YOU...

who for one special moment in my life became the very reason of my existence...

FLOOD
by angelo suarez

we have become estranged, you and i
as the stars no longer find the asphalt-gray
of streets, the somnolent moon your skin,
the sun the sibilance of speech. how we trmeble
now at the slightest hint of touch, the latch
of our desires reopening like a wound.

watch me now as i say: september's
resolute rains, you are water-fragments
descending as drops from manila's urban sky
thus, you are everywhere, dripping down walls
and sliding down roofs, filling every crease of road
and crevice of coil. and on the rise of flood

floats the carcass of memory, taking
the muddied form of muck, filthy plastic bags
venomous piss of rat. in this metropolitan marsh
where nothing is left but a squalid sight of swamps
soggy lampposts, the third-world remnants
of a storm, i dip my hands and dream of fish.

YOU...

i still think of you and what used to be... stupid, ne? considering that it was i who ended things between us...

but what really went wrong?

i guess i failed to fulfill my ultimate promise: "i love you with all my heart, for the rest of my life"... because i felt the love slowly die inside me...

all the arguments that happened almost everyday, the lack of trust, the loss of time for each other... just a few reasons i can mention right now...

but you told me so yourself, you are numb...

i guess that numbness included being numb to my longing for you, your coldness whenever we talk...

all these are only my speculations... and i know i will never know the real reason of what actually went wrong...

i told myself that i will never again do anything that will remind me of you... but i guess i cannot do that since i still have aki and all the other stuff you gave me... plus the fact that i named my kitten "aishi"...

i really loved you with all my heart... i tried to move heaven and earth for you, to prove how much i feel for you... yet you failed to see all that... you never believed the honesty of my heart...

people can attest that all i wanted was to love you, make you happy here with me...

what we had was something special, something i really treasured, something i have always believed would last far longer than forever... but like what you said, it was all just a dream... and all dreams come to an end... but it is a dream that i will always remember...

i had to end my insanity... i won't be a saint for being a martyr for love...

only a week left and its already valentine's day... yet i am not making any plans... not with you, at least... but it could have been you...

i do not hate you... you have made me weak... and this weakness taught me to surrender to these petty emotions...

someday you should realize that you cannot always have things your way...

still, thank you for the memories... i learned a lot from you... it may be just a dream but it was such a good dream...

i don't know if you'll get to read this though but i don't care...

i hope this will be the last time i'll do anything like this...

let the 3rd of june, 2004 be the day when i learned to forget everything about myself for the sake of the one i love...