LESSONS ON INERTIA

Constantine, I dream of you pinpricked –
faint at the intersection. Unscarred loss at
what name to take again. Some rummage,

feel the bust and iron; how temporary must
we all be. They say the flicker matches the
count of the dead, so we took to bearing home

their carcasses. We surprise ourselves half-odd,
whispers of rosebud in conception of what
we may call for ourselves. Sunday, I am adorned

with the sound of church bells three blocks
away. They say their prayers: one unspoken
for the man found, knuckles locked, finger spun

in a rubber band holding his week’s earnings.
Like copper and gore, they say the wad of cash
was signatory impermanence; another was said

half-hearted, for two girls burned of fabric, sticky
muck, ninety-nine peso lipstick mugged on the
car window. First, their names – deprived of sound,

dancing on mockery, widows of steam pacing
and wax gorging at the mirage of white-tent street
parades. Second, how impossible it was to realize

a love is a love, pursing their names onto their
names. If only death could be a beautiful thing,
half-tank, curled fingers and all its picturesque

dainty pixie-fight – idyllic again, white-washed
of the hair they stoned. Another nod goes unfussed:
towards a man with mystic brew down his spines,

the taste of it ebbing in trite taglines. Here, he
becomes corrugated, plastered black ink on his
head split, life taken for lotto ticket dimes. We

offer solemnity to nothingness, a means for divinity
to fool the alive; our fates are self-fulfilling, with
cocked guns we say that it could be any one of us.

We do not close down gutters in the dead of the night,
8PM alms towards nowhere – nor is our name but
porcelain forgiveness, cheap flower and political

By Chia Amisola

Biography:

Chia Amisola is seventeen year-old senior, a lover of language be it in the form of poetry or code, hailing from the scorch of Metro Manila.