Flipping empty pages,
letters yet to be inked
and lines yet to be formed.
Fingertips feeling every surface
on each page, every corner,
searching for familiar spaces
of home to return to,
and maybe to conjure
thoughts she refused to share,
trapping the mind, a loop of angry why’s.
Flipping the same pages,
quiet and still, eyes glare out the window,
but the mind travels through ghosted places
of exchanged I love you’s, I miss you’s.
What page were she in?
What page was I then?
The mind rummages through signs,
since when were we not on the same page?
The eyes cannot cry, but the heart throbs
for the self, to exhale, “Let go.”
Flipping pages void of ink,
thirsty for the essence of home,
the hand dances as it carves away
a facade of anger and frustration
into unsaid words the heart wishes
be inscribed onto the vast pages of the Universe
and so I said “Alyssa,” my pen trembling
as it bleeds your name, mingled with droplets
of little worlds, of yesterday’s once shared,
now being set free, the mind and heart finding a home
on this quenched page
I wrote, “Make sure to eat.”
Andrey Jane P. Caridad is a graduate of Bachelor of Arts in English (major in Creative Writing) from the University of the Philippines Mindanao in the year 2018 with a latin honor of cum laude. She currently resides in the Minahasa Utara region of North Sulawesi, Indonesia. She teaches English in the elementary section of Manado Independent School.