sonnet fifty

then we both abandon
our ways, to cross the path
on this road, which i hope
was never forsaken,

i hunt for your sign in
a midnight lulled to bones
that found its solace
in unrhyming and unraveling

fumbling through invented
words and fragmented thoughts
your name inked on my skin

like it is natural,
like it is to be expected,
like it has always been and it should be.

sonnet forty nine

as savage and wild as
one's absence, the wilting
flower bears a semblance
of peace, and we strive

to make it apparent despite
chaos, despite the havoc
of all this between us -
as you painstakingly

pointed out - we are
two opposing poles, molecules
that attract and negate

each other, charting long
lost destinations upon
each other's hands.

sonnet forty eight

spare me dreams that possess
minutes, i do not want to
be left the way i want to be
because i only wanted you

and to live out a dream
out of a weaver's hands,
drawing circles, tracing panic
like it is your blood rushing

back to the edge of one
unyielding hunger and happenstance
until this heart surrenders

to your revolution and your faith,
to your sunlight and water,
to your desire and delirium.

sonnet forty seven

and i crave the voice of this
swift, existing, bound to the
language of silence and punctuations,
bound to your healing arms

as i always have, searching
for meaning in seconds we
shared and burned, offering
my naked words and bare thoughts

helplessly, hopelessly devoured
by your infinite light,
tying unscripted moments

to things we thought we
could never embrace but i
am here, inviting you to believe.

sonnet forty six

heaping the ache and throwing
it against the dancing, spawning,
spiraling light, a vivid and
fecund memory of how your

touch felt like i can be
conquered again and again,
timid frames of your
smile move my thoughts

like punctuations on silence,
like stones on the seabed,
like dreams in the dusk

laced with one faded and
endless attempt to exalt
what we make of us.

a year ago

while i was trying to remove the clutter from my study table, i found a copy of a letter i gave you last january 23rd 2011. these were the words that i offered you.

and i have no doubt i will offer them to you year after year.


mahal,

my thoughts stray to you this very moment. and there is nothing that embraces my heart in this wild and pensive afternoon save your fire ~ everything that i can recall of you. the fire in your spirit, the gentleness of your gaze, the compassion in your touch, the bravery of your words. i am missing you terribly, my love. i couldn't bear having to sleep in my bed alone. i have a confession to make. i don't believe i still know what it is like to spend my days alone.

i have grown familiar with your laughter and sigh, your stories which you utter just before we head to slumber. and now i am seeking the sound of your voice. and let me tell you this, my love. there is nothing quite like it. there is no one quite like you. there couldn't be. and how fortunate am i for having stumbled upon you, or, for waiting long enough so you may find me. you have sustained me the past few months, and i know i will be counting my blessings every day, for the rest of my life.

so thank you. none of which i have ever mentioned, done or written would suffice to show you and let you know just how much you mean to me, how much of my life you have changed for the better. even when i am tired after a long day of work, i wouldn't want to do anything right now but think of you. you crowd my thoughts and keep my heart beating. and even when the daily insanity of my life suffocates me and pushes me to the edge, looking at you and hearing you is enough to lift my spirit.

i do not know how you do it, but i now believe that some things, or in this case, some beings are made of only two things ~ love and magic. that is you. there hasn't been anything you have created or uttered that weren't made of those. your love resembles the peace after a storm, the flowers that blossom after a hard and unforgiving winter, the dawn that follows dusk. thank you for making me realize that there is much more goodness in life than what i thought it held for me.

you were that gift, that wonder, that surprise that was waiting for me in the end. and who would have thought that the end would give me a new beginning? thanking you would be one of those that i could do, but more than these words i engrave on paper, i want you to know, understand and believe that i will love you, in the face of harshness, impatience or lack of understanding. i would never let the world win. for you have become greater than this world.

you have become its reason and its origin. you have become the axis that permits it to go around. just when you felt that you were as unnoticeable as a grain of sand, you have become the universe to another person. i will not stop. i will remain. i love you as ever.

teresa.

sonnet forty five

what resonates after all has
succumbed to a few hundred
days of yearning is my
yearning still, an unending

fire and an unquenchable
desire, a fiery, incomparable,
intense, outward energy
spoken for one named you

in this undefined elation
gathered by the tenderness
of midnights enveloped

in your arms, without doubts,
without fears, just certainty,
delight and dawn.

sonnet forty four

contemplated, surreal, excised
faith from the vine of your love
i offer you, yet again –
one brief, perpetual reality:

that if you hold my hand
you will never lose an ounce of
what you have given, you will
be embraced for all you are

before and since, that my heart
in its emerging brightness
will not thrive on hushed impatience

but will surrender everything it
knows about giving and keeping
and will harbor you a lifetime of light.

sonnet forty three

and my eyes see nothing
save your blessed imperfection,
your magic and energy,
the things you fail to recognize

about yourself, the roads you
have taken to be who you are,
the same roads that led you
to me, the fears that broke

you and maimed your faith –
let me gather each and every
one of them and tell you

they does not matter,
that my love will embrace
them because they complete me.

sonnet forty two

and as we come to this crossroad,
this threshold, this defining instant,
do we cry, crumble, dissipate?
take my hand and let me show you

that my faith is your fortress,
your love my repose,
your heartbeat the breath
that keeps me alive,

your resolve as infinite as
the sunset, hold on to me
though i am fallible,

let us seek the onset and end
of roads together, and find the
clarity we have always known - us.

