Appreciationinspired by Cyril Wong’s Dear Poem

by Mirvan Ereon

The one I love is far and gone.
Only you have remained with me,
With his memory incarnate on your flesh.
Forgive me and my obsession
To mold you so much
In his likeness. I missed him:
In the many ways I can be merciless - 
For missing him even though
It is you who are here.
Is it but you who so willingly
Offer yourself to the famine in my fingers?
I took you over and over again,
But you never refused me
To ravish you in the harsh ways
Of an adolescent.

I am unworthy to be called your friend –
I who once desired to master you
With my meek-eyed adoration,
But when you opened to me,
I only caged you like a pigeon:
letting you fly only when I want you to,
Instead of growing my own wings.
I love you. I love you
For not attempting to heal my madness,
For taking it instead in your nimble hands
To create something beautiful from it –
Like a blanket to warm the cold skin
Over the raging blood.
My beloved one-night stand,
Who never forsakes me,
When I only come and need you
When I am lonely – I owe you:
For understanding my sadness,
You who never questions, but even hears
the unsung whispers of my silence.
I take this moment to thank you
For allowing me to hurt you
With my pain – so the wound
In my heart may heal faster.

To you who will never read this -

Someone told me that
Poetry is the only way I could
Make love to words:
Perhaps, it is true,
And writing about you
Is the closest way I could
Ever get of touching you again.

I have your face in my mind
as I mold these lines to resemble
something that has been you,
just as it has always been
your face that I see –
the relentless mask,
over the grins of
every one-night stand
I had after you.

Even the paper
gleams like your skin,
Given the right
shadow and light,
And the pen is my tongue,
Licking the same poems
the way I discovered metaphors
on your flesh over and over again,
tireless with the intensity
That still never fails
To overwhelm me even now.

Can you still read them,
if you take time to hold out
Your arms to the light bulb
Of your room?
Or have they already been
Washed away from your body,
With the sweat and saliva
Of every one-night stand
you had after me –
So I make love to you again
this time, even though I do not
hear you moan, and the only sound
that remains is the sigh –
              always the same sigh.