Dear Ryle
I, who was socialized into a “man”,
do not allow my anger to be unleashed out my fists.
I simply cope by straining my wrists & flexing my fingertips
into Corinthian arches. My forearms brace themselves
into Tuscan columns and I scratch & chafe & etch mazes
against the circumference of my epidermis.
I have seen, in numerous films & mainstream media,
my forefathers turn strangers noses into rufous fountains,
crimson cascades in a sudden-flash.
I have seen the way shame shakes my shoulders
& makes me shiver, the way it makes me stutter my words
& shutter into my chalice shell.
I have seen the way my guilt makes my ego
guard my heart from getting held accountable.
I have seen how my insecurity cause me to second guess myself
& back down from being seen.
My childhood trauma consists of
seeing teeth transformed into theatre seats
for treading tears & silent sobs;
I have seen jawlines
sharpen through jagged grinding of incisors,
in certain instances I catch my tongue wanting to tease out
these cracked lips, and shatter its rattle.
Last night I repeated the same mantra
in my mental space, asking the lord or any other filipino deity
to help me comprehend or properly pronounce my suppressed emotions
in steady and concise paragraphs, instead of a gaping roar.
instead of pocketing myself in the shell of my painted husk
instead of allowing Depression to pickpocket my happiness
and install a jailbreak version of someone else’s smile
stitched into my weary cheeks.
Recently I checked how much patience
I have preserved and my savings continue to produce ten folds.
I look onto the “role model men” who mold my world
around their own incentives and materialistic hoarding
by spending the worker classes’ millions of dollars
on fire-arms and underground military bases.
My tax dollars probably pay for war crimes in Third World countries,
so I have decided to invest it all into a panopticon for my passions,
and a federal prison where these haunting demons have been placed;
to free roam and sleep on wooden ramps
while the blind crows and toothless alligator exchange
a laughing moment within I, the kaiju’s, stomach.