distances

Relative Distance

by Jaime An Lim

That night you finally said

Somehow we do not speak to each other anymore

We watched the bedroom ceiling catch the bold circle of light

From the stiff dangling wire

The narrow strips of shadow between board and board

Sharp as demarcation lines

My arms held you quite close

A toss of hair and I was assailed by vague memories of desire

What did you expect? I said

While the repetitive sea filled the room with its sad and tired replies

Later, turning our backs

We found a sense of loss between our touching skins

Wide as a gulf of emptiness

Where we launched our separate journeys to separate seas...

Skin

by Lyde Gerard Villanueva

I will whisper your name

to the gecko for it will remember

you with exactnessas it utters

its call for fixity of memory.

At twilight, you will find the gecko

in your ceiling, looking at you

with its peculiar eyes.

You will try to move away, but it will still find you.

With your trembling hands, you mapped

the dots in the gecko's skin,

finding familiar specs

in your greening pores.

*via lamentations of terrible beauty and easter

I have never been much of a poet.

But I can relate, for so many different reasons aside from the obvious ones.

Words are not supposed to caress strangers' emotions.

Some do not like the intrusion.