When I was a kid, I thought falling in love would change things completely.
I thought that it would fix me,
turn me inside out and make me new,
cast miracles in me.
I thought love would do that -
close up scars,
and fix up broken hearts,
and make things hurt less
than they did before.

So I remember when I met her how it
seemed like a movie
with the camera panning out from the screen.
Fix the frame.
Remember on the bookstore floor a strewn copy
of a teenage romance novel then
the curve of her fingers.
Her pale skin.
All those details crystallized:

That first sunset with her.
An old ship docked by the bay which stayed unmoving as
the fog crept in through the windows.
Eight in the evening and the lights in the shipyards flicker on in fits and starts.
Then a rosy edge to the horizon. The early hues of sunset.
A hotel by the skyline with a yellow, blinking sign seen from across the water,
And the bands of light lining a ferris wheel, neon green.
The deep dark of the tide as it rises up, lapping at the boulders with a soft, stumbling sound.
Then the fading out as the clouds come in and I wonder whether I should kiss her.

But I don’t.

When I was a kid, I thought falling in love would make me happy.
For two weeks, it did —
I remember the Saturday I told her,
the Sunday we held hands,
and then the days of the week blurring in their detail -
a clock whose arms were ticking always towards her —

Those were two weeks of color,
Until the clouds came rolling in again
from over the bay,
fogging up the last view of a
grey Manila sunset.