home run
the giants’ opening day
garlic fries on april eve
at&t park looming
smell of sea & seagulls &
relentless churning excitement
choppy waves of
orange and black streaming into green
familiar pitchers frozen in bronze
safeguard the stadium
stopped permanently for pictures
announcers sweeping their voices
across the bay of people
this is what it means to be giant
i think
leaning over the railing,
knbr 680 in a little black box in one hand,
dodger blue
(i apologize every time,
that was the only color my dad’s
catalog had
& everything in it was free)
binoculars in the other
and i stare at ant-men
deceivingly shorter than me
cheer at the crack of the bat,
the ebullient chants of the crowd
yelling
let’s
go
giants,
let’s
go –
taste of tallness when they hit a
high fly ball
over left field
going back &
back
&
(he looks up, sees only blue)
gone
& now
they’ve faded into something liminal,
post-championship but pre-failure,
stolen the name of future-tellers.
i wonder if they can tell a new mythology now.
lean over the railing,
inhale,
welcome
oracle park.
“in time your love life will be the subject of stories”
the first time,
everyone warns you about regret.
quotes statistics about failed
romances,
inversely proportional relationship
between adolescence and
believing in love.
i can’t say i believe
in a god
but love
is the closest i get –
but love looks like a belief
that hope, more than apathy,
remains the boldest rebellion
we ever stage
and the first time,
that hope starts with
falling in love.
(& when i say fall i mean)
pumpkin patches, jason derulo’s “it girl”,
funnel cakes, haunted houses &
first cuffing season
that i sat, hands clasped tightly
in the back of his mom’s car
fingers curling around each other
reminding myself
not all ten were mine.
my parents still tease me about him,
my first almost. first definitely gay. first
person my eyes
latched onto
& didn’t fall from,
because he held on, too.
first i love you,
whispered in
snatched phone calls
wedged between my sister’s naps
and mom’s awakeness
& they still make fun of that,
but. but it was something,
some little war against
going gently into the day
without tenderness.
(i’d like to think
those i love you’s reverbrate through the universe
that at any point in time
we are suffused with love
from someone else’s chronology)
Janelle Salanga is a self-professed Gryffindor and an ardent advocate of used bookstores. She is a current sophomore at the University of California, Davis, she is majoring in science & technology studies while minoring in political science and communication. When she's not coding or binge-watching Michael Schur shows, she writes for UC Davis Magazine as an editorial intern and is currently directing a vignette for Pilipinx Cultural Night. Her work has been published in The Margins, Occulum, and The Brown Orient, among other places. You can find her (re)tweeting assorted oddities @janelle_cpp. She is a regular contributor to Marías at Sampaguitas.