175

I have never seen “Volcanoes”—
But, when Travellers tell
How those old—phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still—

Bear within—appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men—

If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place—

If at length the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome—
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?

If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy “Pompeii”!
To the Hills return!

White had always been there
Since you were born
But today I saw it
in places where shouldn’t be
We don’t have autumn here,
but I can still watch time change
From your chestnut brown
Turned silver grey
Bright wide puppy eyes
Hooded underneath your age
You walk differently now
Waddling tiredly
towards the sunset
where you can hear
Your years catching up
Into faded weeping winter

The roaches come out
every 5 am when everyone sleeps
But I see them
When I’m up at dawn
They crawl one by one
On the microwave
the bruised wooden table
Sometimes it creeps into me
In one ear, out the other
It echoes my father’s laughter
My mom’s denial of said laughter
I hear its critter noises
And I shout ****** ******
Yet they all still sleep
Soundly at the comfort
of politeness and tolerance

No one believes
The crazy daughter
When she screams help

“Who’s the lucky guy?” someone asks
“Their name’s Bea,” I reply
“I support that,” they hesitate
“You are so brave.” they add

I never saw their lips as a political statement
Nor did I think holding hands in the front seat
while a friend is puking by the side of the road
Was some kind of revolution

How romantic is it
That our story will be etched
Not in some Neruda poetry book
But a professor’s first textbook
Or a college student’s 2 am essay

When I said I was in love
You thought it meant I was hungry
Not for touch or for pleasure
But for justice and freedom
I didn’t know that
When I run my fingers down her neck
It would be tied to a long Twitter thread

I never saw my love as a battleground
A metaphysical exploration of sexuality
What’s Marxist about the way their eyes
disappear when they smile?
What’s so intersectional about
Our entanglement at the back seat
Or our hands holding in front

I never thought I would be so brave
At my most fragile state
So political
In my most dumbstruck ways
So woke
When I’m asleep in her embrace

My whole life I had scoffed at boys gifting girls flowers
The expensive ones, the kind they saved up for
I thought it was incredibly immature to pay for pretty dead things
When the world is in the process of destruction
And the economy is constantly in inflation
It could’ve paid for a lot of things—
A nice meal or even AirPods

It was until I got a girl of my own
Smiling like she’s the sun
Walking around and tugging me along
I suddenly had the urge to get her a 50-dollar bouquet
Or those fancy ones in a box shipped from Dubai
Or a giant teddy bear—Yes!
A giant teddy bear to fill a corner of her room on top of her pile of trash

Suddenly she deserves pretty dead things
Hold onto them as they slowly wilt
I want her to walk around owning a piece of Earth
It could’ve been an animal or a plant
Shiny gems or a worm
But she deserves the brightest crop among the weeds
The purplest shade nature can make
The pinkest rose
The yellowest sunflower

I’m not even one to write a poem either
But somehow I now belong in the stupid group of hopeless romantics
plucking pretty things from Earth
Despite inflation and pragmatism
I guess it says a lot about us humans
Sentimental *****

I am no longer the woman I despised before
I have let my lover be
watch her spend days and nights
wandering like a wild animal in a vast field
I pace back and forth around the cage
I have locked myself in
while she,
being the carefree creature she is,
have travelled far and wild
and I told myself
let the lover be
let her hair be swayed by the wind
let her tiptoe on the grass
as I watch her in careful fascination
and she watches me back
admiring me like a dusty, discolored painting in a museum
“There’s something delicate about her,” she says.
for in the confined nature of my soul
I have lived a thousand lives
I have seen people come and go
watched them like they were fire dancing in the wind
reached out to touch them
and pulled back right away
because the woman I no longer am
would touch the flame and keep it for the cold of the night
now I dance around my self-made cage
and I let my lover run free.