fransivan mackenzie

MORNING HAS COME

two years after we promised each other forever, your right hand holds the door open for me. it creaks like a dead branch of a white oak. sings like a mourning dove stitching a ballad in the breeze at dawn. it glitches. stops. then sighs a silence that blankets the city of my drunken dreams. for the first time in eons, i get a glimpse of the world between the yawning plank of mahogany and the cracked wall, the sun lending its light to everything. go, you whisper. i turn away from your eyes and look ahead as if this landscape is a garden and not a graveyard. a home that isn't housed by your aching alabaster bones, made up instead of skies that do not transcribe the echo of your hurt. go, you say between your teeth. i take a step forward. i do not say goodbye. i do not plead for an explanation. i do not ask you why you don’t let yourself be loved like you deserve. i kissed you in this very spot a lifetime ago, do you remember that? go. your voice cracks. i smile the saddest beam. i take the exit if it's all you can give. i take the past years in the pockets of my coat, along with your name engraved on a ring. i take the memory of yesterday, of me telling you how i'll be happy to bear a lifetime of moonless nights if it meant being with you through it all. i take this as i love you too much. i take this as forgive me. and i will. i do. go. my legs don't falter as i walk. they don't crumble under the weight of our tomorrows. they don't forfeit me to the ground even when you shut the door. ever so subtly like the rasp of a leaf against another. like a sob caught in a lover's throat.

Fransivan MacKenzie is an independent artist born and raised in the Philippines. She is the author of Out of the Woods, a chapbook of poetry and prose, and Departures, a collection of short stories. Her works also appeared in Transition Magazine, The Racket, Jaden Magazine, Abandon Journal, CP Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing her degree in Counseling Psychology at Philippine Normal University - Manila.