Six years ago, these hands wrote your name on pages
after blank pages then colored it with the brightest fireworks
of January first and February fourteenth; like a quark soup
of admiration brewing a new artificial universe of bliss
then a sudden Big Bang and falling for a cloudless night
when the stars are out to trace lines in the sky to form
your face as the newest constellation along with metaphors
equivalent to “Can you be my girlfriend?” and “Yes, I love you too.”
Five years ago, these lips whispered Shakespeare’s love sonnets
within shared breaths where inhales and exhales rhymed;
when at every exchange of air from hope filled lungs
our tongues were mutual in longing for each other’s that tasted
like wines aged to serve one and one purpose only – to salivate
sacred liquors that flowed from breasts of euphoric gods.
This skin was yours to conquer with satin soft touches,
where surrenders were automatic; where losing was a glorious resolve.
Four years ago, these eyes wondered in awe at the morning light
caught in your snow white cheeks until your theatre curtain eyelids
open up to another day dreaming in a sunrise warmed bed
of promises of thirty-minute forever’s and eternal first times.
These feet wandered about the seven wonders of your hips,
the wake after the earthquake that destroyed
five Catholic churches in an apartment for one;
the plains where harvests of “You are my everything” sprouted
as plentiful as the abundance of what was once Fertile Crescent’s.
Three years ago, these arms held on to a thin thread trust and these palms
felt how brittle honesty can be when distance didn’t mean peace
like the white walls in my mother’s hospital room but only silences
after questions patterned to “Hoy! Naunsa na ka diha?” and time
bound assurances, “Paabot lang; mahuman lang ni nga problema
magpuyo na ko diha. Pramis!” and other frets frolicking about the four corners
of what was once we called home, with the cracks on its foundations
multiplied by infidelity born out of “I can no longer stand missing you
every day anymore.” On your other side of our world, the wallpapers
were peeling off while your room was emptied to welcome a new pseudo
infinite; painting the walls with the colours of a name that wasn’t of mine.
Two years ago, this liver had to survive long and multiple
episodes of misery induced alcohol intakes, drinking the past
as if every shot were one by one the strands of your hair
that were soft with nostalgia and black as the cruelty of fate.
These kidneys suffered sleepless days to work sadness off,
this stomach thinned from gastric juices over a diet bordering
to an ulcer of you and anticipated slow suicide over hunger
while waiting on these knees that fell hard to the ground
at every begging for a miracle that you’ll come back,
and this head, in the midst of everything, went mad!
One year ago, these hands were just hands without a reason
or a name to embellish except to write “bitch, you left me
when I needed you most.” These lips dried out from screaming
“Dili ko bitter!” and “Kulcob! Kulcob mong tanan!”
These eyes saw only sepia colored sheets on cold lonely beds
and greyed out apartment walls with no frames to hang,
with no color to match but only blues and solitude. This right foot
walked towards Polomolok while the left I have to pull out
from a grave with your name on the niche.
Now these hands just wrote this poem.
These kidneys, liver, stomach and knees are all doing fine.
And this head, this mind, knows very well that the dead
is supposed to remain dead
and that you
[in time and space]
the previous universe,
is just and ever changing feeling.
—
Darsi performed ‘A Brief History of Body Parts’ at LitOrgy 6, held at Cork and Barrel in Obrero last month.