i only sing in the sigh of the midnight and the dawn. and only in sobs.
when daylight arrives and my father has gone, i sleep into the ballad of the
mourning doves, having no one to call to me and say they survived the witching
hours. having no one at all. i read somewhere that in netherlands, if you die
and have no one to attend your funeral service, they send you a civil servant
and a poet so you won’t have to be lonely as they bury you. all the time, in my
head, i book a flight to the greener planes of amsterdam. i dream of my death
sitting through pews, immaculate and vacant of grief. no bouquet of white tulips. no
mourners in black with heads hung low. perhaps, not even a headstone. but a poem,
a string of words that have seen me through various deaths i died while living
can see me through my earthly ending, too. i thank the desolate f. starik in unwritten
blues. i tell myself that tomorrow will forgive me for all these wishes. as if the
sunrise isn’t the bleed unmade yet and already unforgiving. as if it isn’t the wound.
Fransivan MacKenzie is a twenty-one-year-old storyteller born and raised in the Philippines. She is the author of Out of the Woods, a chapbook of poetry and prose, and Departures, a collection of short stories. Her works also appeared in Germ Magazine, Transition Magazine, The Racket, Ice Lolly Review, Jaden Press, and more literary journals all over the globe. She is currently taking her degree in Psychology at Philippine Normal University – Manila. Find out more about her on her website: https://fransivanmackenzie.wixsite.com/my-site.