HUMAN GEOGRAPHER

Allow me,

allow me the comfort of your back.

Let me take away parts of you—collarbones

Adam’s apples, Adam’s ribs

your eye lashes, your clumsy hands

the Andy Warhol tattoo

the quarter moons in the corner of your mouth.

Let me wrap my legs around your thighs.



Let me map your skin in my head,

measuring your spine thumb

by thumb.

Here are your ears and here is your tongue.

I am marking latitudes

and longitudes of you if only to remember

because I swear to God you kissed my knee

the morning after.

You might have said something and I didn’t catch it

but then it may have been only God

who, with final judgment, uttered, “No.”

So here we are—



in different elongated-shaped places on the map:

I, barely visible in a simple province;

you, in a foreign country

with vegan restaurants and underground trains.

懐かし〜, this is how little children would call it.



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