Maybe it’s your lack
of interest that interests me,
how you stay
silent and bound
to your books, yet never to the words
I speak: syllables I send out
to cast ripples in the narrow horizon
between us, the air
so quiet, drowning my sentences
to sleep, even before they reach the soft margins
of your ears, lulling this scene into a dream, dousing
the ink of our names into white pages
we wake up to, once
morning sun swims in, the reticent traces
of an alphabet laid to dry on our lips.
in her wakefulness, she saw an unwanted world whirling within waters and words, weaving itself underneath a watercolor sky, paling wants welded to its widths: people weary and weathered but wearing unwashed winsome faces, she wandered away – walked without sandals, wedged her body between wayward weapons of warring worlds whilst her limbs started to sprout wings, ward off the old skin- the whorls of her fingertips wafting into feathers, bones winding into lightness, waltzing into whiteness, leaving the world to wilt, whisked away in her wakefulness
The dream found itself awake. It was plopped on top of a pink and white polka-dotted pillow. By then it was midmorning and the dreamer had already left. The dream made its way to the tiny bathroom nearby the bed and examined its face while washing its hands. It smiled at its reflection, pinched its cheeks a little, and proceeded to take a bath. After dressing itself it took a few bits of chocolate from the fridge and poured a cup of instant coffee, spilling some by the side of the old Lazy Susan. It took its time – sifted through a book collection of three shelves, played with the dog running around the front yard, lay down on the grass looking at the sky – before deciding it was time to go. It bid the dog goodbye before locking the gate and walking to the end of the block where a tricycle terminal lay. It endured a bumpy ride to the nearest LRT terminal and huddled like packed fish with the other passengers on a trip to the center of the city. Once there, it made its way through a slew of stalls in the talipapa (sloughing through fruits and eggs and middle-aged women fanning away flies from their wares) and found itself roads and streets and stop signs later, in a small park on a hill. It was past afternoon and the dream wiped away beads of sweat from its forehead. It sat down on a patch of grass and looked around – a small child was playing ball with its father and nearby a young couple sat (picnic mats and basket beside them), making planes from the morning paper. The dream lay still and let its fingers flit through the blades of grass, disturbing the sleep of some ladybugs, the hunt of a wayward mantis. Dark started to settle: a soft shroud lulling things into slowness and soon the dream found itself staring across the city which the now-empty hill overlooked. It wondered about the dreamer, somewhere out there hidden by the constellation of lights and signs tracing a faint outline of the bustling city. It kept its eyes to the sky for the rest of the night, lips mouthing out the invisible language of stars. It let the wind’s fingers stroke its hair while listening to the love songs of crickets nestled in nearby trees.
When the first rays of dawn crept from the edge of the horizon, the dream sighed and started to fade away.
How to see the world
with eyes stilled to the surface
of a dull mirror?
let us turn into ghosts; let our bodies fade
into unreliable outlines of fireworks – fleeting
constellations newly-hatched by hope, brimming
from the eyes of people inhabiting
this city. Shining
bright: easily, they will mistake us for stars
before we disappear, wrap
our misgivings in beautiful clouds of dust.
The end of the curious dream
only indicates a pause -
the moment between falling
down the jagged recesses
of the alphabet, muted
echoes of monochrome cliffs and the stab
of wakefulness, all knitted blankets
and soft pillows. The warmth of morning, the unhurried
buzzing of alarm clock, reminding us
of our place.
