It might be too late.
There’s a sore already squeezing my spine,
Budging every disc, perhaps, still disobeying
My brain’s commandment: imprison the memory
That summons the tenderness in my eyes
That’s been sleeping, happily dormant,
For centuries
Slightly more but never less.
Too late, the vultures bathed too long
In puff clouds, spiraling and hovering
Through the voiceless storms
Hates dead deer for supper.
Too late, the daddy longs legs
Garrisoned in our ceiling’s corner
Made a colony out of its eggs,
Spawns growing larger than the other.
Our fingers in cold blanket
Tips locked in, skin-to-skin, pulled apart
Still feeding the beak of an aircraft
Left alone in an evening trip, blissed
With nothing but the distant supernovas
Wrecking no havoc, but screeching for company.
I sink deep in the raggedness of your palm
prints. Breathing your exhales
My illusory longing now appears thin
Together with the soft flesh wrapped around
My hand,
electrified. As the clock’s hands clap
For this, I might as well forget
For this should dwindle my sharpness
in retracing back my footsteps.
All roads are painted in pitch,
And, also, are, ironically,
caused by the same one
Who burnt a lamp
That led to this
Moment.
—
Marc Jeff Lañada was born and lived almost his entire life in General Santos City. He is an incoming 4th year BA Communication Arts student in University of the Philippines Mindanao.