I remember that boat we once saw, drifting aimlessly as we rowed toward what we called our nirvana.

“Whoever left that boat alone in this vast sea must be a sadist,” you said, believing that even things have spirits, like humans do.

But just like that boat, you left me adrift in the waves of wonder.

I’m not sure where I went wrong, but suddenly, I awoke in the silence of the waves, drifting farther from you.

Someday, the sound of your name will fade into the tragedy of a forgotten harana.

You will be gone, and I will long to erase your memory from my thoughts, wash away the traces of times spent with you.

You will be gone like the kundimans once sung by our grandfathers to our beloved grandmothers.

You will become a scar, like a deep cut on my skin—permanent.

Someday, I will long to forget your name and the sound of it. And I will have a hard time doing so because forgetting someone you once loved is also forgetting the life you shared with them.

Just like our ancestors with their cherished harana, you will become a beautiful memory that happened to me.

isn’t it ironic,
to feel a quiet sadness
at the very thought of going home?

to go back home
is to return to our discreetness
to return to our discreetness
is to become a secret once again.

i remember, you once told me
you loved me
but i never showed that i, too
was falling in love
for a man’s love for another was
deemed a sin
and we hate to see our mothers
cry, condemning us.

i never wished to forsake home altogether,  
but just this once,
i long to stay a while longer,  
to remain by your side.
for isn’t this already home? 

they say home is where we find
our deepest comfort,  
so why would i bother to go back  
when i already feel i’m in my safest
just by being with you?

abegail,
        you came in this orb
   a yellow bell in its bush,
                flourishing
you are beautiful,
      in the most delicate,
most demure but loud

you were a friend
         and i see you in every
wilting flower
     that i pass on streets
  because why does the world
only choose      the beautiful,
       in their most tender age,
                 to wither and fall

maybe we’re from different worlds
or from different time loops
and our souls just got lost
into being born in this cosmos.

i dreamt of you clad in warlike armor.
perhaps you were meant to be born
in a dystopian realm
where mynah birds are aliens
and you never saw
what the sky really looks like
in the absence of explosions.

because that is what you are,
your skin reeks of angst
your stare is a carbine
ready to point shoot
i would shoot their mouths
until they splash red, you said.

and i thought of me growing up
not knowing the smell of longing
because how wonderful would that be?
to live in a city devoid
of longing for peace
to remain young, walking
through an endless hallway of trees
without the eyes of scavengers
observing our bodies
forming an entity.

maybe we’re not meant to be
and maybe we are
but not here
where we hide like the cicadas
on grass awaiting the moonbeams
to blanket the whole town
of living saints who tell tales
about angels who burn cities
stained with people of our kind, loving.

my man, god-like
no longer must you please me
your skin the color of dark amber
already has my eyes
and your breath, a scent of jasmine
turns the ylang-ylangs a stranger

no longer must you wonder
whether or not my heart
only yearns for yours
because i’m always yours
even when you turn my bones
to brittle everytime a spear
slung across your back for a hunt

maybe, in a universe opposite to ours, the mothers never warned us about the looming threats  of our potential demise  by stray bullets. we would have been raised unaware of the stench of blood  that have dried on roads. murders could be a stranger and any person could lead a village without the thought  of having him killed in plain sight.

because in this town, where flowerbeds are a kaleidoscope along the roads, where banyan trees serve the children a home, where the sky is always  a cloudless blue, we fear no monsters lurking even in the shade  of red harvest moon, but men in mask who turned pistols as toys.