Like I never needed love before

Yawning, stretching, grasping my nth mug of coffee. Pressing Ctrl + S, then Alt + F4, grinning hugely. “Damn, I sound so smart,” I say out loud, to no one in particular. “It must be inherent.”

The man off to my side grunts.

“What? Aren’t you glad? I can talk about Francis Ponge and the duality of poetry, about literatures of the Non-Western World, about Estrella Alfon, about Nolledo and his Maria Alma. Quiz me on Dobyns and the crisis of language and the poetry of the city, and I can prattle on, sleep-deprived, wanting of a bath and a proper meal, surviving on sheer stubbornness, caffeine and nicotine. Aren’t you glad?”

Another grunt.

“Well, I’m a magnificent conversationalist.” My voice has taken on an English accent, culled from years of reading Victorian romances out loud. “I happen to know a lot about mandrakes, sweetness. Yes, mandrakes, and not the Hogwarts version. Mandrakes, mandrakes. What eighteen-year-old in a five-mile radius can claim to know about that?”

“You need sleep.”

My laugh sounds shrill, even to my delusional ears.

*

Weeks ago, I watched as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss the boy who had ignored her for three years. Wow, I thought, we’re in for it now.

“That’s for ignoring me freshman year,” she told him, sure to keep her voice more impassioned, certainly louder, than a whisper.

I walked beside her then as she sashayed away, an unmistakable new sway to her hips, a smile of pure, gloating satisfaction playing on her face.

“I can see everything through your skirt,” I told her.

“I bet he could too,” she said.

*

One more time, he told her, impatient for the slap of her moans against his neck, of the near-desperate clasp of her hands against his back. You can have me one more time, he told his Maria, this new mythos found on yet another port – who, in time he was sure, would succumb to the gray that wrought all his memories of whores in places far-flung, humid and too-bright with sunlight. But for now she was still real, the color apricots from home, the scent of the moon when he was traveling – pale, timid, keeping an unrealized power that ensnared many a sailor to walk to the edge of the ship and simply walk farther, hands held high in hopes for a touch of the cool surface. But, oh, his Maria: the heat, the openness, the unabashed wanting making them both moist with a glance, near-erupting with an accidental grazing of sun-kissed skin. One more, he repeated, already hardening where he still nestled inside her, willing her eyes to open, her grip on him to tighten. One more time, Maria my darling, he implored. I leave on the rooster’s first crow.

*

Last night, I dreamt I shared a hopia with F. Sionil Jose.