This Poem Is for the City Boy Who Claimed Cubao as His Home
—after Mark Anthony Cayanan
“Walk near me,” you say. “Hold my hand so you won’t get lost.” Cubao was the first thing I saw when I moved to this city, and every time, it is the last thing I see before taking a bus bound to the North. You once said, “All roads lead to Cubao.” Along the way, I walk like someone dodging bullets—walking in a megacity is a risk you take when it is not built for pedestrians. When crossing, you hold my shoulder to make sure we move together, that I am not left behind after ten seconds of allowable passage. If I miss the chance, you stand at the end, laughing, waiting another sixty seconds. People are always moving. When walking, we switch places because I cannot walk straight. When sitting, you prefer to sit across from me so you can talk with your eyes, in silence. When the conversation reaches a dead end, I say, “Jesus passed by.” When ordering, you take the lead, chatting easily with the barista before gently looking back and making sure you got my order right. Your eyes are smiling. Yet Ocean Vuong calls the eye God’s loneliest creation, a gate through which the world passes without staying. I want to believe him, but I don’t. Because in that thin, pretentious instant of a blink—an interval so brief it embarrasses itself by being named—you appear, insisting on being mine, if only inside the dark that folds and unfolds.
Before our skin touches, the small hairs do, like brushstrokes of silly conversations, where life is artificially redeemed. Before walking the footbridge, we take a deep breath. While strolling through the filtered light of Cubao’s streets, I light a cigarette and watch the jeepneys fill. I observe everyone except you. At the food park, it rained angels, and this is where they agreed to meet.
We stand there before running to the alley covered with vines and hanging greens. In the corners and stalls of Cubao Expo, I stand, wondering, that even in this small cul-de-sac, stoplights and vigilance are required. The air is cellophane, thin and trembling, folding the city’s noise into a fragile, transparent layer that catches the wind. I count your curls. I map your birthmarks. I locate your eyes. I survey your olive skin.
Benj Gabun Sumabat is a trilingual Ilokano poet and essayist from the Philippines. They are currently in their senior year in BA Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman. As a PWD (Psychosocial disability) and non-binary writer, their works often explore themes of blue humanities, regional sensibilities, disability politics, and queer poetry. Their works appear in New York University The Greene Street Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Dagmay Literary Journal, Polyglot Magazine, Bannawag Magazine, TLTD Journal for Filipino Poets, and elsewhere. They are a former recipient of the Alfredo F. Tadiar Library writing residency program and affiliated with the Concerned Artists of the Philippines and Ubbog Cordillera Writers Group.
