is it madness to confess
i crave for the sadness
i have known, named, and matched
to follow the rhythm of my heart?

like old flames with their burned out fate
of my sadness i have not felt of late
have my tears lost its salt for her thirst
do my sighs no longer suffice as cries
for all that remains in me, and dies?

where could you be, mi tristesa?

on its last day
we murdered last year*

with our lensed eyes
named with a new gaze
our voices flayed out
with our mismatched knives
designed and sharpened
to cut, gouge, and bleed
with the gifts of new poisons
and fresh deaths.

woman of the south
daughter of the full moon
with your tongue and its grace
to give words their colors and shape
i find myself hunting for you
in the jungle where i know nothing
without my traps and arrows
naked for your distant gaze
to touch my shade.

and though it aches
with a certain sweetness i indulge
when a flame has lost its glow and warmth
of what is stolen, or replaced,
i do not know-
i cannot find the shape for words
nor the proper name for the silence
for the fate of friendship
forged from strangeness
when time comes for the harvest
of what was found that has been bound
in this lifetime to be lost

i remind myself of what i know:
of the fate of things,
the price that must be paid
in the barter and trade
for the joys and sorrows of living
yet even as the pieces fit and shape
the balance struck between the scales
i could not find aything as i go on
not knowing if regret was born
with a different voice and face

ahh, even those of my blood
my friends true and few
would blind themselves
twist their tongues to speak
of how i deserve and that i will
find again my reason and my smile

but how can i not sentence myself
to what remains of my days into shadows,
of my nights into secluded and distant isles
for though i have only hoped to sow
seeds to bear sweet fruit for smiles,
i only have the harvest of tears
from all the names i claimed to love!

for even if each of my lovers proclaim
that there is no regret nor to blame
for how our story came to its end,
the distance between us is a wasteland:

*where even silence fear to sleep, with eyes
bled out of their tears and could not weep.

we would have remained as we were
with our shoes and our clothes
our words without voice, without witness
to our hunts for metaphors,
these sweet fruits we harvest under the season
fraught with rain, whirlwinds of dust and ashes

and then this world was forged

just as wordsmiths seek
for rhyme and first line
a thousand dreams birth to unveil
this cyberscape, the endless pages
for the human story

no more shall concrete cities and highways
bind us apart with walls or lost in the maze
under separate and distant skies
night and day paused their dance
into an embrace holding us together
so that you and i could touch
should we brave and dare
just like how we do now
i with my words and you with your eyes
where our souls little by little
we bare

ask the light, and she will speak-
the secret smile she traces as she kisses
my eyes for the beautiful day that is born

as it was her gift yesterday,
on this day when i breathe with love
for you and only you, know this:
you do not owe me touch or hearing
even grateful words need not disturb
the silence because someone has to be
the first to fall, even without knowing
how or when: for a lifetime or all alone.

let me savour the stars and her kisses-
full, like the moonlight with her embrace
where my arms stretch out, as if waiting
for you, even when you are not coming,

because the same light
who promises i can greet you
could only remain silent and dark
as she denies my last desire
to say thank you, and goodbye.