Love Letters from a Burning Planet

by MJ Gomez

---

                                 X
 
A dimpled boy told me what forever means.
 
                                IX
 
His whispers the crumbling
of language
and earth, revealing

                                                                                              the hallway
                                                                                              of mirrors,
the prayer beneath all prayer--
 
                  Stay. Take me by all my selves and show me.
                                    What a miracle it is to be understood.
                  How truth becomes song
                                                                  becomes willful forgetfulness.
 
                  Wind shackled to the throat
until it is time to let go—I send to you a songbird, hellfire
                  at its claws, a name
 
at the border
                  between sound and meaning.
 
                                VIII
 
Singing of light, but not of what follows.
Promises of strong coffee. The promise of forever
 
                  we break daily
 
                  over bread.
 
The truth is every promise has already borne too much of the world to last.
 
                                VII
 
And when they find us, sweetheart,
                                              we’ll be light and only--
 
                                  Light. The shrapnel,
                  ​not the fire it came from. What remains of devotion
 
                                  drips into an hour so beyond us
only the page survives.
                                                                 Crystallized flame
                                  on the bedroom floor.
 
Our hands clasped
in prayer, invoking a god’s name--
 
                                VI

Only we remember.
 
 
                                V
 
Picture the world made anew.
 
                                              The song escaping the burning
                  ​is inside every other song.
 
The lightest touch
                  ​brings out the wrong frequency. The undercurrent
                  condensing spent stardust.
 
Alive, the fire asks its surroundings
                                  how they want to be remembered.
 
                  ​At the lightest touch--
A planet ignites.
 
                                IV
 
A mother sings her only son to sleep. Only their embrace
                  ​                  ​                  ​                  ​  withstands the burning.
 
                                III
 
                                  Hear the glass--
Its shatter--
 
                  ​Singing all we know of always--
 
 
                                II
 
What we haven’t realized: the earth has said all that needs to be said.
 
This time, the earth chooses not to speak against the fire.
 
And we burn in silence.
 
                                ​I
 
When they lifted me to heaven
                  ​all I could think of was what I left behind.
 
The loneliness—called want, called daydream, called
choir—                   
                  ​                  ​         My tailbone an animal
                  ​cradled by an angel in freefall.
 
Holding the memory of sunlight
                  ​                  ​                  ​     folded into clay
until it is so dark
                  ​the body can only remember
through emptiness.
 
                  Even now, there are still parts of me
that have not touched the Sun.
                 
I send to you a flame
like a bullet
                                             repenting.

---

MJ Gomez is a young writer from the Philippines, currently based in Saudi Arabia. Pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English, they enjoy playing guitar on hot, sleepy days and stargazing through bus windows. Their work is featured in Healthline Zine, the Cloudscent Journal, the Lunar Journal, Lavender Bones Magazine, and others. You can find them on Twitter @bluejayverses!

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