I wish it was enough

Because my first love is a memory
of fragmented photographs and a funeral
of love in songs long dead, we are alive

when our fingertips meet. When we wade
through spaces, our longing becomes real
weight: the pendant on your neck, a compass

pulled towards the minute intervals between
directions. What do you have with you
that won't reach me? A question like this

makes me worry, as if it is only absence
that makes us ask. I wish it was enough
to say here is a stone and in your hand

it can only be a heart, mine. Do you see
how transformation is romance? If not
change, then the gravity of the idea

of possession. If not that, then stones
with all their inert capacities to become
this thing that has a beat, meaning a beat

that we could dance to and as I hold you
so close, we will realize that we beat
in waltzes. Will you dance this dance

with me? Imagine how we could
defeat distances with every step-
close-step, our hands folded, molded

in perfect clasp, saying we make sense,
in this moment, our hearts, our hearts
are in the present, feeling so alive.

Ganito kasi 'yun

Forgetfulness
Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

I would love to dowse for you

and what if today you see your skyline pinned down by lampposts carrying tiny luminosities, and you notice your sky, and the colors are retreating to a corner of this city, and what if your horizon is crooked, and you are in a bus sharing silences and love

songs with strangers, and I will never leave you makes so much sense, and what if you’re being pulled to your stop, and you see a friend from elementary, and hello, and wow I really wish we could chat, and you go down, and this is the city, and the night yawns you need to get home, and the electric wires lead everywhere, and what if head down you see leaves like dead skin on scarred streets, and yes you can kiss the pavement

for containing starlight, and your home is just around the corner, and windows hold silhouettes and secrets, and a story is in your head