Two
As in a pair. As in a set. As in a couple. As in dalawa. As in double. As in two of cups. As in division into halves. As in when our two hands touch in the city bus in daylight it makes two hands turn into ten fingers and I think that means something. As in we can make more out of nothing. As in we are more when we are with each other. As in you trace your finger against the lines on my palm like you are reading them and I think I know what it means to believe in something, now. As in I am not good at writing within the lines, rather, I do it too much, but your flesh teaches me that lines are just lines, borders just borders. As in it does not have to mean anything, like two and its silent w, that asks us in its dampened whisper: what do we say when we don’t say anything at all?
Boys
As in sometimes. As in any pronouns. As in I have a skirt in my closet I have never worn, brown, long, kind of Catholic-school girl looking, it is mine, I took it from the rack at Goodwill, hid it under a pile of pants and tried it on and looked at myself the mirror, bought it, threw it in my closet, and never told anyone about it. Someday, I think I’ll put it on, match it with a good shirt, a good pair of earrings, look at my reflection, and see that I did not change, but everything around me. As in maybe the biggest performance was life itself. As in who are we but what others define us as. As in gender is not something we own but something we give. As in I give you my gender. As in it is yours now, I don’t need it. As in we are, were, will be, boys, as long as we keep telling ourselves that. As in call me whatever you want, and I’ll be it. As in boys aren’t boys until they are called boys. As in we were boys together. As in we were not boys.
Kiss
As in it is a January night and we are hungry for something outside of us, maybe the Thai place near yours, maybe the chill straight wind that runs down our backs rushing out of the house, but we do it, my feet slapping the pavement as if to wake the earth from its sleep. As if to say, hear me, I am hungry, the way we walk up the stairs together after a fumbled greeting, how you tell me to pretend that we know each other so your roommates don’t know, and I start to believe it, how we talk, sweaty palms, hyperhidrosis, on your mattress, until somehow we are pushed together, and our lips touch, and it is good, and it is filling us up with something that we cannot name, like craving was all we knew, and all we had, so we did it anyway.
Two boys kiss under a half-moon. Two boys kiss in one of the boy’s beds. Two boys kiss and it is good, and it is scary, and it is all feelings felt and unfelt, but it is good. Two brown boys kiss. Two brown boys kiss in a way that two brown boys shouldn’t kiss. Two brown boys kiss in a land that is not their home. Two brown boys kiss and wonder whether two brown boys should kiss, and two brown boys kiss and they become history unravelling between their tongues. Two brown boys kiss and it is a revolution and an exchange of language and a passing down of culture. Two brown boys kiss and it is so good it is scary and it is done and they are staring at each other after with no words because they were emptied out into each other into groans and whatever pleasure was they had it and held on to it and one boy starts to leave and the other boy puts a scarf around his neck like his mother did when he was too young to know what two boys kissing meant and he smiles gently and quietly and says “this is good.” Two boys kissed and wondered whether they would kiss again. Two boys kiss and it is something and it is nothing and it is everything and it is done, and it is enough.
Adam Arca is a Filipino migrant rights organizer and writer living on unceded Musqueam territory (Vancouver, BC). A son to migrant workers from Bulacan and Cebu, their work is informed by care and liberation movements from Turtle Island to the Philippines. Their work has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, amongst others.
