When I was sketching this afternoon,
my strokes seemed unsure
and my lines were all wrong and
I realized some things about you.

The reason your fingers
always seem to be slipping
every time you try to catch a
handful of waterfall
is because once upon a time
the rocks that your soles were planted on
crumbled.

You used to be a deer,
the way you stood on new heights
and how you looked on
with a steady eye, so
when was it that you decided
one more step was too much for you to climb?

The burying must stop.
It has been proven time and time again
that no matter
how deep a grave is dug,
the flowers will give the bones away.

I don't understand why you
confuse seawater with fresh, because
I know that you've already stuck out your tongue
and tasted the sweetness of real freshwater
or have you?

You are dust
walking in deep shadows
where I cannot find you.
I have only a candle
and my words, but I will wait.
After all, in the beginning,
something beautiful was made from dust
and from a word
sprung a world.

And lastly I realized that
I hope that you someday read this poem
and we will sit together in the afternoon sun
and you will listen to the sound of new things
as I sketch with sure strokes
and just the right lines.

Sumisigaw at
Sumisipa ang mga
Awit at tulang
Nilalabas ng iyong
Daliring nanginginig.

Ganito ang pag-
Ikot ng mundong ito:
Tuloy-tuloy lang.

I have hands that won’t keep
to themselves.
They are always rummaging
and dancing and clapping
and snapping and opening
and closing and trying to fix
every
single
broken thing they can find.

And that includes you.

My heart is a bottomless pit for aches.
Not mine, but yours.
It’s almost a cursed thing, how
despite its size being only that of my fist,
my heart always finds a way to squeeze in
some new hurt into the spaces that
before you,
I never knew existed.
There they stay;
and like all things that stay,
with enough time,
become part of their surroundings.
I can’t tell whose cut is whose anymore.

Put me in a room full of people.
Blindfold me.
Spin me like a tornado.
Make me stop.
My outstretched fingers will be reaching
for the most broken souls in the room.

Call it compassion. Kindness. Empathy.
Whatever you like,
but there is a fine, fine line between that
and the way I bleed.
Oh,
how I bleed.
Forgive my boldness when I say
I won’t even try to make you understand
the fact that I do
somehow
understand.
Think of it this way: ripples.
And I always get the last one.

I’m still a child.
I like to play pretend.
I’m a doctor.
I’m a superhero.
I’m the one with all the answers,
all the weapons,
all the magical cures.
Take that!
And that!
Ha! Aha! Ha!
Ha…
Ha.
As the years wear on,
I see that my tools aren’t right,
and that my cape is too tight around my neck.
I don’t have all the answers.
No weapons.
No magical cures.
I’m just a girl trying to play the part that was never hers.

And it’s taken me three volcano boys,
a couple of glass-bottomed hearted girls,
and just about the rest of the world to realize that I
am not
the Savior.

My hands were not made to heal
every heart they rest themselves upon,
or to fill that vacuum inside every man,
one that nothing,
nothing,
nothing in this world will ever
make
whole.

So here.
I let go of every burden that’s been
causing me to stoop and to stumble,
every pressing weight that’s been
keeping me from keeping faith,
every heavy yoke that’s been
causing me to choke on things
I never should have let in
in the first place.

Yet I will continue to love you.
I have come to learn that love
has a lot of ugly before it becomes beautiful,
a lot of hurt before healing’s arrival,
a lot of you before any of me.
My part is done.
These fidgety fingers no longer carry suffering.
Here, let me see yours, though battle scarred and bruised.
You’ve been bearing more than you were built for, beloved.

I think it’s time to surrender.

Why can't we have meaningless talk
the way people have meaningless ***-
you would crash over me into a
river of un-scathing emptiness
and leave marks on my skin-
stories that this was where
you started to tear at
the seams
effortlessly
like the silkness
of your sorrows on my floor.

You would become a sultry verse
in this anthology of every day
lodged between the rush and
vacancy of broken hearts
and anguished limbs.

You would radiate the heat
of your angry, angry heart onto
the cold deadness of mine,
and we could burn and melt
all at the same time.

Meaninglessly you would leave
me out of breath,
gather your clothes
and go home.