Be that motel in the outskirts of history.
Hold a vacant room for us on the rainy Tuesdays
of adulthood. Let us sit on your bar stools
whenever we’ve forgotten the name
of a stranger who’s shown us a minor kindness.
Let us converse with no one but ourselves.
Account for the selves that once were alive.
Then tell them of the world and its newest stories.
Of the infinite shapes of sky,
the quiet evenings that await,
and the love songs we still sing in our sleep
we have yet to write.
Here’s an old one that I just realized I’ve not shared.
Reaching T_______
On a train stop to T______ I discovered
the smallest freedoms: footsteps
of a kitten running toward the station exit
right when the car doors slide open,
a chime over the speaker system
cut off by our immediate departure,
a woman on the end of the train
on the speaker, repeating thrice
the next stop. I thought:
who makes a living like that—
who spends their whole lives
announcing where they’re headed
to anyone who’d listen? I stood at the next stop
whispered a name to myself, thrice,
walked across the platform, and waited
for a train going the opposite way.
The cold has a funny way of making you move
into and out of places—cities
or rooms, pockets or scarves.
All of them, if the cold is uncommon enough.
All I know is when I’ve returned
to Manila, all I will take
home is this winter
in a nameless town
of only noun, number, and color:
Lone Black Orchid, they’d call it.
Or Teawater. Or a Field of Cranes.
In whichever of these places, I believe,
hides the human soul: a newly opened bookstore
in a quiet district, flowers by the open door,
snow on the doorstep, a waving gold cat,
awaiting its first customer.
Already I can see the cobblestones and the yet nameless shoes
I’ll have to wear. I see the steps I take in multiples of two. And I see
the hundred kilometers of questions: Does God intend each of us
to walk far enough to graze the skin of the earth? And by the way,
who am I? Out of the office shoes, having erased the people I love
from whatever logbook the heart keeps. Who would I be?
Had I been born in a country that, instead, curses the cold weather
under the fog of their breaths? We have forgotten. To survive,
we must take all the downhill paths. But isn’t that all a bit too beautiful?
Nope. My feet are beaten. A week without a shower walking along
Galician hills. A clarification of the important. All I want is movement
and laughter. But are we ever prepared for those modest servings
of being inescapably human, and still always plotting an escape?
Look, for 400 years those builders carried their tools and climbed
the pillars of that church to clean the faces of those who have shown
in their life a kindness we can worship. Some of their grandchildren
must still persist in these cold winters. The man who poured us wine
in the hostel and told us about his daughter who will one day return
to that candlelit room away from the snow. The old woman who took
our photographs, and us of her, all the while only talking in secrets.
Even her ex-husband who, once in his life, must have helped a driver
change a tire, who may have just misinterpreted what it means
to love, as we have all done. I want to believe we can all be right.
That this is all right. How our feet are carving questions into the earth,
addressed to God, or to whoever is watching. It may be him. It may be
no one. Who knows. Already, I’ve begun walking. Already, I cannot stop.
Outside, the monsoon sings
its violent song. The little feet of children
are plunging into puddles, in pursuit
of thieves. Here’s a joke: First, I felt pity,
whereas the Martians who may be observing
must think different. The human inside me
wants to take off his shirt and display
an unsophisticated happiness to the Habagat,
to imagine an entire city that appears
only when it rains; to think of Manila divided
into new districts by new rivers
and noble, laughing lords. The ensuing wars
and chaos. I want to hold that sword again
that I sheathed in a drawer
in some childhood home. The one
that appeared on weekends with my father
in the cliffs and lava pools
of the hardware store.
But who the fuck will clean these clothes?
Who defeats my current evil nemesis named
Wet Car Seat? How will I explain
to this woman across the table
that I’m not crazy? That I was stabbing
the imaginary ninja behind her
who was about to snap her neck,
and that she should sleep with her hero?
The future of neckties and coffee has arrived.
It’s everything we imagined. We can only pretend
to be the ski-masked robber, shot
by the toddler across the room
with a gun whose name ends in “2000.”
Never again the good guys.
Once, I believed the Mayans. An adolescent
in his pajamas, dozing off to the Discovery
Channel, past bedtime. At the age, precisely,
when bedtimes were past their own bedtimes,
and they were all sailing into that old horizon
like the best of our unremembered dreams.
That was the first I saw, too, of the country
of desire—how there are places
that can be close and far, both at once.
A never-ending park that succeeds
a never-ending sea. My greatest question
was an old one: Will we get there before the End?
Will I love? Will I hold a girl’s neck and kiss her
and like it? Blessed, I feel, to be wrong.
Where I stand now is not the brink
of the discovery of love. I have lived
in that city. Battled with its coin laundries.
Eaten the noodles by the station. Passed out
in its train. That city and its war
of urban life has sunk. I’ve prayed
at the grave of old loves that vaguely smell
like that dog we all grew up with
who we couldn’t pet one last time
before they entered that cold room.
Look, the evening is sweeping the sky
to make room for morning. What comes next
is coming next. Here we all are. Survivors.
Loveless and newly young. Entire histories
of galaxies unfolding above us.
The world, repeating that trick it mastered
only yesterday. Spinning.
The mind wanders a winter field.
The sun a distant glow.
A dying star. Heaven somehow
only a well-lit disappointment.
I hear a voice: Perhaps yours. Reading
a sentence from an English textbook,
telling the story of a farm town,
houses arranged like the Lord’s
set of toys. Surely, there’s a reason
why I’m here. A lost little piece
of paper, with a list of those things you do.
In a haystack in some barn, in a town
we can call whatever we want.
How you tie your hair into buns
when you go out. How you kneel
and pray for better weather.
How you plan on keeping warm
hands walking a windy avenue.
Here I am, looking under the hay
and looking again. A short gospel
in your storybook, open
only in the city of your sleep.
Not searching for a particular thing.
Looking away, breathing,
then looking back at you.
Reciting a poem
that changes a little each day.
It doesn’t mean the great fire of love
as Jack Gilbert calls it
blinds you any less. You only see
the book from the chapters.
Identify the lies you wrote
to yourself in the diary
in the drawer. Every woman
a goddess of something.
Every harvest of kisses bountiful
until it isn’t. Count the times
you’ve fallen in love by your fingers,
then by your toes. Chart it
in a board meeting of past selves
in the most strategic hiding place
of your heart. Maybe
the back of a notebook.
Read through every poem.
Every renaissance
for every girl who touched you
the right way.
Fill in the ledgers of the past.
But don’t forget the great fire.
Let it consume everything.
And get out alive again.
