
Palestina of Our Quiet Flowers
Poetry, Lawdenmarc Decamora, the Philippines
It starts with an earthquake.
The alphabets upon our feet
Come crawling to one corner
Of the room, shadowy
Maligned by chandeliers
Then to the other side
The ochre walls send no signs
Of the pastness of this life,
This plea, from my heart
To yours strange time’s shaking
The disease that takes hold
Of us forgiving, forgetting
The asthma of our quiet flowers.
It starts with a laughter.
The numbers on our hands
Disappear before the sun sets
And you worry a million
Raindrops will die
That they’ll never remember
The last 40-9-7 of you and I
In the soft porn version
Of quaint blood, of the language
Of our ideological flowers
Then there’s the end of the world—
my habiba!—we laugh and we choke.