We Teach Each Other How to Stay

T. De Los Reyes

  All good things in the life I know involve me stumbling into my own astonishment. I take a half-step in the dark and you are beside me, my hand nestled in your hand as if it has always belonged there. When you call me little flower as a way of saying good morning and all good things spill into the day like sunlight, how grateful I am for a cracked window. When you place a wet kiss on my nape while washing my back in the shower, I think of all good things and forget I am wounded. When I find you in the kitchen failing to make coconut buns you’ve seen someone else do, when I try to braid your hair and it becomes a hot mess, when I use too much spice and you still lick the spoon, I recognise all good things hold our mistakes gently. Each time I think I finally know who you are, I am grateful for my ignorance.  All good things come in waves, and each version of you I would take gladly: when I’m awake, or in my dreams, in this life or the next. If every corner of this universe where you exist are all good things, I beg to be allowed to hold you close. Let me embrace your ghost to my bones.

about the author
T. De Los Reyes

T. De Los Reyes

T. De Los Reyes is a Filipino poet and author of And Yet Held (Bull City Press, 2024). Her poems have previously appeared or are forthcoming in Pleaides, Epiphany, Bellingham Review, The Los Angeles Review, Shō Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She is the designer of Nowruz Journal and the founder of Read A Little Poetry. She lives and writes in Manila, Philippines. Read more of her work at tdelosreyes.com.