(for Bartek)
Go,
Because I need to erase you.
Don’t haunt me with your pictures
in Rudnik and Sanem.
Don’t make me remember
that I had dreamed of walking in the desolate streets
of your hometown
with you holding my hand.
Go,
Because while it is perpetually summer in Davao,
I don’t need to touch snow
to feel winter, the chill I felt
as I look into your dead eyes,
“Do widzenia” as our last words
shattering me like frosted glass
and you not planning to even carry
a shard of me.
Go,
Because I don’t want to remember
all of your warm smiles,
all dreams of our fingertips touching together,
all the postcards you sent me,
or the printed plane ticket to Davao.
They have all have been hidden
in the deepest layer of my cabinet
locked away into oblivion.
Yes, go,
Forget me,
Because the flowers in Davao
do not need winter, nor spring
to grow and
to have a new life.
Glyd Jun Arañes works as a linguist at Appen. He was a fellow at the 2010 ADDU Writers Workshop and the 2011 Davao Writers Workshop.