Those Summer Months

Patrick Alderson

You have been dead four months and I carried your son to your grave. His tight hands — trembling — hurt my arm but I cannot protest. His face, red and raw — my shoulder still damp from his tears — cannot shape the smile you loved. There’s a picture of you, encasing a photograph taken months before that disease marked you, it’s damp from the autumn rain, I wipe it away — grave realization controlling me. It is only your face. Not you. This was not the you that hurt but continued to smile, to laugh — to show hurt was to show defeat. I still wonder who you were trying to convince. Did you face your distortion, for all those months, laughing, rejecting nature’s grave cruelty out of sanity or comfort, damp from the medication, but never the one damp facing the storm desperate to hurt us all. Your name is etched, like on your grave stone, in your son's phone, he says it would be killing you to delete it — you would laugh. It was nature that stole months from us — contorting your memory — leaving us to face the absurdity of a world without you. Your face is no longer beside mine when I wake — only damp pillows, empty sheets and the ache of months I know will pile over into years. It hurts — yes, I remember what you told me before you finally let go, I know us somehow living was of grave importance to you — and maybe one day that grave will enshrine flowers that bloom with the warm face of a morning sun. But for now, we still feel you. There’s a mist we have to navigate — damp and biting — and we will try, somehow, to not hurt anymore. We want to remember those summer months.

I see you, sheltering me under an umbrella, damp but un-grave, that familiar smile that refused hurt — a light to the approaching months.

I Am a Woman. Are You ... More?

Lauri Webster

You took a shotgun to my soul. Rent my psyche from my form, Torn in pieces, no longer whole. Biting cold becomes the norm, I am living in a storm.

I beg for help, seek a judiciary, In spite of all my acrimony. Sure, we’ll listen to your testimony Before we start, are you a phony?

There is no help on that bleak shore I’ve washed up onto once more. (And I cry, but not for you; For all the things that I deplore, For my pieces on the floor.)

Instead it’s cries of “Liar, whore! Maybe it was you who started it, or Wanted it, or made him want it more Too much! Could you not find the door?”

“We’ll. Not. Listen. Anymore. You’ve gone too far. Now leave before

We punish you.” And this, all for Telling how a man was violent at the core.

The lesson learned I dare to say, Don’t tell of when a man might play; It is his right to be that way, You’re the one who’s gone astray.

Carissa Natalia Baconguis

(FILIPINO)

Sapagkat ang pagsunog ng mundo ay hindi na teorya lamang, sapagkat kahit ang hangin ay hindi ligtas sa sakit, sapagkat ang bawat oras ay palapit nang palapit sa pagsabog, sapagkat ang oras ay magkasingkahulugan sa pansamantala: sinusukat ko ang panahon sa iyo. paalala ng bawat sugat, gasgas, tampo, at atubili ang ating mortalidad. parehas lang naman ito: mas madali na rin at kahit sa facebook ay maaring bumili ng tirahan. ang kabaong ay tirahan ng alaala. gusto kong malibing sa bundok, at ikaw naman gusto mo malapit sa dagat. nagtatalunan na tayo sa kulay ng kabaong, na para bang ito ang bahay, at pagkatapos, ang mga bintana, ang pintuan, at kung aso ba o pusa. tumatanda tayo nang hindi tumatanda. hindi bale, pinag-iisipan ko na ang mundo ay titiklop din sa sarili, at tatabi rin ang taas ng bundok sa lalim ng dagat. kung mayroon pang lupang maaaring pagtubuan, tutubo ang sinulid kong damo at gagapang sa iyo, na para bang sasabihin, nakikilala kita kahit sa kamatayan pa, at nakikilala kita ngayon at lagi; kung ang hangin ay patuloy tayong sinusunog, makikilala kita sa lahat ng paraan ng kamatayan, at sa bawat punong dahon nasalabid. ikaw ang sukat ng natitira kong buhay. kung sabihin mo man sa akin kung masyado ba tayong nagmamadali, sasabihin ko lamang sa iyo kung may maari pa tayong pagmadalian. ngayon, nasusulyapan kita, umuubo sa iyong tulog at pinag-iisipan ko kung okay ka lang. sa bawat sunod ng oras, pinag-iisipan ko kung mayroon pa bang maaaring asahan. kung mananakawan pa ba ako ng sinag.

(ENGLISH TRANSLATION)

Since a burning world is not simply a theory anymore, since not even air is free of illness, since every hour we come closer and closer to an explosion, since time is synonymous to moment: i measure the passage of time through you. every cut, bruise, hesitation, and reluctance, only reminds us of our mortality. it’s the same: it’s so easy to buy a coffin even on facebook. the coffin is a home of memories. i want to be buried in the mountains, you want to be buried by the sea. we debate over the color of the coffin, like it could be our house, and later, the windows, the door, a cat or a dog. we grow old without growing old. don’t worry, i imagine the world turning upside down, and the mountain bends over eventually to the depths of the sea. if there is still soil left, the strings of my grasses will grow and crawl into yours, as if saying, i know who you are even in death, and i know you now and always; if the air continues to burn us, i’ll know you in every moment of death, in every grassroot entangled. you measure what is left of my life. if you ask me if you think we’re rushing, i’ll ask you if there’s anything left to rush for. i see you now, coughing in your sleep, and i wonder if you’re alright. as time goes by, i wonder if there’s anything left to hope for. if even light will be stolen from me.