.              You do not know my name, or maybe you do. Either way, I do not know yours, too. I may have met you already. Maybe our shadows have already crossed. Maybe I know you so well, yet I have not a hint that it is you. You may be the person that sat beside me on the long, long 'couch' of a jeepney or that girl that dropped her hanky inside the bus on its aisle. You may be my classmate; my neighbor, perhaps. My friend. My friend's friend. Or the cousin of my friend's friend that once set my heart a galloping horse but I then realized - laughed at myself, even - that I was such a foolish dolt to feel that way and utterly air-headed to believe  it, so I 'ended everything between us'.

               I may have seen you already, taken a good look at your face - your eyes having no sparkles and the fireflies in my stomach asleep being the only difference. You may have liked me or even 'fell' for my stupid smile and I had no idea at all.  So I apologize if my apathy made your heart numb or my blindness shattered you.

               Away from these hundreds or maybe even thousands of possibilities and ineluctabilities;  the chances of me already meeting you and not knowing that it was you; all I ask is your love abided by the love from the skies. Love, not affection nor attraction, nor any of the temporal abstracts. A four-letter piece-of-cake-to-spell word, yet too involuted to be brought to living definition. Love, my dear, and fidelity is what I ask.

               I long to see you, know you. To be stifled by the fragrance of your hair, know the color of your eyes; to be deafened by your voice in its saccharinity, watch how those delicate eyelashes of yours lay gently on your cheeks as you close your eyes upon sleeping.

               Life is a book wherein the plot depends on how the protagonist writes it. Tell me how many more pages would it take for me to get to our chapter 'cause darling, I swear I would skip even a hundred or two. If only I can, and if only you can. But apparently, I'm stuck in this chapter called 'present'.



**Sincerely,
Your present Future

I closed the door, sat on my bed
With closed fists I thump my head
Black-and-blue, my eyes are red
Count one or two, and I'll be dead.

I can't sense no love - only angst
The voices cause none but pang
I taste pain, savor its tang
A finger on the trigger - bang!

Hail, dreamcatcher, hear now my thoughts
Free my soul of fond hopes of naught;
Of brokenness these dreams had taught;
Of ceaseless pain this life has brought.

This heart is weary of shouting;
Of being empty yet drowning
In insipid words befuddling;
In ashed promises succumbing.

**** this anguish feasting inside
That this shiv may be put aside;
These damp sheets be given a rest,
And that may bliss in this room nest.

Hail, dreamcatcher, hear now my sigh,
The words I'll mutter as lie
Below the grass, hear my cry;
My soliloquies ere I die.

The dreams that I wove with your strings
Are dreams that 'til I slumber clings;
Dreams that on stars I'll be wishing
That I with the stars be dreaming.

Farewell to you, dear moon, I say
Awake I can no longer stay
In peace on this bed I shall lay,
Never again shall I rise, I pray.

So dreamcatcher croon me to sleep
And let me drown in thoughts so deep
Don't wake me up, I had enough
Last wish: I be gone in a puff.