There you will find kindness, and silence.

for you, flying ipis

——

Dear ghost, wherever you might reside,
whether it’s in cupboards or the guest room
or the shadows cast by the French door
as it swings open for afternoon tea:

Please understand it’s nothing personal
and that even in such domestic matters
only the strong survive.

This house may be ill-suited for angels
bearing swords of fire, but I am here
with mop and rubber gloves and an army
twenty brown cardboard boxes strong,
attacking these spaces with the impunity
of the desperate. Do you know what it means
to have irreconcilable differences?

It means I’ve had enough. I’ll not have you
settling like a fine grey dust over the good
upholstery, clinging like lacework of cobwebs
to the corners of each room. These hands
are more real than the imprints your feet
left in the carpet, than your face in the hallway
mirror, superimposed over mine.

for Deirdre

——

Sometimes I think it isn’t the words
we fight against, but their impossibility,

that which clatters down through
our fingers into gaps in the floor.

I’m told silence is the world’s gift
to girls with tight lips and austere eyes—

the truth is, too many words going unsaid
is nothing to smile about. You and I tire

of ink-constellations, blossoming dark
on the sides of our hands. Tell me about

yourself. Write me a letter, if we can’t
find it in ourselves to write poems.

You push a piece of paper across the table:
Here are the things I have no names for.

My brother’s eyes. The cracks in my roof, the rain
that there collects, how I shut my ears against

drowning in the sound. My mother’s hair, touched
by a sun I’ve never seen. I answer: A warmth,

morning coffee and fresh bread. What it means
to listen to the sea roar from inside a shell.

The angels we wrestle with, and the heavens
they leave us for. When I try to write a poem

my fingers wonder—How heavy are words,
that we place them with such care in these lines

in these pages in each other’s hands?
If you read them you may hear my name,

how the sounds link arms, an imagined
voice in your real ear. Perhaps then we’ll find

that we’d become real without realizing—
to one another, if not in the pages of books.

Please be quiet you said     softly, without
a single crack     smooth as polished glass
as black stone.     What for I said      listen
I’m as much here as you—     Please be reasonable
can’t you do this     one thing for me     can’t we talk
in the morning?     And I said How bright
does it have to be     for you to look at my face?

This was always what happened     to the words I tried
to give you     alive     issuing from my mouth
breathing my breath     dead in your hands
because you loved the silence     infinitely more.
I remember     you never did like storms,

I remember the flowers on your curtains     yellow
and lavender in every season     drawn shut against
the world’s wind. Outside     the surf     white water
blowing itself apart     black rock faces     worn to mirror-
smoothness     clear     and empty as the little I imagine
of your eyes. You would never admit to seeing     outlines
left behind by the sea’s pounding      you said once
all love is being     the destroyer     never the destroyed.

Now I’m only writing     home     to tell you
no closing windows can effect     a change in the weather
and every day is overcast     so far away from where
you are. It’s a welcome change      I’m not sorry
what I am is sick     to death     of all the silence.

But now that I’m gone      my voice will stay      behind
to disturb you     throwing itself against your door
shattering     into the cracks in the concrete
in the shape of a body     you recognize. Here
in the words you refuse     to read, are the contours

of my hands     upon your heart: I demand     that you beat.
That noise means     you are alive.

after Mary Oliver

——

My spirit undresses itself
before you like this: 
in the heart of the afternoon,
for the price of a cup of coffee. 

What can you fit
into an eggshell?

The slow, feathered pulse
of a heart before
it is born. A handful
of hollow bones
like fingers intertwining,
dreaming one day
maybe, wings.

Inside an embrace,
the same—

Your fingers intertwining
in my bird’s-nest hair,
encircling arms, your body
cradling mine. The assurance
of your heartbeat as it falls
against my shoulder.
Long, sweet sleep.

for Mama, in the spirit of utang na loob, every which way

——

The last time we spoke, you said you hated my hair:

           if you’re just going to let it
           go wild you should cut it
           mukha kang bruha sweetheart 
           ano ba ang tigas ng ulo mo

as though my head were baked earth, an overgrown
garden of wildflowers—which are all called “wildflowers”
because they aren’t pretty enough for names of their own.

Meanwhile, I was burning holes in your good chiffon blouse
with my eyes and all the fires of teenage angst. I said:

           well sorry
           what cure would you
           suggest for being sixteen
           other than growing older?

But since that conversation, Mother, I have turned twenty
and I’m tired of remembering all the virtues
I didn’t have the sense to inherit. Know that today
I spent all my money on a haircut by Miss Elsa
at the parlor across the way. I told her:

           cut it away but gently
           and in one stroke
           treat it almost as a small thing
           whose heart has stopped beating

Tonight, I will (finally) tie the locks back with a ribbon,
tuck them into a brown paper bag. I’ll send it in the mail
across the sea—there people can use it
to make dying children feel beautiful,

           and you can imagine
           you have a beautiful daughter.

I wonder how many times I’m going to have to repurpose this poem until it feels whole.

——

wild places
after Susan Kinsolving

I have let my clothes wash up against the rocks
by the beach,
where they gather sand in the folds that chafe
most closely
against skin. I am running to leave you behind,
knowing love
only as that which trails behind me with every
step, bleeding
all too quietly into the sand. Nothing embraces
here; nothing
can. Water collapses closeness, and I am only
so much broken
coral to the ocean. The tide will take me without
asking first—
what it carries away in the crescents of much colder
arms than yours,
where to find a heartbeat with pale lips in the hollow
of my throat,
what name it can cry as waves recede from shore.
It is enough
to say you are not here. You are not here. You are
not here.

for Kate

——

i.

What do I remember?
Only the most fragile things.

A broom made of sticks
to fight the wind with, to gather
leaves as they fall. The crunching sound
they make under eager feet.—
the only time white sneakers
are stronger than the world.

Deep breaths exhaling
into a hundred soap bubbles.
Metal bedposts, paper lanterns
hanging—brittle crayon-colors
in a dusty white room.

ii.

Pizza next week, I promise.
We’ll make it by hand, like real Italians do.

iii.

What remains?

White space. Indrawn air
softly released—once, and then
no more. Remembered smiles,
lovingly gathered, in the box
of a photograph.
Your firefly-eyes.

What remains, I reach for
fearfully. Do not fly away,
nor crumble when I curl
my fingers in. Let me keep
at least these fragile things.

iv.

In return, my gifts to you
are these words, crayon-scribbles
on pink paper slips, a single
helium balloon with its string
like a kite’s tail.

I am hoping these gifts
reach you, at least as far
as the sun. I am hoping
you will see the colors, if not
the words—if not the words.

i.

There is your mouth pressed
against the cold contours
of a cellular phone,
mumbling I love you
to an answering
machine.

ii.

And look, here I am, preoccupied
with the polite examination
of more public I love you’s—

graffiti on train walls,
lines of poetry,
the press of shoulders
against shoulders
as the city rattles by.

iii.

But you know, where we’re from,
even words have problems
with the traffic. I’m sorry
yours lost their way,

dropping away from
telephone-walls,
to brush warmly against
the shell of my ear—

the strangest ever
accidental 
collision.

iv.

Now, look,
here I am, rooted
to the stranger-space
that was closest beside you.

This is my arm around
the back of your
empty seat.

It isn’t much
but you can give me 
your loneliness 
to enclose in 
flower-dusted china
curves, to exchange
for the warmth

I breathe to you

in soft curls, in the way 
my shape adapts 
itself to your palm 

we can pretend
sweet breath
brushing your cheek

we can pretend
the memory of hands
turned up in yours

holding
being held