Your smile is the crust of a half-eaten buko pie,
bitter as a burnt croissant,
as vast and deep as a pail of cashew nuts.
It is the stain from the underside of a rusting can
of oatmeal, like milk spilt by a spoiled brat,
like the trenches around a dog's mouth
after it has bitten a child, like the shiny horn
of a carabao stuck in lahar, but which once tore
its master's side. Your smile
is a mouse' skeleton picked clean by ants
the mark of the hourglass on a black widow's back
the gleeful tail of a lizard that escaped my fingers
ripples formed by tadpoles in a pond
or the tides of Taal Lake, acrid with tilapia.
It is the scythe of the farmer's son drunk with despair
Horses' hoofprints surrounding a Dole plantation
Broken bottles after a brawl.
It is like Pacman gobbling up the world
like the deck of an alien ship attacking the Enterprise
like Guile's sonic boom in the old Street Fighter game
like the lip of a mushroom cloud rising from Hiroshima
like the spray of gunpowder at the Battle of Manila Bay.
It pains me like the Cheshire Cat's unreal grin
like the boomerang that knocked off the first kangaroo's teeth
like the bowstring drawn back to release Eros' dart.
It is how the foamy shores must have looked
to Icarus, as he flew towards the sun.
The sickle in Death's hand;
Path of a pendulum, slicing up time;
Silver of a cracked mirror;
Yellow-white roots of my nails;
Curve of the Quezon Memorial Circle
awash in the shadows of an unlit night.
Your smile is the glint of sunlight
off your owner-jeep's hood, like the road
up the Camp John Hay golf course
where the guard forbade us to walk,
like the moon, smiling thinly over a grain of star.
Your smile is the eternal blankness
of a white sheet of paper, like a sharp bamboo leaf
spinning in the wind, plastic bags swimming
in a flood along Dimas-Alang, lightning
flashing in an arc across a red Alabang sky.
Like the edge of my umbrella, held quiet over your head
as I soak myself trying to keep you from the rain.

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Si Anna ay nakakatulog kahit painumin siya ng kape o Red Bull. Pero magaling siya sa puyatan basta walang kinalaman sa school work. Siya ay mabait at maganda, sabi niya.

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