He Came in a Flash of Turtles and Teal Shirts, Sandcastle & Unbothered by Kathleen Pastrana
He Came in a Flash of Turtles and Teal Shirts
It’s momentary,
this stupefying shift in affection
a glitch or some mishap,
perhaps in the armor
fashioned after your indifference:
heavy
like a tiny coffin,
stone-cold
and everlasting
in turmeric dunes
you wither in dusty afternoons
craving a certain warmth provided
only by bodies breathing
side by side
in spaces
dwarfed by oceans
dividing Davao
and Dubai,
fragmented by phone lines stretching
light-years long—
you never get a call back,
then silence erupts
in such galactic scales
we have no business navigating
feelings float
into nothingness
like a wayward spacecraft,
some discarded balloon,
a half-thought in danger
of bursting into confounding confetti.
I’m sorry,
I never shine
as breathtakingly beautiful
as the winter sunrise you revere so much.
Some days I wish I were more
interesting
than leather crafting,
turtles, teal shirts,
Spartan racing in deserts
but by all means go,
and cast your sails through tinsel teal
and whipped cerulean tides,
straight into the waiting embrace
of Brazil and maybe
Jordan—
the oases of places you used to love,
I will not get in the way.
Oh,
but I will
envy the winds
that will carry your sighs
in plunging waves of overwhelming hurt
and metaphorical goodbyes.
Sandcastle
Mindlessly,
I scroll through photographs I have sworn
to keep buried in a digital gallery
where the only work of art worth seeing
is a portrait of your face.
My fingers move with a delicate swiftness
forged from routine, to zoom in on listless eyes
that conceal the madness raging within.
I know I have yet to unlearn this habit.
But the sight of someone I have grown
to love in secret sends a fleet of memories
sailing against the wind,
and once again my defenses collapse
like a half-built sandcastle exposed to the tides,
baring the perfect location for the dwindling pain
to strike. Someday,
when all the pining comes to an end,
I shall glimpse your life in pictures
with apathetic composure
like a bored museum patron
in search of more interesting art
to admire.
Perhaps
until then I can wallow in moments frozen
beneath a glass screen,
doomed to remain hidden for as long
as we still breathe.
Unbothered
How dreadful it is to wake,
when you’re nursing a familiar
heartache
In an empty hotel room
where the lights are dimmed
and the sounds,
muffled,
I lie curled
in an impenetrable cocoon,
struggling to be unbothered
But the darkness threatens
my mind to rebel,
and remember
with striking clarity
the feelings I fought so hard to
quell
So, in time with the tremble
in the pendulum
that swings in my chest,
I drown in tear-stained sheets
with my heart clenched
tightly in his fist
Longing for the butterflies
to finally disappear,
and waiting for dust to settle
until I am healed.
“I spent a lot of years reading Charles Bukowski, so for a while I’ve been attempting to write as raw and jagged as possible. This poem has been rejected, revised, and revisited a couple of times. I thought perhaps it truly deserves to rot in my digital folder. But I had written it with particular fondness, and with that I remain eternally hopeful.”
Kathleen Pastrana (she/her) writes from her hometown in Bulacan, Philippines. She used to work as a speechwriter for corporate and academic events. Now she writes poetry in a house she shares with 40 rescued cats. Her poems have appeared in Banaag Diwa, Quibble Lit (forthcoming), and elsewhere. She can be found on Instagram @keithpastrana and Twitter @kpstrn .