Sometimes I get sad
like REALLY sad

Actually not just sometimes but all the time

my chest would feel like an empty grave
screaming for it’s tenant.

The gaping hole that longs for someone to cradle into the night
A lover longing for it’s beloved.

I would have thoughts of the things I have lost
like a tree wondering where it’s leaves have gone in the fall.

I have memories and feelings that I have flung to the back of my head
like ***** laundry that just waits for me to deal with it.
I know one day I will have to pick them up and shove them into the washing machine
but here I am just ignoring it.
I am running out of clean clothes to wear
and have a mountain of ***** clothes to face

I have sorrows that I have coated in caramel
like candied apples
thinking that they’d be sweet but they still taste so bitter.

My heart was burning house filled with people dancing in it
The people have grown tired have left
and the firemen have arrived.

Now it nothing but a soggy dance floor with a shattered disco ball.
A sun that has exploded and have become a super nova
reminiscing what it once was and mourning what it will never be.

I hope day I won’t feel as much sad
that one day I will have enough motivation to face that mountain of ***** clothes.
I hope that one day I will be brave enough to be happy.
But till then I hope y’all keep me company.

Cause sometimes, most of the time
One of the main reasons I sad is because
I am lonely.

I want to know
All it took
to get to this point
Right here
Right now

Your "hello, my name is _"
Will carry the weight
Of your struggles
Of your mistakes
That were really lessons learned
And have made you into the
Strong and secure person you are today

And the answers to the endless prayers
I offered before I even knew what
Name would fill in that blank

What did it take for you to reach this moment where we meet?
The lines that we will draw to connect all the dots together
No matter how seemingly insignificant
Or painful those dots may be

The end is our own little masterpiece
Our own story backed up by a million more stories
And the prologue
to rest of our lives

Even if our what if will always still be suspended in the air
And I will be forced to breathe it in and out once in awhile, remembering your smell
I'm on solid ground
And no matter how many free moving particles of our what if roam the skies
What's sure is keeping me on the steady floor

Our what if may never be seen, even if I may feel it once in awhile
But my here and now is where I walk on
Even if it's just one step at a time
I'm moving forward
And my when is in my view.

Babangon para sa 'yo
Nandito ang pangako
"Grabeh! Ang liwanag oh."
Kahit ano pang layo.

do i want to lie flat in your prison cells? perhaps not.
but i do know that the curse of our words is that
they will one day swap out our air for oxygen,
and we will breathe ink down our throats; gasping
for sound.

it is inevitable. these vestiges of mind matchless to those
who give chase - we who disappear like ghosts - one day
to resurface - our bodies in exchange. we will be beaten
by batons, cut open by silver: a cuff for a tongue. we perish
for our

                      speech.

reverse engineering:

tomorrow
i will know still your voice,
how your silence splits words
into pieces, as you break me
with your collared sweaters and polka dot
socks: tell me i am floating,
question my Gods, forbid me
from touching your church elders; your parents’
Lord.

today
i will know your laughter, a tad frail:
the voice of an unsteady
deity - your fingers - never stilling a pen,
nor sketching a hand - whittling
my own: your chin trembling as you chide me
for their largeness; i show you their erasures:
your lack of wayward lines; your work
of an artist.

yesterday
i tell you to sing, you tell me not to -
you arm yourself and lock away in your room,
say your poetry terrible,
wrong, un-joyful, cross-averted; they cracks
in all the wrong places like your flimsy
hands, like your hopes massive-disintegrating
like the feebleness in your dust-allergic bodies; your lack

of lungs: brittled long by heavy-handed
words and thin brushes: you with death -
the un-wayward stroke: You
who are sickly, whose quiet breaths reach
where we cannot find

and find the places where
our gods long to be touchable.

for my pastor, for my father, and for a friend.

6.
i find your name carved quiet by the windowsill
in an empty room.

5.
i find half your coat hanging wayside where once his coat was, too.

4.
father told me you too keep your dentures in a cup like grandfather’s.

3.
that you were there as he packed his bags and warbled off
for the hospital. you didn’t talk to him then
but still we knew. or so he did:

he caught you smiling by the desks where he worked.

2.
i find your photographs by the balcony,
and your footprints by the garden. bits of your
hair by the pavement next to candy wrappers and
pencil jars.

1.
together we pick up the pieces you left behind. and sew. and stitch
ourselves together. open our mouths in silence.

0.
we wait for your next visit.