Missing Lover – Kari Astillero

When river resounds among girls sitting on rocks
and each voice combs like a moon-song:
rope vines crawl like our hands,                to reach

                                                        you, there
at the bosom of our mother.
What must say we send in boat leafs & petals
for you, to gather in quite—
                                                       speak for us

the shadows of children playing hide & seek
sunset melting into a luminous lake field.
A memory pressed in a book:
               the slumber’s

music you placed in a glass jar beside your bed.
A lamp with which a child reads under her blanket.

Here, is a handmime of figures, dancing—
seeing is the start
                       of dying towards the desired.

A thief is in and out of our house
searching                                a missing lover.

Kari Astillero is a Filipina living in one of 7, 100 Philippine Islands. She is currently teaching English, and guarding her solitude away from the city’s noise. Her work has been published in Rust + Moth, Solidago Journal, Thistle Magazine, Severine Lit, The Ibis Head Review among others.