kabilang buhay

  You admit you hate numbers. It is hell extracting answers

when figures shuffle and formulae mix. It is nightmare

solving for the value of x and y or converting meters into miles.

You concede you’re not a math wiz but the wind here in corniche

suggests a challenge to your brain to calculate the distance

of Bahrain bridge from this radius: You wonder how many

full steps it will take for that adjacent land to be reached?

Though your poor arithmetic aptitude can’t quickly get

the right answers when improper fractions are divided in halves

or when digits must be rounded off to nearest tens or ones,

you can tell how deep the depth of this anguish is, you can measure

the size of this loneliness as vast as this foreign ground

gradually sinking in to your pores amassing to your weight of grief.

You glance randomly at passersby and notice there’s one thing common in them.

Their eyes just like yours longing to bid goodbye to this place

they never learned to call their own - home.