yet another unfinished poem

Words escaped from our closed lips,
drifted out of the open window
(Open because you said your car stinks,
I said I didn't notice, but alright-
let's, besides we should enjoy December)
and got smudged into the black canvas outside
much like the green, yellow, red and blue
Christmas lights
that streak past the hazy highway
as we drove by signs and stores, and houses and trees,
and memories and drinks,
and kisses shared under sheets,
and these familiar streets.

Every letter, every phoneme,
they tried so hard to clutch at the rolled-up windows,
unwilling to be left behind,
desperate to be listened to.
Perhaps they would be much like the sticky little black fingers
of ghost-eyed children as they clutch at our t-shirts and jeans
(or my hair, if they were hungry enough),
should we bother to stop and get down
at that intersection in Javellana and E. Lopez
where they stand close together like death's little army,
a month's worth of dirt their armor,
a biting pang in their stomachs their only weapon.

But then, I'm sure they would be much more like the children,
should we happen to pass them again a little later
when they'd all be lying asleep on Tanduay cardboard boxes quilted together,
wrapped in nothing but their diluted dreams--
weak and willing to be pried away from the car windows
by our indifference and make-pretend forgetfulness
and be dissolved into the cold, biting air,
uncaring if they won't find our ears.

And so all we hear
are the orange streetlights, the blurred figures we pass,
(I remember Roxas Boulevard, only there's no blue here in Iloilo)
your hair rumpling against your bullcap as you adjust it too many times in one block alone,
my sweat gliding down my temple to my collarbone--
icy and then suddenly warm.
They sound much like the swish-swash of rain
beating down a bus window,
creating rolling stripes of gray and yellow
on your face as I stare at your eyes
too long ago,
much like now, when you would take your eyes from the road
and look at me, as if I was a stranger you’ve just offered a ride.