Patricia Bansil
Author
Jillian Ramirez
Author
Alex Esguerra
Graphic Artist
Jannah Albay
Graphic Artist
After the Apocalypse
[2AM] After |
2 in the morning, |
With winds that howl, that whisper “you are alone,” |
That remind me of doors being swung wide open, |
Inviting me in, amongst the crowd |
I have always been excluded from |
But cruelty is to be expected |
When the ones who surround you are equally as lost, |
And so you take your shiftless, sleep-burdened form from |
What the mirror has allowed you to envision: |
A fractured shell of once-was now reeking of dying remains |
What is it to live die? |
In an ignorant, self-serving society |
One that never showed respite |
Despite every heartache, |
Experience nonetheless, the tantalizing sight of the ark |
A solemn testimony to |
How harrowing it is to repeatedly grieve over |
Something you thought had already died |
Like atoms in the body |
From dead stars of which we are vestiges of |
If there is truly rise from the rot, then |
Exhume me from the ground up |
Try and gild my flesh radiant so that my body would |
Count on the sun to shine ever still brightly the next day |
[5PM] The Apocalypse, |
When the world has fallen into a fathomless sleep, |
Look for me in these familiar green halls |
covered with moss, with ivy that crawls, with fungi, |
The life that exists as a form of decay |
The people that are more monster than man |
In a future where intemperance takes reign |
Can a difference truly be made? |
Between the grotesque half-rotten creatures and |
The heart-tarnished abhorrent man? |
Alive in its inhumanity |
What is it to die live? |
In an insouciant, self-preserving universe |
When we who remain are struck by nature’s cruel hand, feel |
The barbaric indifference of creation’s flooding deride |
Though, the struggle to escape submersion bares |
The desire of the heart to live |
Hope; |
Perhaps it’s something that never even lived |
Neither created nor destroyed |
Being descendants of destruction |
Is there refuge in our drowning? If that is so |
Coax me out of the waters, wake me only soon in the rye to |
Rouse and yearn for the same light tomorrow afterwards, |
When it is 5 in the afternoon |