She's Me. You're You. Let's Go Live.

No one else has held me underneath the moon like she has

My heart sits inside a box hundreds of miles outside my chest. The sky is filled with smoke. A red sun looks down upon me as I drive into the desert and can only think of you sitting behind white walls alone but not alone left to your thoughts. You call me and say, "I miss you." "Can I call you tomorrow?" "Do you think I'm gonna be okay?" "Do you think I'll go home today?" I hope so.

that I was always thinking of you

taste

Just wear the dress. Sweat naked in the summer, in the possibilities of it all. Let the mango drip down your chin, sucia. Drink the goddamn coffee whenever you feel like it. Go as fast and as far as you can. Take this feeling and give it a place to bleed. Watermelon heart all swollen with love. There are always more arms to wrap yourself in, fruit to eat. Take a lover for every day of the week if you must. A love like this will eat you alive. A love like this will either kill you or keep you running, but it's why we come back. To have a love that leaves a stain. To have a love that reeks and snarls. To love a toad. You must cut it out though. You must build a new house. You must dip your fingers into the mirror instead and let the mango drip messy and sticky. Make your own heart swell for once in your life.

Do you ever dream about the mountains stitched onto you? Do you ever miss the summers there? Do you ever think about rice paddies and banana leaves? How did it feel to cross the ocean? Were you carried in a bag? Or were you held the whole time? Did you come over in a box, a small coffin? Or did you think of it like a bahay kubo, a little home on stilts? Did you find a place for yourself here? Did the home they brought you to ever feel like home? Or was it an eternal eclipse, like Bakunawa had finally succeeded in swallowing the moon? Do you like to be worn? Do you like to be shown off? How did it feel to be born from the most beautiful brown hands in the world? To have danced underneath the moonlight? To have walked up and down the mountains a hundred times? A thousand? A million? Since time immemorial? Do you ever dream about the mountains stitched onto you? The rice paddies? The banana leaves? How long has it been since you were there? Would you even recognize it now? I hope one day we can return together.

Piano keys / freckles like starlight on a dark night / the Ulali CD skipping on the same track each time / the same track each time / the scratch that came from trying to hold it so gentle / the scratch that came from dropping it on the carpet / i’m sorry / i don’t remember if it was me or not / to be honest / so much time has passed since then / but I still remember the boombox sitting on top of the TV / the bunny ears / the click sound of the dial we used to change the channel / Ulali playing from the boombox / my father not there / just you and me listening to the closest thing I have ever heard to being god’s voice / god must be Ulali singing on a crackling boombox in the 90’s / must be the sound of the earth itself come alive / must be in this memory of you and I listening together / when you still wanted to be my mother / in a house we don’t live in anymore

the wind running through it like my hands did so long ago

the scraggle of trees reaching for the starlight in the still and quiet