By: Ma. Antonette Lofamia
When you’ve waited two hundred million years, you can also wait
six hundred. I steal a line from Calvino just like this and I say
to you: tea always tastes smells like grass. We are sitting
in a Starbucks and you are drinking yuzu citrus and tea
which reminds me of my home in Ehime, beloved princess,
princess, be loved. You can also wait six hundred, I tell myself.
I am kissing you now (a Tsvetaeva), I am kissing you now—
across the gap of a thousand years. You are sipping yuzu citrus and tea.
Did I mean years or yards? A word changes everything and tomorrow,
I’m leaving. We walk ghosting past the streets of Shibuya.
I am kissing you now—across the gap of a thousand yards.
Ma. Antonette Lofamia is a Filipino teacher and writer now living in Japan. Previously published as Anya Lofamia, her works appear online and in print. Her work also appears in the recently published anthology in the Philippines, NARITO: Essays on Place. Currently, she focuses on writing learning modules to aid distance learning in her country, and discovering minimalism.
*Ehime is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku.
It’s kanji, 愛媛県, literally means love/beloved princess.