ANA MARIA KATIGBAK



UNTITLED
 

Amazon, we call each other,
in the language of what is survived
and lost.

It is a weakness, we admit:
faces we have loved, hands
we have held in our own,
stars that have played their part
in the first intimations of forever.

My amazon-sister,
we have taught hands to forget
the body’s ripening to touch
fingers have unlearned
the secret regions of a face.

Some things, we know,
will stay with us forever:
the heart’s manner of knowing
what is missed-
absences marked
with initials we have carved
in stone

And the names we have sworn
Never again to remember
become the ones we cannot
readily forget.
 

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