I let the rain fall upon my shoulders.
It is cold,
yet welcoming somehow.

I taste the salty sadness
as it runs in lines
down my face,
and drips off my chin.

After months of the emotional hiatus,
this storm has ended it all.

I feel the electricity welling inside me.
I wait for the lightning to strike,
before the deafening boom of thunder.

And I am awake.

For the first time in months,
I feel everything instead of nothing.
I am somber.
I am impassioned.
I am free;
to feel
and to let the feelings take me in their arms
and throw me until I can’t move.

This monsoon
is long overdue
and the numbness of emotion beats
the paralysis of feeling nothing.

hiatus hit me hard,
as if my passion was restrained,
at the end i have no gain,
because what i loved to do began to fade away.

I wrote and rejected my own words,
I marked them basic, unoriginal.
I erased lines I never replaced.
I stopped making new worlds.
I loathed that I was only typical,
I hoped it would only be a phase
But I paused.
The pause turned into a halt.
It turned into a break, turned into never.
Then I wrote back all that I lost,
Stopped stopping and breaking and believing the false.
I want to continue writing letters.
So I will mix and match and reach my goal to have never been better.

:
..
....
........
...........

As often as a human's breath,
deadlines and restrictions pop up
simultaneous with emergencies
chores, and necessities...all in a fast
pace, many things are prioritized
...though, most are unnecessary and
occupy precious space in our lives...

everyday, we struggle...silent battles
and tribulations stir the soul...
for some reason, some things cannot
be changed...some people play deaf
and stay the same.....neither could
thoughts towards them, be altered...
sometimes, our ties with useless stuff,
and useless people...need to be severed.
moments come when, we've had enough
..............of rules and regulations.
...................we just get fed up...

life is precious and short.....a part of me
....awaits a break......a cold phase,
.........when all my discontent would freeze
..............when all queasy feelings
...................this fidgeting within,
........................would turn to ice
..............................permanently.....
.................­......
...................
.............
.........
......
....
..­
.

Sally

© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
(an old unposted poem from 2014)

luminary Sanhedrin
of California
Valley with
the mouth
of Big
Sur that
made island
their oasis
where Levites
Scholars bade
them Jerusalem
and where
Mormons would
praise Ottoman
and imperial
permitters mostly
left woebegone