They told you to fear forest fires.
They told you how dangerous it was.
How destructive.
But they didn't tell you how
it's the earth's way of renewing itself,
of ridding itself of the grit,
so it can rise anew.

I want a forest fire to take over my heart,
to let it burn the walls,
to purge the sorrow,
to take away the mud seeping through the cracks.
It will not be a pretty sight.
Flowers will be set ablaze.
It will destroy
but it will bear.

You will see me standing
in the middle of the trees reborn—
the one who set the forest ablaze,
the one who rose up in smoke.
Changed.
Radiating.
The wind at my command.

see, I'm kissing you
but I'm keeping distance
because loving me means
sharing my soul
and tasting the sadness
in my
tongue

Build a rocketship,
fly out of the atmosphere,
live among the stars.

Maybe the end of the universe
does not lie in an explosion
or a hole that breathes black,
maybe it is right here
where stone benches reside
and the raindrops taunt like pesky little children
waiting for you to see them,
loud enough to mimic the silence
loud enough to sound like sorrow.
Maybe this is the end of the universe—
cosmic loneliness.
The stars are in a bitter drink
and the sun lies anywhere but within you
and your moon—why do they say that? To the moon and back?—your moon is a rock in your stomach
and only the fingers of the almost rain
weighs you down on dear, old Earth,
washing you off your tears.

I watched my father scrunch his eyebrows together
whenever my mother said something he didn't like,
his impatience seeping through his dark skin,
apparent in the way he turned his body away
as if he wanted to run from all this
but he's trapped now, trapped forever.
I listened as my mother told me she did not want to stay
and my brother and I are the only things anchoring her unto this godforsaken house
of peeling white paint and crumbling walls and endless shouts and burning words.
I watched them hold each other when things got tough
and I knew it wasn't because of love—
it was because they were the nearest things to each other.
At a very young age I knew love was something that dissolves,
a flower you water everyday,
a story you never stop writing,
And some people, they don't know,
that they have stopped watering,
and they're running out of ink, only on page 3.
Little girl me knew.
Big girl me continues to watch it unfold,
dead petals in their hair
and dark ink between their fingers—
dry

Little boy,
one day when you wake up and peer outside,
I hope you see flowers screaming in color and children dancing.
Little boy,
someday when you look up the sky
I hope you don't see gray,
but bright, bright, blue.
Little boy,
I hope the loudest noise you will ever hear
is your own laughter.
Little boy,
I hope one day you look at yourself
and don't see ruins,
but buildings standing tall,
guarding the city.
Little boy,
hope.

The earth is getting warmer,
the ice are melting,
the polar bears are endangered,
mermaids are not real,
my dad's never getting clean,
you'll never drive two hours to bring me Butterfingers,
you'll never listen to the songs I send you,
you don't know my middle name,
I feel like I have to beg to be with you,
you'll never read this poem because it's so tiny and insignificant,
and my heart's going to break any day now
but I'd still ask you to pick up the pieces for me.

The power is cut and the house is dark,
it is not yet night, the world bathed in saturated blue,
washed in layers of filter.
We're lost in our own worlds,
my brother and I,
and our silence is understanding
and companionship
and muted friendship.
My mother is in the kitchen,
silhouetted against the candle's orange light,
and she is soft edges
and stitches
and a woman who bore two.
The three of us,
strangers, family,
unknown, discovered,
hidden in the darkness, revealed in the shadows.
I want to say, *this matters.
This moment matters.
You will forget
but I will always remember.

How I long for your wide open sky.
I long for your sunbeams and your rain—whatever falls into my mouth,
I will gladly take in.

August. How I cling to all your pasts
and all your uncertain futures.
I cling to your promise of ever ever green
and I wait at your doorstep, naive nymph from nether.

Was it for nothing, August?
Do I keep you on my tongue and never in my heart?
August. August.

Endless pastures and lightning-laden nights. Your fleeting love speaks through the dark.

Still—
The witching hour,
a pond at dawn.
Still—
Nevertheless,
after all this time,
I look for you in a sea of people.

The street is illuminated in that shade of orange
that makes everything liminal
and we move in an opposite direction as the runners.
It seemed funny back then—
like fish veering away from its school
and maybe that’s what we are.

As we sink our feet in the slightly muddy field
and we sit without care of our light-colored jeans,
the fireflies light the dimmest corners.
We ooh and ahh like children
and maybe that’s what we are.

Boy and girl with no faces, no names.
I know you by a monosyllable
still I come, still,
like strangers made bolder by the circumstance
and maybe that’s all we are.

Our fingers dance around each other
doing the cha cha on faded jeans instead of shiny floors,
picking popped kernels once in a while -
processed butter on the tips of our ballroom thumbs and forefingers.

Let me take a sip of your flat sugar laden drink,
taste it on my lips in a little while.

Hey!
It tickles when you draw question marks on my thighs,
just let your hands make knots with mine.

Train our eyes on the giant screen
where the heroine makes one mistake after another
and isn't that real life?
Blunders and I'm sorry's and
chance meetings and vivid colors
and the boy beside me--
Real. Life.

Maybe we should stay in the flimsy seats
while the credits roll,
pick apart the moving pictures
reminding us of first love and first fears.
Of forgotten dreams and words we lost.

Maybe we should examine the best narrative yet -
you in your soft sweater,
me in my mud-caked shoes.

Hold my hand while we descend the steps;
shadow swallows the bottom,
reminding me of movie monsters and white faced ghosts.

Usher me into the light.

Although, I have to admit,
I see you better when it's dark.

