Instead of a Letter

Rodrigo Dela Peña Jr

You who made a bracelet out of scars
on your wrist, how each slash inflicted

was a memento of getting through each week.
You from whom I learned how to drink cheap gin

straight out of the bottle, wincing at every
swig—where have you been after the tumble

of years, everyone else caught in the song
and dance of getting married, raising kids?

I heard you moved to Finland and I worry
that snow would come as a gradual

erasure of your world. You would have laughed
if I said that to you, this looking

at Nordic weather as metaphor, the way
you rolled your eyes when I wept at the ending

of a Mexican film where two stoner guys go
on a roadtrip with a woman who would lead their lips

to each other. Now the snow must be melting
in spring and I think about water draining into

sewage pipes, its many faces as liquid
on a glass, as ice cubes, as rain. You who would leave

and vanish, who would become history,
memory, elegy. Drink with me

in Manila, Singapore, Helsinki. Let me remember
your name when the credits scroll in a movie

theatre. Maia, good mother in Greek,
illusion in Hindi. Aisha, meaning alive.