Terminal Thoughts
By Diego Silang Maranan

When Annique arrives today, she will carry
a different country in her bags
     As she unpacks in my room I'll watch,
     and I alone will see the rotting kelp
     folded carefully among her socks, or the heavy

slabs smuggled from the walls of Burnaby's
concrete fortress As she shakes her bras to
     air, pine needles will fall in a pungent
     shower that, as it hits the floor, becomes
     less shower than mist, less mist than breath,

less breath than sigh In the land of Starbucks outlets
that end only when your patience does, gray
     is the anthem we sing, brine the intoxicant of
     choice There, the collective monologue of
     the populace bounces off glass, and soon will find

a path to my ears numb with ice-wind, ears still recalling
     the sounds of my nonage from five thousand miles away

© Diego Silang Maranan