What is and what isn't because it's yet to be, the blink-long present and the possibility—here they are, tracing the same curved path around each other, each time coming closer and closer, set on colliding. Every inch of the journey anguishes, every trace of consciousness burns—running while knowing running is all there's left to do, and there's no finish line 'cause the end is but the start of something new. Maybe it's all about looking for ways to explain—why someone can be always absent while perpetually being here; why you insistently phrase your thoughts as questions; why I go back to the same places where I once was and where I once wasn't because I was yet to be, the blink-long present and the possibility (...)

Tu vida entera en dos cajas.
Una de cartón, con fotos y cartas y cuadernos y ruidos sordos
contras esquinas marrones
cuando pasa de mano en mano.
Una de madera, con manos y piernas y
tez blanca al borde de la transparencia
y un silencio que se extiende
por metros y por años.
Ojos me buscan y me encuentran
y labios me preguntan cómo
te hubiera gustado esto o aquello,
suponiendo que yo se,
suponiendo que te conocía,
y no se cuanta verdad hay en eso.
Solo se que dentro de años,
con tu caja de cartón olvidada,
cuando seas solo huesos
y pueda pensarte sin pensar,
en los espacios entre tus costillas
y el aire que te llena,
seguirá habitando un deseo,
que cosquilleará, se trepará y se enredará,
formando una telaraña,
uniendo hueso con hueso,
enmarañando tu esqueleto,
pero no habrá nadie para verlo
más que tu caja de madera.

You're wearing green, a dress,
a green dress that used to be mine.
It's night time, sun long set,
and we stand at the end of a pier.
I'm meant to allow the lines to blur,
hear the clock tick and let my eyes stray,
but how I would like to go back
to the same places where we were.
How did it go again?
You're green, undressed,
skin on display that's not mine to own.
It's due time, sun just set,
and we lie in the middle of a pyre.

Saved from dozing off at the seashore by the water lapping at his feet, reaching his heels before it retreats, sand between his toes and sticking to his skin—It should be uncomfortable, but it just makes him want to dig his feet in deeper, roll around on the great expanse of golden soil until he can never fully wash it off—So that this place stays with him for days to come, so he can carry around the sound of waves breaking, the salty smell of seaweed in the air, the feeling of the breeze on his bare skin—So there's never any chance for him to speak, knowing his voice is prone to drown in the water that abruptly meets the shore and the whistle of the wind.

Soft-spoken, rough-edged,
a bit of a loner (God knows why),
a good girl with blood on her hands.
A good girl with a bad childhood,
who learnt hands aren't meant
to be lent but played. She takes
people and rips off their scars like
band-aids, quick so it's painless,
quick so it tears out their hair and
leaves their skin an angry shade of
red. A speech's been in the making
for years, an excuse about being
chewed up and spat out from
the belly of the beast by a father
with ill humour and a mother
unsympathetic, but in the back of
her mind, behind the heavy curtain
that won't let the eye meet what lack
of light is really all about, she knows
she just enjoys the art of pushing
buttons and breaking the dam.
A bad girl with an average childhood,
who learnt loving parents sometimes
aren't enough to prevent ill humour
and a sympathy drought. To you,
she's a girl. That's always been good
enough a reason to fall for.

"If I'm still single by the time I get my first grey hair, I'm marrying you."
When it’s morning and I’m sober and rummaging through my bedside table for painkillers, I’ll wonder how you didn’t take offence at that.
So inconsiderate and foolish and deluded.
You smile like you know something I don't—a language I understand but can't speak, a puzzle I can figure out only when you point out where to start.
"What makes you think I'll be available by then? That I won't already have a dog and a white picket fence with someone else?,” you say.
"Oh, I'll just show up at your door one day, all sad and alone and holding up a single grey hair, and you'll feel so much pity that you'll leave everything behind to run away with me.
And we'll get one of those dogs you love
(a Beagle, you say)
and we'll go to that one country you like—
awfully cold, no fun, city names with fifteen letters,
(Iceland, you say)
and you'll be the one to break us up when I become too much,"
and you laugh,
and (you say, the only reason
I would dump you
is because you smoke like a chimney,
and I'm not marrying into tobacco-smelling rugs and lung cancer at forty two)
So I tell you I quit, pinky-swear on it,
and when you make a face in disbelief,
I take out the last pack of cigarrettes
sitting in the back of my trousers
and toss them from the balcony we stand in,
watching them rain down on the sidewalk
in some sort of dramatic, contaminating declaration of devotion.
When I find the painkillers and I'm back in bed, I'll wonder why I can't remember the rest of the night.
Maybe it couldn't hold a candle to the way you looked when I promised you my own version of a white picket fence.

