Map
When Things Go Bad
When Things Go Bad
Imagine if we had to return memories;
We’d draw lines between what you can keep and what I can’t.
Like hugs you give me when I wake you up to bring me home—this is carefully packed in my box,
But the melody of that song we played during the 13-hour traffic jam is yours. (We were in your car, after all.)
We’d toss the bad ones out the door---
The ones of my friends calling you a thing
And we would fight and fidget over the good ones and maybe play a tug of war with them
Like the memory of us scrambling up the side of a mountain until it tears up from too much dissection and is ruined anyway. Fingerprinted, crumpled and tossed out.
Fallen flat, we'd step over them and fight over who ruined what:
--held hands forming hearts shadowing Boracay sand.
--the full moon pool, your silvery tears.
--airconditioned love, warming my feet between your calves.
We end up owning nothing.
From corner to corner, the imprint of you disappears.
Here, by this white cursive post by the solarium where you carved our names with a Bic ballpen,
Is a white stream of light in my eyes
The fog blurring my periphery transforms into a shelf that is beside your bedroom door.
I pluck *uck bits out of conversations, because I am unwilling to touch them. I would have holes in my stream of words. I do not talk straight, at you, because there is you missing.