there

BETWEEN hello and goodbye was our love. Somewhere there, some place, a glance, a look: we had loved. At what point exactly, I will never be sure; has anyone ever? Like in twilight, in what exact stretch of sky where night ends and a new day begins. But it was there. Somewhere beside a fading star, behind a sliver of silver cloud was a love felt, never realized. There. Bookmarked, written in ink now dried, forever ending.

nomad no more

HAPPINESS. I often wonder if it can be absolute, like love. As if there's no such thing as too much or less of it. It is what it is. Perfect. Full.


But unlike love, happiness is only a feeling, emotion, a room you walk into and leave, sometimes with the door left open. It neither exists on its own nor can it be distilled into its purest form.


So, no.


Happiness is not absolute. Then why does it feel like it is? Right now, right here, as we pull and push for truths in a rhythm set in beats we couldn't understand albeit willing our bodies to act in such yearning haste? If happiness is a place, this is where I am going to live, and stay. Tonight I build a home in that hollow on your neck, achoring myself with an arm under your back, another under a leg, lock it all in a kiss. There is a warmth between us feeding the flame of what's already burning within me, devouring towns, walls, bridges, until there is only us glistening in the dark. But I look into your eyes and suddenly find myself at sea, like a rock tossed mindlessly, disturbing the still surface creating waves, penetrating the shadowy depths. I am a welcomed disturbance and drowning with such ease. And when I can finally breathe, something within me breaks, a string or a glass jar, a beating vital than any organ and you're oblivious to it. My heart is an underground river silently carving its way into anything that does not resemble the happiness I am talking about. Happiness so full, so perfect  it rivals the way my body fits yours, how I cover the whole of your length. No current seeping, no light permeating into the space you have filled in my arms forever locked, and never letting go.

a prose for a smile

YOU have quelled my anxious soul, until there is only lightness, until I'm suspended in space caught between the curl of your lips and the imagined warmth over the stretch of my skin where your last touch had been.

i write for no one

IF you think the words I weave are for you to wear, you can walk naked now. They have never been yours and never will be. You are not significant enough to upset me nor matter enough to stand for even just a blot, to push me to push the pen, earnestly, till my fingers bleed. You think this is for you, but really, it is not.

there we had been

WE HAVE BEEN LISTENING to the same song, in secret, beneath sheets of silence, layers of longing under the cover of night wet with rain that we love, that puts out the forest fires of our fears, and muffles the sounds of a heart thrashing, desperately, hidden behind every thunderclap. Listen, my love. Listen to those distant heartbeats. The song will end soon, and your breath in my ear will be the only thing that could lull me to sleep.

the chase

I chase the light that gives colors to the sad sunset. Beautiful as always, forever out of reach. You.

once

THERE IS NO WAY of knowing if the cat is alive or dead because of one simple fact: we did not open the box. There is no such box now, or a cat, or any metaphor that could stand for whatever this is that we have. The comet has already streaked past us, closing out all posibilities, permanently, leaving nothing in its wake but us looking at the night sky, under a different set of stars, thoughts to the same sad epilogue: You and I collided, once. Our paths crossed, but never joined.

poetry

And poetry will be our language,
     Shelter ourselves with it,
     Like thick blankets at winter's peak;
     Kisses indelible on our skin.
     We will talk, live, love down to the last word
     Until there is only silence,
     Where words become infinite.

the spark

WHY a spark? A spark that fades, a fleeting firework? Why can't it be an eternal sunset over a still sea, fingers of waves gently crashing at your feet; an abundant blue sky instead of wispy clouds?

shelter

I HAVE ONLY ONE image of you left: You gazing out a car window, almost a shadow against the afternoon sun. Your gaze a firefly I could not catch, not yet. And my fingertips fully awake to the blood pulsing through my hand you held in yours. Each beat an irrational wish to haul you to me, kiss you for a moment, let go. I could make a home right there, in that soft hollow of your neck, I thought. I didn't know then that such a place existed, a shelter hundred dreams away from anywhere. And yet there we were. You were so close I could see through your cracks, find meaning to the words, sadness, joy swirling violently from beneath your skin. It was beautiful. You were, you are. I ached for I had been looking for something I was scared to find, and finally found it, in you. You. And now I wonder: how could I be so afraid?


You looking out the window: this is all I have of you now, your only definition. I will think of you, remember you, half of a face riddled with hope and a gentle smile blunting lines of loneliness I have come to know, until time itself forgets and memory turns into a mere trick of light in the gathering darkness of our story at its close.

yet another year

2015.


What a year it had been, of comings and goings, of being, unbecoming; all things leading to this: I walk into a new stretch of time, ever wondering, loving, under soft rain and explosions in the sky.