dear ones )/)(/\|\//open your hearts\spill out your
pain and sorrow unto this vast, moist earth, whisper
to me your secrets...i never tire, i listen....//)\ i hear
everything )(/)(/ be healed, be soothed by my cool
touch (/ be embraced by the wind that sways me \/
kneel over me, let your tears fall upon me, feed me
with your heartaches, your brokenness...bury them
'neath my roots, i'll choke them with my tight grasp.
in the open air...shout out your dragons, your night-
mares....let the wind blow your dark shadows away
let the sun melt them, deny them space  \/)/  i cover
the soil with a green  carpet.....one with the sun, the
wind, and the rain....i go wet, i go dry....i thirst, and
i swallow them all \\||....i am the grass ../)//((\



Sally
© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
November 13, 2017

We're almost touching.
we were walking side by side,
you're talking about cabs in your hometown.
I can feel the gravity of your hand, calling my fingers
whispering "it's alright."

We're touching but not quite.
you held my shoulder to protect me from the passing cars.
and for the first time in a long while, I felt so fragile.
In this world where I find it hard even to breathe,
you believed me.

I almost said it.
All I need is one ounce of strength to tell you every single thing that I have ever felt about you.

I want to find home in your collarbones.
Would you be kind enough to let a stranger in?
I want to seep in your being because I'm cold.
The world is harsh and my cracks are aching.

Almost.

There is no easy way out.
Finding solace in cigarettes,
malice in each intent.
When we kiss and flash,
I taste snow and ash-
slippery, salty blood lust.
4 a.m galaxies and gold speckled chains.
The thud in your lungs and the flood in my veins.

Adjusting my pace simply to make space
for the passing of strangers I'll quickly erase.
From my celestial mind and my unaligned spine.
While these battered boots pitter patter
atop the gum splattered streets,
Where I silently succumb to an alarming defeat.

You,
jumbling and juggling my thoughts-
they cling like sweaty icicles in the their last dying breath.

You, me, we.
Naked on a patch of empty mattress
Everything too symbolic to possibly process
Standing solitary in unison
beneath the draining translucent sink above
a degree too warm, my skin blushing on accident-
insides tangled and squirming
when that warm wet hand wrapped itself so delicately
around an unremembered segment of skin .
a stray fingertip racing up my thigh,
my throat clasping at the shudder
as i glance into those boring brown eyes

"I don't **** people I respect."

But this was a truth that was too soon broken,
I was disguised, misguided and easily cloaked when
the eyes I knew from a childish fluke
swept me
into a bed of nails that i thought
would protect me

you, me, we-
behind a rubber duck shower curtain
in the spotlight of the stage
where the x's had been taped
i was made certain a foolish damsel in distress
to each falsified caress.

but in those last fleeting moments
where the memory's page
starts to curl and break
you reached your arms out to me
and like damp sheets in the breeze of my body
we take our final plunge for all to see
and we lower to our knees
to scrub the smudges in between.