You stand on the edge of a cliff
and wail a storm about
a lover, imagining those muscles-
they seem to ripple all over that body.
He rode a horse into the evening light
and you follow suit, clutching an insignificant hem,
leaving that sleeve over one heaving breast.
Now you clutch your husband’s hand,
once again, in that billowing white
you like to overrate, standing ‘fore an altar.
It would surprise noone if
you start running off, in your floaty sheets, elbows
the angle for when picking up fights,
shake your hair against the wind
while green fields and hilltops grow
in the city, for you and all that running in white.
Later tonight, you will dig your buttocks
with the balls of your feet,
and your wrist will lie limp on the edge of a bed
with the crocheted spread and its simplex whorls
that echo your curled lashes.
You will later return to the cliff
and wail the name you can’t put a face on
and return pale, dying, on a poster bed
with the crochet spread and you, in the queen anne’s lace,
elastic around the wrist, dying,
pale, fretting, in the white you were so good
at running in fields with.
—-
Zola Gonzalez-Macarambon is a poet and visual artist based in Cagayan de Oro.