Dying, Death, Spirits

The highway was dark

but you can tell from the rippling reflections

the movement of the sea.

The lamp lights burned like sunflowers

or little houses

and they blurred as you passed by each of them

in the infinitely long bridge.



That night, the moon was a crescent

and then it grew a quarter.

We were inching towards regions

of untouched skin, the hours crawling over

the darker parts of the city.

We were stealing whatever we could:

misplaced hands, legs,

affections, dimples the size of a penny,

wrists, the innocence and naivety.



That night the moon looked like a fish bowl,

dark and blue;

pebbles reflecting green and red.

I am reminded of the fishes at home.

First, the grey fish. Silent.

Then a pair of oranges ones and another,

a pale female.

They swam quicker: dying, death, spirits.

It meant nothing to them.

Not when the first of them floats,

not when another opens its gills too wide

and jerks.



The radio car emits static

and I hear my mother’s voice in my head.

The night bows its head and apologizes

for what it didn’t mean.

The city thrives and the girls

remain.



This piece (along with two others) was published on the 2015 UP Portia Sorority Literary Folio, Gunita. Find the online version here.