abegail,
        you came in this orb
   a yellow bell in its bush,
                flourishing
you are beautiful,
      in the most delicate,
most demure but loud

you were a friend
         and i see you in every
wilting flower
     that i pass on streets
  because why does the world
only choose      the beautiful,
       in their most tender age,
                 to wither and fall

maybe we’re from different worlds
or from different time loops
and our souls just got lost
into being born in this cosmos.

i dreamt of you clad in warlike armor.
perhaps you were meant to be born
in a dystopian realm
where mynah birds are aliens
and you never saw
what the sky really looks like
in the absence of explosions.

because that is what you are,
your skin reeks of angst
your stare is a carbine
ready to point shoot
i would shoot their mouths
until they splash red, you said.

and i thought of me growing up
not knowing the smell of longing
because how wonderful would that be?
to live in a city devoid
of longing for peace
to remain young, walking
through an endless hallway of trees
without the eyes of scavengers
observing our bodies
forming an entity.

maybe we’re not meant to be
and maybe we are
but not here
where we hide like the cicadas
on grass awaiting the moonbeams
to blanket the whole town
of living saints who tell tales
about angels who burn cities
stained with people of our kind, loving.

my man, god-like
no longer must you please me
your skin the color of dark amber
already has my eyes
and your breath, a scent of jasmine
turns the ylang-ylangs a stranger

no longer must you wonder
whether or not my heart
only yearns for yours
because i’m always yours
even when you turn my bones
to brittle everytime a spear
slung across your back for a hunt

maybe, in a universe opposite to ours, the mothers never warned us about the looming threats  of our potential demise  by stray bullets. we would have been raised unaware of the stench of blood  that have dried on roads. murders could be a stranger and any person could lead a village without the thought  of having him killed in plain sight.

because in this town, where flowerbeds are a kaleidoscope along the roads, where banyan trees serve the children a home, where the sky is always  a cloudless blue, we fear no monsters lurking even in the shade  of red harvest moon, but men in mask who turned pistols as toys.

when the sky turned black and we see red circles blazing from warlike planes,
when rivers streamed deep red and we see no children running,
when the air smelled like gunfires and we see nothing but the wilting of flowers,
when small boys turned daggers into toys and we hear nothing but the shaking of the grounds,

know that my presense is always in the scent of orchids that get lost through your nostrils,
know that we breathe in the same country and i would cross seas even when they became a pool of corpses,
know that i will be the same child who kissed you under the moonbeams

meet me
at a roof of an abandoned store. there, we will linger until the sinking of the sun, reddening the sky. we will watch the people below passing akin to a colony of weaver ants, eager to find something to relish.

hug me
tight with your arms as the sun, a zircon red, turns our bodies a luminary akin to a tribunal of fireflies.  we won’t let go until we see no flower bed of asters and we hear nothing but the singing of cicadas.

kiss me
on my lips, a soft ripe mango. lick them. bite them until they turn crimson. show them how your tongue resembles a slender snake as the mothers, down below us, watching, perform sign of the cross.

beauty, as we call it, is seen upon the laughter of a child who plays marbles under the morning sunbeams

a dog that, amidst the scorching midday sun, trails its master selling sorbetes to the kids who wear smiles and bruises on their knees

the crowing of roosters and the chirping of birds while the falling leaves of yellow acacia listen as they gracefully descend to the land

beauty, as we call it, is already seen only when our eyes see no war but peace