Plan A: Do

Step 1: Be ready for my first day.

Rooms, schedules. 304, 12-3

The right building and in-between breaks

Introduce yourself, and “why you’re here.”

Step 2: Mentally prepare myself.

First row seat, take down notes, and speak up

My classmates’ chatter filled the hallway As I’d made it safe and sound

Topics started to run through my head

Like bullets, ricocheting around

All their noises drowned, their colors faded

As soon as I knew I found

You.

Wait. What had I just found myself in the middle of? All he did was open a door. Surely, he wasn’t the only interesting person there. So what was happening? Had everybody stopped talking? What? What?

What I got were even more questions. Inside the room, I felt the walls closing in on me. Putting me on the spot this early. Why the awareness of where he sat? Why take note of whom he’s talked to? Why the pain of not talking to him when I’d had the chance? 

When we finally talked, I had a plan:

• Wait ten minutes more by the entrance, so we can walk in together. 

• I thought of bringing this thing up ‘cause I forgot last time. 

• Tell you the joke I thought you’d find funny.

• All while not looking you much in the eye.

To answer all the whys that left me none the wiser. Mark them all done faster.

But you’d be earlier than I was

How early should I wake up then? 

But you’d already be talking to someone

Who was that? A friend?

But you didn’t react at all

Why didn’t you? 

But I looked for you when you were gone

Where were you?

I lost all the bullet points in my head. My hands turned cold. Defenseless. I was breathless, trying to beat the odds. Betting my luck. Gambling against the seconds. 

This was hard and unlike me

To Do:

“Nakapagpasa ka na ba?”

“Ah, hindi pa.”

“Sabay tayo.”

The distance between here and there is our silence. 

Should I say something? Should I go first? Should I-

Wait. 

We’re here. 

You’re the one who knocks,

So I’ll be the one to speak. 

Today, Tomorrow, or Later?

When you’re asking me what I mean

One fine day in August,

I started making it all work out for me

I didn’t decide to like you

I just did

One shared moment now in February,

I can’t have both you and my rhyme

When Plan B comes in

But you work your way through 

And I become an ellipsis

The plan becomes you

No sign of your name in my structured poems

But you are all over my careless paragraphs

All my pauses and disappointed sighs

The forced certainty in my maybes and perhaps 

The weight of all of my waiting

Fills the cold air with no new sound

Except for my last step, closing the door

• As I end this now