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  • Writer's pictureMarías at Sampaguitas

Poetry by Christine Fojas

This is Not How It Ends


Love expanded like a thought in my head

circling like a snake made of smoke

whispering of an endless hunger. Nights

stole my rest. Your bones my sky

weighing me down. Nobody at the wheel

but we were riding high on unspoken dreams.


I craft each memory, build each dream

while weaving patterns in my head.

Hand spinning thread on the wheel,

fingers deft. The past is just smoke

and mirrors. A broken sky

can be fixed. Will be fixed. For a night


or two. You told me: this is the night

I will change the world. A dream

chases me out into open sky.

You live here now, in my head.

Your words turn to smoke.

Your hand turned the damn wheel


too late; in bright lights your eyes wheeled.

For a half-second, I understood that tonight

will be the last time we’ll share smoke-

flavored kisses. Let me have a dream

that fits like a hat over my head

to cover my eyes. I want to live under a fake sky.


We thought we’d always have white-blue skies,

a field of spinning pinwheels,

bodies twined on grass, poem-chains in my head

written down after long nights

as if transcribing a dream.

It all passes through my fingers like smoke.


Your lips blew perfect rings of smoke,

cigarette held between long fingers. The sky’s

the limit, you promised me, or was that a dream?

Top down, wind in my hair, you at the wheel.

We didn’t think it would be the last night

we would share this intimate space. Go on ahead


of me. Get a head-start. I will follow you through the smoke

that fills my every night, walk on the jagged pieces of our sky

and kneel, while a spoke in a wheel whirls like an eye in a god’s dream.




Christine Fojas (she/her) is a Filipino-Canadian hailing from Las Piñas City and currently living in Metro Vancouver. She has a BA in Comparative Literature from University of the Philippines and works as a library technician at Douglas College. A list of her publications can be found at her website. She is also on Twitter as @chrisfojas. Fojas is a regular contributor for Marías at Sampaguitas.

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