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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