piphi

*

 Kath’s  capture

we can talk about breasts that sag, an old woman bathing at 3pm and she touches her nipples like dimples of her grandchild. old and hopeful. we can, talk about, lust. lust for departures and rolling stores. rock and roll damnation and the artsy feeling you have when you urinate. we may not agree on a lot of things. like Vonnegut and Amelia Earhart, bananaque and lasagna, atheism and thrift shops. sometimes, you feel like the city where you grow up. you brace change so fast that sometimes the ancestral houses and the attics weep on your toes. most of the time you, call me beautiful especially when i open my eyes, rub them like a little boy and grin with my hair erecting like morning stalls on the sidewalks. one day, we promised to live by the sea. we will visit the capital on Sundays and teach kids. You promised to cook arroz caldo, i pledged to boil the eggs. as you know, i am great at boiling…eggs. 

there is politics in your sleep. i stare at you for hours and walk around greek city states, touching the bricks with my hands. when i told you about how i really like looking back, you answered me:

“it is because you cried when you felt like crying, 

when you felt like falling in-love, you did too.

you left when you had to.

you danced and leaped in the rain.”

you smiled when i told you that i sobbed over that defeated boxer. i sobbed when his son hugged him, he was beaten and wounded. then you whispered, “it’s like that.”

maybe, the world does not know you that well. for the rest, you are a secret that tickles their fancy. but i am glad i know you. you are alive and you believe in love.

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