sonnet forty one

here's what i want to do with you:
hunt the web of shadows and cast
them away, never to obscure your
light again, gather the sea foam

and imaginary flowers so i may
offer them at your feet,
tuck the clouds behind our sunsets
to trace our dreams until

they are realized, to be as
forgiving as the heart you have
allowed me to see, to sanctify

the endless avenues that
led you to me, to love no one
else but you - my lifetime.

sonnet forty

you seize the grief in my eyes
and filter it with all the courage
you can gather with your
hands, until all that is left

is the happiness of finding
each other, and our will to remain
and battle the odds -
then i realized there is

no need to halt this desire
with words that stab our silence
because in the end i only

want you, because in the
end my soul belongs to you,
because i simply know no end for us.

sonnet thirty nine

when our whispers recline
to the dread of silence
i offer up my heart
and envelop your soul

with the faith and fire
we found from where
we began, my lips
tremble at the sight

of your light, massive
and more finite than
anything we both have seen

then i go back to the first
sunrise crowded with
the song of your gaze and smile.

sonnet thirty eight

this heart will never give up
on you, on understanding your
flaws and loving you just
the same - because i know

i have my own shortcomings
because i know you try hard
to be patient when i fail
and when i could not see

what you are seeing,
i will take all that you are
because you have given meaning

to all the goodness i have come
to know, to all the love i ever felt,
to the life that loses its light without you.

sonnet thirty seven

it is my secret ritual
to start and end the day
with a vision of you
plaguing my mind -

listless, moving, constant
like the hours that beg
for the slightest trace of
us, and of what we

have made out of this
love forged by fire and faith,
a stirring, arresting, riveting

clarity, the pure and white
sound of your breath and
step, drawing closer and closer to me.

sonnet thirty six

i will, without restraint
seize the thousand glances
you have offered like
i never saw them before,

i will, without regret
see your light even through
tainted, shattered glass
to prove you there is nothing

to lose save yourself in
this provocation, in this incantation,
i will, from now on

give up measuring my words
and thoughts because even if
you are exact, you are infinite.

sonnet thirty five

and i wake up to the
naked scent of your body
brimming with wonder -
lucid and lustrous and

illumined by the faint
light hanging from the window,
inches of you touched by
the shadow my thoughts

create, i chase endless
trenches that bear your
peace as you remain

perpetually graceful and
perfect the way you are
if only all mornings are like this.

sonnet thirty four

you are shaken and begin to
doubt out of one question
i asked - then i go back
to square one - how much

more of this do i live through?
the answer is i do not have to
but i am left with one stern
reality, naked and shameless,

that i love you and
that this journey will be
taken for as long as i impossibly

could, because that is what
we deserve, because i know
i could give more than i imagined.

sonnet thirty three

we fall once again to the
harrowing, blinding intensity
of this love seeking to
define itself, seeking to

break the confines of
what we have named it
but what is it really?
except a safe harbor for

hearts crippled repeatedly
by distrust and disbelief,
by disheveled despair

yet i clutch steadily to
the tethers you have left,
for all the world to see.

sonnet thirty two

there is no calm in this burning,
just an incessant play of havoc
and chaos but who wants peace
when your hurt and pain

is clothed as an affirmation
you are still breathing and
to the point desiring, aching,
loving, deliriously and selflessly

after a pause and a push
we scavenge upon ruins and
remnants of us but i deem

myself whole and incorrupt
even after breaking, even after
battles we never won.

sonnet thirty one

here, if you have had enough,
if you cannot take anything more,
we have lost moments to
deliberate, measured, consuming

fires, and we are in the
middle of it, so should i step
away and watch everything
go or be in the same circle

so i may save what i can?
then we realize we have not
had nearly enough to have

lost so much, to give this up,
to destroy what's left of my
words, what's left of us.

sonnet thirty

dismantled, disengaged, disappearing
subtleties and tendencies
and we thought we were
insufferable and indispensable

but really all we have ever been
were intense, insane, indelible
that even our will prevents us
from running away from ourselves

which is why the vines and
trellis of you and i defeat
inconsistencies and impossibilities

so we may exalt, praise, excise
the height of what we have,
bring it closer to unknown depths.

sonnet twenty nine

take away all that you
know i could give, all
that you know i could offer -
blurred, tangerine skies,

cracked, parched earth,
thoughtless notions that
exist only in my head,
even the sometimes irrational,

illogical self-destruction
and gather me, make me
whole, re-create, reassemble

with much faith that
it blinds and cripples all
void and blackness.

sonnet twenty eight

we wage pointless battles
when we know we would
both lose, but it has
never been about who wins -

it is about loving and forgiving,
it is about surviving and ending,
it is about breathing and beginning,
it is about you and me

and what we make of this -
in height and depth, in light
and darkness, in laughters and tears

of tangles and tangents,
of breaking and mending,
of embracing and gathering.

sonnet twenty seven

maimed, crushed, bruised
by the heady silence even
with the attempt to break it,
but i wait and i remain

an era, a time, a moment
i can be yours and you would
believe it can be
and you would simply believe

in apparitions and in things you
do not see, the strength that it
holds water, that it is changeless

that you will find me still, definite,
exact, relentless to have you
mend the ruined.

sonnet twenty six

still, indelible, inexhaustible
her despair deliberate and
her particles incarnate of a
sacred, salvaging tangle of

flesh that stretch upon her
naked, languishing body
seeking to be defined, yet again,
by your hands idled by

imaginings, singular, emphasized
flame that seize the breath
out of me, marred by seconds

of silence, of pure, unashamed
desire for you, clinging
to you just like the fist time.