#mcpakisabi

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LITERARY: #FFA500

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ARTWORK: The Art of Imperfection

Art of Imperfection

Kintsugi: The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by joining its pieces back together with gold. A metaphor for fixing the broken through embracing our flaws.

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LITERARY: A fist to the mirror

You see a reflection in my broken state.

Seven years of bad luck again and again,

Yielded down by the second.

We are seven and seventeen being battered with words.

I can’t hate myself because that would mean I hate you, 

and despite what we both let on, 

we both know that is not the case.

Being upset at you is like shattering a mirror with my fist.

Its shards caught in our throats like stingers lodged:

Anaphylaxis from words unsaid.

Our effigies are indiscernible from each other, 

Just like genetics passed down.

You make me take my glasses off when I cry

Because you see yourself in them.

Either way, we share the same eyes.

If Jesus was made in God’s fullest image, did his father too curse a

fig tree and cast the tables of merchants to the ground—

Dirty gold by droppings and the bark of a dried-up tree?

The fruit that falls not far from the tree is bound to sprout in that

same place,

Competing with its predecessor until one concedes under the

other.

The rotten wood becomes compost,

Food for the bad seed to grow the same way.

Until it’s cut and sanded into something useful to each other.

We eat at the same table on opposing ends,

The morning meal shared without conversation.

Two pairs of grubby hands, fat like breakfast sausages,

Reaching for a cigarette, a wrench, a father.

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LITERARY: carnations; white, red, pink, then yellow

my carnation,  

i long for your embrace. the summer has long passed, our roots torn from the ground by an unforgiving flood. i stare at the delicate petals of our romance, and it brings tears to my eyes. 

with every greeting, i spoke of how i wished to see you grow—a white carnation, untouched by rain, barely budding. i grew too, up a wall and into the light of the sun, and as close as i've gotten to the sun, you always shone brighter than i ever could.

white was tainted red. blood, sweat, and tears watered this garden we cultivated. seeds we planted and nurtured with time, patience, and love. they gave me you: a red carnation, in full bloom. lover, you were always destined for more. for greater things.

i stopped growing, and the white returned, my red carnation. but you were no longer my white carnation, nor were you red. you were pink. as pink as my cheeks the day i met you. as pink as your lips after we first kissed. lover, i know you. 

other flowers tell me thus begins the end. an unforgiving winter is coming. the forecasts are in: our flowers are dying. before the end comes yellow. i love you, my carnation. 

should the day come that destruction seeks our garden, know that i choose you. a tree would have been stronger, but i choose you, my carnation. i would renounce the sun if it meant you would choose me too.

forever yours,

ivy

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LITERARY: Letter to Alya

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ARTWORK: Hiding in Plain Sight

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LITERARY: I am Uneven and I am Odd

It’s my crooked eyes that you look at,

My hair that falls the way I don't want it to.

My corn-like teeth and my awkward smile.

It's the roughness of my skin.

“Be the way you aren’t,”

Say the bursts and whispers in my head—

Can they stop? Can they?

‘Cause

Every single part of me

Couldn’t get any more uneven.

I’m no man and I’m no animal;

I’m a number, an odd one.

Down to the syllables of this work,

Every single line.

Somehow it’s all strange,

Somehow it’s all odd.

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LITERARY: tulog na