Poems

If you give him your heart
and he doesn’t take it,
you do not lose love.
In fact, you have more than you
started out with, don’t you?
It is yours to keep.

Ang matag hatag-bawi dili gyud muhunom
Ang tanang mga balod sulod dili mahurot

And maybe, your love
is not the shell you never see again
when the boy wants to take the ocean home,
press his ear against it
just to remember
because he will not be staying.

Dungug mo ba sa dughan mo?
Dungug mo ba sa dughan mo?
Dungug mo ba sa dughan mo?
Dungug mo ba sa dughan mo?

Maybe, your love
is the ocean.
Even when the boy leaves,
he will only take with him
what it was like to swim,
float, dive, or drown.

Kay ikaw kadagatan
Pagkalalum
Walay kahumanan
Nagapadayon
Sa paghigugma
Di papugong
Hangtud sa hangtud

But you will always have this ocean
coming for you
even when you send it away.

It swells and crashes it your chest
because you are beautiful,
wide open space.
And you are rightly out of breath
that there is so much of you
ready to be seen and
already worthy.

Kay ikaw kadagatan
Pagkalalum
Walay kahumanan
Nagapadayon
Sa paghigugma
Di papugong
Hangtud sa hangtud

Your ocean, still there.

Still being love.

Even when there’s no one you’re in love with
and no one in love with you
to give it to.

You’re trying to explain how much
it really hurts.
You think that if
you can empty your body
with words,
you will stop feeling.
But words are empty suitcases
and you are an entire closet of truth,
piles and piles of truth
with never enough luggage.

So let the pain be unexplainable.
Admit that your eloquence
is a window view of an airplane.
And everything you want to say
is the sky.
Goodbye will be the tiny black dot
at the end of your last sentence.
Even if
you mean it to be the unfamiliar
country you go to.
Write anyway.

Finish it.

It will not heal you.
But as your heart drifts
like continents across the world,
language will be that one small boat
you row to find yourself waving
on all separate shores
when everything else
is changing.

I imagine this is what it feels like
to be in the pit of my stomach.
I do not need to close my eyes
to be almost sure
that there is no darkness deeper than living
sometimes.

It’s like I’m standing on the edge
of my loved one’s forgetting,
and I am one more day of not showing up
until no one invites me to dinner anymore.

Somewhere my mother switches off a night light
and I’m in a city too far to call for her.
Every silhouette of a tree branch
is a hand letting go.
Every person
easily becomes the shadow in the hallway,
before my bedroom door
completely shuts.

I know that there is nothing in the dark.

But in the dark,
my mind is the sleepless ache
that echoes within itself
a howling hunger to be loved
like I love.

It is the far side of the moon facing away
from everywhere else that I’ve been held

until I am unreachable in my loneliness.

I am afraid because
when there is nothing else to see,
I see the nightmares.
From the people I will lose,
to why it is easy to let me go,

and I can’t look away.

I do not want to be the bad friend.
I do not want to be the daughter you don’t really know.
I do not want to be the insecure lover.
I do not want to be the room without doors,
and without windows,
and the one inside of it,
gasping for light.

You’re washing my hair
and asking me what I want for dinner.
Tonight, there are the tiniest suds on your glasses.
I make sure the bathwater is extra foamy
because I’m no goddess naked.
I could marry you tomorrow in Kansas, you know.
The only enemy you’ll wake up to would be
a stubborn wife
and all there is to fight about
is whose turn it is to give our future dog a bath.

But there is always the villain
more important to defeat than the last,
always the civilians to save.
Are you okay, Clark?
Let me be your phone booth.
When everyone is running away from disaster,
I’ll be shelter to your coat and tie

and I’ll protect you.
Especially now, you in your sweatpants
falling in love faster than a speeding bullet.
A man, not at all, made of steel.
A man of blankets, and pillows,
and lips that taste like good night and good morning
all in one cup.

I really don’t know how you could be
in love with someone who can’t fly
but only you, love, can hear my heartbeat
from the other side of the world.
It is the heartbeat that you listen for.
So I’ll be the few seconds’ delay you need to
diffuse the bomb,
the best person to dispose of Kryptonite,
the sucker punch bad guys get for messing with you,
and for plotting to destroy the world.
And just in case,
I’ll be your easiest rescue.

But I look forward to
after you’ve tried to save the day,
and you fly back to my apartment.
In that instance, news stories are being written
about this incredible hero from another planet.
They don’t know how simple your ‘extraordinary’ is.

We should build a monument
of us in the living room. We’ll sit on a couch.
You with your feet up, an arm around my shoulder
while I’ll mend your red cape.

This is hard.

I am not used to writing with this hand.
My fingers do not know how to hold a pen this way.
People think it obvious that this is not what I’m used to.
But I do not stop because this is how I love you, dearest.
Yes, this takes more time than the usual.
It takes twice the effort
and I don’t know if I can ever get through being awkward.

But I will not stop because this is how
I love you, dearest.
I will continue writing with what seems like
a broken hand
until letter after l e t t e r ,
I might actually get b e t t e r.
And sentence after sentence
you find yourself in the skewed image
of how I’m going to try,
to learn,
to say…
I love you.

It doesn’t look pretty at all.
Not like the ‘i-love-yous’ you’ve read.
Dearest, I am not so attractive too.
Not like you.
I am bent and out of shape,
and never quite the ideal.

But anyway,
I love you.

Without vanity.
Without following straight lines.
Without trend.
Without wanting to be perfect.

Just that…
I love you.