I wanted a love that transcends the beauty of the moon
I wanted it burning and I wanted it to sear my hands
I wanted grand gestures and things I can touch

but that's not how we are

we still trip on cracks
we still lose the words we want to say and sometimes I wish I could put them in my pocket and take them out when the time is right
we still get anxious
and we still don't know

that's alright,
that's alright

we don't find love, we build it.
and I'm grateful—will always be—
that I'm building it with you

when the street lights shadow play
across your face
and you're your own neon sign
and the velvet night feels like a blanket—
how electric

To revel in your solidness
when your grip of the wheel turns your
knuckles white and your palm
lays on my thigh
like that one song I could not stop listening to
two years ago

To revel in your togetherness
when it seems like nothing is changing
although everything is
and your laughter still resonates within the compact space
and the calm in your voice is a deserted beach at midnight

To revel in you
when the air is sweet
the tears, bitter
the wounds, rotting
the healing, slow—
how hauntingly beautiful

My eyes are heavier than a thousand oceans,
my breath settles      
                        one          
                                                two.
I'm drifting off to the peaceful abyss,
galaxies dancing under my eyelids.
Ping.
"You up?"
Why, yes.
I am.

isn't little butterflies on my stomach,
falling for you
isn't an oasis on a barren desert,
falling for you
isn't like knowing how to breathe,
falling for you
is subjecting myself to a million drops
from a million towers,
falling for you
is letting the ocean drown me,
falling for you
is standing in the middle of a hurricane.

And that's okay.

Because,
love,
I was made for rain.

Sometimes I see you looking out the window
and I know you still wait for her.
Sometimes I hear you humming, very softly, almost a whisper,
the song she always sang to you when you're about to sleep.
Sometimes I catch you touching the place behind your ears
where she always kissed you.
Sometimes you stop in your tracks when you smell her perfume.
And sometimes I can feel your hands loosening its grip when you hold mine—a fraction, an inch, barely noticeable.
And sometimes you laugh at my jokes but the glitter never reaches your eyes.
And sometimes you kiss me but it feels like a question.
And I know we're both haunted by a girl still alive,
her phantom hand pushing me
away from you.

You know this boy for a minute. And still you kiss like long lost friends.
He doesn’t sing. He is beneath the landslide, maybe in a champagne sky.
You miss him. In that moment he is there and he is not.
And softly he pulls you in, but is he not ungraspable memory? A woman-made construct like time. Like love.

I stopped believing my father when I was eight,
when he threw away his cigarettes and told me,
no more.
I stopped believing him when he got the last beer
out of the fridge and told me,
never again.

Siguro nga'y tayo lamang
ang mga tao sa mundo,
at ang mga ilaw sa daan ay disenyo lamang
ng mga 'di nakikitang kamay,
ang matamis na boses na nanggagaling sa kahon
ay likha lamang ng ating mga isip,
at ang mga katanungang pumupuno sa katahimikan
ay guniguni na dulot ng magdamag.

Ang puwang ba na pumapagitna ay tulay
o dingding?
Ang dilim ba'y bunga ng gabi o dahil
pareho tayong nakapikit?

Malabo ang lansangan sa likod ng salamin
ngunit ngayon, sa bulang ito,
lahat ay malinaw, totoo.

Decent—
I hate that word.
My mother wants me to be decent
when all I really want to be,
what I actually am,
is loud,
color,
all mouth,
leather skirts,
and hoop earrings,
(an ode to the roundness of the sun)
nails in deep, dark red,
banging doors,
and laughing in all the wrong places.
She wants decent,
she means 'quiet'.
She means 'not anyone'.
She means 'forgettable'.
She means 'the kind you take home to momma'.
But, see—
I'm a Warhol pop art,
Kahlo brows,
that mouth in the Munch in a constant 'o',
the kind to put herself in an oven
and call it a day,
shirts cropped to their full potential,
belly button to the light,
black line drawn like a cat's,
maybe a little cherry on the lips
(the kind to kiss boys sweeter, dear).

But, okay, I love you—
and I will put on the heirloom pieces.
Just for tonight.

sickly sweet and sticky
honey
stains the checkered cloth,
a rusty blob
shaped like the birthmark
on your ribs,
except this one stays on my fingers
long after I touched it,
washed it,
licked it off,
and then it tastes like
nothing
and the saccharine surprise
exists only in memory

that sunny Sunday
when everything is yellow
and my knees are a little red and burnt
and ants colored like fire
form a trail
and the birthmark is
miles away
and I had to make do
with the honey

beneath the tin roof,
beside the shrubs of unnameable greens,
where white light bouncing off white walls
does not touch your skin but sear you all the same⁠—
the snip of metal,
the lull of sporadic humming,
sends you to opiated oblivion,
and on your feet:
waves of dark hair
touch the earth
and get blown away
lightly, slowly

Your stairs shrieked like an infant at midnight
and your walls haunted my dreams.
Still you housed my hands that touched so tenderly your floors, your mold, your crown.
Your windows stared: eyes on a hill. And I wonder what it feels like to be seen
like a monument in a ghost town.
You housed my head
so constantly swirled, maimed, losing consciousness.
You housed me so fiercely, intensely,
with a love that sang my restless soul to sleep.
Everyday you kept me in your arms, your womb.
You framed all my sunsets, my stars,
my endless sighs.
It is time to let your walls collapse,
your doors forever close,
but I have left my heart underneath your old, old bones.

i want to roam the halls of museums
with you
and float through history
as we make
our own

Oh, Anne.
I can see a butterfly
rise up from the blood stains
you left on the floor.

A pillow is a pillow
and not an extension of you;
a shirt is a shirt
and not a reminder of the ways you encompass me;
a ring is metal and rock,
not an upside down promise;
or words just a cluster of letters
and never your love—
because what are words in the grand scheme of things
but blankets a little too short,
a little too thin?
What good are threads if they come loose, unraveling
everything?
Here I come undone.
Here we fray.