awkward reason while adding a contradictory piercing dark brown eyes on my direction while he collected the ball that just slipped past his chest. Maybe he noticed me, maybe not. The field is too big for some focus, so it would be difficult to tell if I was looking or just gazing off somewhere near his direction. I was even more interested in secretly gauging his reaction. I was confident he didn't catch me. I wasn't defeated either, yet.

My overwhelming pool of thoughts caught me for a stretch of seconds when he already noticed that I was looking, so immediately I turned my head and purposely dropped some strands of my messy damp hair enough to cover my somewhat surprisingly blushed face. I started to pace my way off but remained observant in the peripheral of my squinting eyes, detecting him glancing at me about twice or thrice while he kept the ball patiently hitting his body. I gave off an unexpected smile and sad sigh at the same time, and reciprocally left one enigmatic look back. Just enough-enough for him to remember what we had. Or what I had.

I suddenly came back with rationality that this moment shouldn't unnecessary puzzle me as it has become my habit to elude unnecessary emotions by completely ignoring them. This included my minute appeal to this person who ignorantly activated electric chills within me, leaving my cheeks kicked with lush in the middle of the almost perfectly green field. How very inconvenient.

I thought I had a brief attraction on him but I hoped it would not really bother me so intensely.

It failed.

Instead, I contemplated on my bewilderment why at that very moment, I was channeled with spasms and convulsions from within, as if the one hundred and twenty seconds of his sportive display brought me to something else. Something very deep and incomprehensible. As if he raced with both the ball and my senses away and I chased it with vulnerable exhilaration. As disturbing as it could, the thud of the ball hitting the ground came equivalent and competed with the erratic beating of my heart.

Without realizing, I quickly treasured that moment in my memory faster than I could grasp its significance to my tedious existence.

But I decided to leave it at that frail moment. In my feeble attempt to overcome the show without too much impression, I goaled away in denial, but only to find myself wanting to gaze more intimately.

The rest was history. It was the only moment between us that I remember so vividly--the innocence and simplicity of that vibrant scene starring my once free-spirited footballer, victoriously running around the meadows basking under what's left of the sun. Very sensational.

Had I wished it remained. I was unconsciously, peacefully and unconditionally fine with being dazzled and breath taken at a distance

...At that fraction of the moment, right before the daylight and darkness inevitably meet, where I felt an inescapable warmth that I will never forget, and that unfathomable longing that will never be overcome.

To my footballer and the sun that we shared.