You walk in after work
to see me sitting in your kitchen floor,
neck craned up,
staring at a cookie tray as it cools down,
and I wait and make a list in my head
of all the reasons why you will finally snap:
1) I used the emergency key you gave me
2) and let myself in with no warning
3) to use your stove and your pantry
4) and I'm inconsiderate and foolish and deluded,
but you drop your bag by the door,
toe off your shoes on the hall,
and take a seat next to me
to watch the steam rise from every cookie at once.

“I can’t have a family.”
“Oh, well… We could always adopt.”
“No, I mean—I can’t have a family. Just can’t.”
I tell you it’s not too late yet, you know? You can still take off your ring and leave—it would break my heart, but I’d get it.
When we're back at the hotel and I'm clear-minded and you're rubbing my shoulder in that spot you know is always tense, I'll wonder how I can be so self-centered.
I made you love me, promised you bureaucracy and an after party and a possible forever, and then I tell you the thing you've wanted your entire life is the one thing I can't get myself to give to you.
“You promised me a Beagle, remember?”
(I did, I say)
“So, how about we start there?”
And in our hotel room, when you press down exactly in the right place, I'll look at you as a bead of sweat rolls down your neck and I’ll think we’re young. We know time passes, but we are yet to find out time weights.
"Dog it is, then"
And it is.
And I’ll wonder how I didn’t realize before what you've really wanted all along.

I try to go about it in different ways.
Once, I read you Siken before bed,
and I take my time when I tell you love always wakes up the dragon,
and when I look up from the page I expect you to say it,
(You're the dragon, you should say)
but all I see is you frowning, pointing at a line you want me to go over,
and I once again say,
Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love.
It's like a religion. It's terrifying.
No one will ever want to sleep with you.
The pity in the white of your eyes makes my head spin,
and I wonder how you can feel compassion for the inconsiderate and the foolish and the deluded.
And then it hits me.
And then I pity myself too.

"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
"Then everything that can, will," you say, and you hold my hand.
I don't think that's how it works.
"Us. We can," you go on.
And I wonder what you'll do if our carpet ever smells of smoke or we never adopt that dog.
"Then we will," I say.
And somehow, we do.

ruth keeps waiting for it.
her girlfriend cups her face with gloved hands, and ruth guesses this is as good a time as any.
after having a cup of her favorite tea at the coffee shop that witnessed their first date and now their nth one—babbling, laughing, kissing, refilling drinks, shins pressing together under the table and lips never staying still. after she drops ruth off at her front door and makes sure she's content. while facing the chilly wind with one of two hearts hanging by a thread. she draws circles on her cheeks, ephemeral warmth, and ruth waits, everlasting dread.
it's not you, it's me. it was good while it lasted, but it's just not working out for me anymore. we're better off as friends. she's gonna pull out all the stops, and the worst part is that she's gonna mean all of them. it gives ruth no room to get mad and put the blame on her, so with warm hands tilting her head up, she awaits, dreadful.
“i had fun today,” is what she gets instead, an air of elation about it that ruth can't quite understand. “thank you.”
“for what?”
she shrugs, smile never hesitating. “just—everything.”
hands pull ruth that last bit closer to her and she leans down to leave a peck, quick and light. her hold does nothing but get warmer by the second. not that ephemeral anymore.
ruth blinks. “text me when you get home?”
it's like an hourglass. you can turn it over as many times as you like, but the sand will merely continue to flow.
on the bus on their way back from school, when they kiss goodbye at the doorstep after one of them's over for dinner, during a study date at the library where they will whisper yell every conversation, over the phone on a tuesday night after hours. it always feels like it's about to come, yet it never does.
ruth keeps waiting for it.