A dance on vines. This finger slides across the paper’s edge. Trees older than any of us protecting us from the now, folding into the same trees. Stars are down from their perch, swaying a moonlight beat. Some people get married wanting to break up. At the park, hidden from no one by a white car. That the faint yellow light reaches your shoulder and neck. There are gaps where your face is in full color. Listen to the margins of our breaths. We had been flying, ready to replace the fixed fireflies of the sky. Your hands, soft and cold, hold these words. This instant constancy.

*

Lines on my eyes, hair over the face. The deliberate blur of images. Finally where anything is possible—the dog a log, the moon a bulb. No shadows when it is dark. Stole your ashes just to have something to hold. A breath on my ear spills. To make permanent the shape of your eyes crickets sing them praises. To wait for your dead weight to move, lead chest a seawall, pelvic bones jutting out like rocks. Love, tasting your ashes, I am reminded of the first time your name danced on my tongue. The story in your head infinite and better.

*

Mud. Our roof becomes a raincloud, the ceiling final gives way. Doubt all things that are easy. Rain indoors could be easily framed, sold somewhere. You stab furious black on paper, forming trees. To make waves, one must learn negative space. We are building a nest on a cliff, as flights of swallows pool beneath our feet. Stepping on feathers, crushing heads. To bore holes on mountains and not exit on the other side.  Forgive me. All I want: to be small enough and lay inside your watch, a hand slowly cutting my shoulder, the second fluttering above, moving.

*

Your handkerchief in the summer rain, a loose horizon. Everyday, to remember your face.

About Vyxz Vasquez

Vyxz Vasquez teaches literature and creative writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Her poems have been published in Kritika Kultura, High Chair, East Lit, and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. She is currently finishing her Master of Arts in Creative Writing thesis on the poetry of witness. Two-year old Santiago is her joy.

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