Box Full of Crayons

Coloring Book.
Colorless and flat, smiling
Faces that lack depth,
Drawn with thick and thin; solid
and broken lines, stare
from black and white pages.

Crayons.
His little hands grasp big crayons;
Smudges colors on the pictures
all over the pages
of the coloring book
Of my life on the floor.

Out of the Crib.
Your face and mine blended
In his delicate face
That brings depth
Into my eyes.
His laughter resounds
Through the walls.
His cry wakes me up
In the middle of the night.
But it doesn’t matter.
I get up and prepare
A bottle of milk.
Now he walks.
Now he talks his baby talk
And fills our world.

Boxes of Milk.
His fragile little body
Close to mine; his tiny hands
Stroke my face;
Your hand in mine
We’re holding him.
Inside the cupboard
Are boxes of milk stored
In exchange of the little luxuries
We decided to let go.

Box full of crayons.
Coloring books scattered
On the floor. He sits in the middle
With a box full of crayons.
He opens it up with his tiny hands
And holds the crayons
That brings all the colors.

Rain Train

I stepped out into the road from the passenger seat
Of the jeepney and the rain started to pour down
Hesitantly. I trotted down the pedestrian lane
Dodging the droplets of rain that reached out to me.
In the absence of an umbrella I hid under
my silken jacket. The droplets penetrate
my makeshift shelter and it becomes heavier
as I walked towards the Quezon-Avenue flyover.

I crossed the highway. It has always been easy,
In sunny days and rainy days—when I’m alone.
I stick to the edges of the pedestrian lane
and raise my left hand to stop the cars and jeepneys;
‘til I reach the other side.

Without my umbrella, I joined the throng
of the labor force hurrying to work
this Monday morning. I ascend the escalator
of the Quezon Avenue MRT Station and I’m lost
in the crowd.

Inside the train I feel warm in the company
of strangers, huddled together
because of the hurry that drives them on.
My right hand clasps my wet silken jacket
And my left hand holds on
to the handle bars to keep me
from falling…

I remember her hand clutching my elbow
when we walked side by side and I held
her umbrella through the rain on a Monday afternoon
of June two years back when we were still
in the university.
And now she is out of this sun-dried, rain-drenched country.
Overseas…
perhaps she beholds her dreams slowly unfold. And I,
here in the train, on a rainy June morning, think of
the girl with the umbrella in the pouring rain.

As the rain splatter on the window
of the train, I snuggle with total strangers.