Your parting kiss fell
like a mote of dust leaving
a bruise in my heart.
~ ~ ~
I still dare not move
the empty cup of coffee
you marked with your lips.
~ ~ ~
Her fragrance lingers—
dancing in the room, bottled
by the falling rain.
~ ~ ~
Years on, I’d still flinch
from hearing the song she sang
on the night we met.
~ ~ ~
A room full of stillness
Like volumes upon volumes of books—our words,
the ones we left unsaid—in a beautiful, lost library.
Gabriel is a graduate of UP Mindanao’s Creative Writing Program. He currently works as a web content writer.