The days, the days.

Salt in water, water through fingers, molecules
exhaled once never to repeat themselves inside my body. The goings are unnoticed
until the room echoes, the eyes blink at what was once there. And still the
inexorable, is.

I sat in my favorite
sofa, the bright green one, and told my mother I would buy her every gemstone in
the encyclopedia, and I rattled them off in alphabetical order: alexandrite,
beryl, chrysoprase… She doesn’t remember this, but I do. I see myself, scrawny
and loud, telling my mom, look how smart I am.

I blew out smoke and looked out the
bathroom window, at the darkness, at the cogon grass ready to sway at the
slightest wind, and thought, I’m not going to be much of anything. At the same
time a light went on, in a stranger’s house, far away, and it startled me into
believing in fireflies again.

The doors
are closing, and they make only the gentlest of sounds.