chimmy, ma. jhayle meer (born 1994, Manila) writes poems, essays, and fiction using her background in filmmaking. Her works appear in Brave New Words Volume 2, Cordite Poetry Review, Oyster River Pages, Pelikula Journal Volume 9, and Suspect. She completed her BA in Film and MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines. She teaches in senior high school, and is a founding member of the Community of Teachers and Writers.
River Poem 1
I want to see the river for what it is, not as a river of tears, a river of thoughts. Not a metaphor. In my 30s, I lived beside a river in a city that was often flooded. I loved it there— driving on the narrow two-way bridge of Tumana that overlooked the dredging. The river was unbothered, unflinching. With all the digging around, I meant it kept flowing, overflowing. People made it down to the river banks once in a while. They walked their dogs, played frisbee. I never could tell who was whispering, what it was about: a body of water to drown in, a forlorn meeting place. Come rainfall, they stand under the Bridge of Sto. Niño in quiet vigil, wearing colored raincoats. As they monitored markings on a pier—the water rose, waiting, bidding time. Nobody swam in the river anymore. We climbed nearby mountains and drank fresh cold water from the same source. Sometimes, washed the sweat off our flushed faces, our skins that made us separate from the river. It never changed what it meant to say, it never aged.
River Poem 2
The first time I crossed a river, I was a girl-thing unprepared to swim in her flimsy sando and panties, terrified to death as the water rose except it did not really. It was just moving as I moved, gently testing what storm beneath me raged in brutal daylight. Somebody said, the others are performing dives, jumping off a platform in the deeper parts, will you join them, in their game of trust fall? But what if I lay here, listening to the wailing, thunderous falls that dived head first from the peak? And let the river take me or my body away—somebody said, it was fine. I could cross to the other side where the stones would be cold from waiting. I could never, keep my peace where there is movement. Would you have thought years later that the river was nowhere to be found? At the hospital where my grandmother flailed her arms and reached out to the ceiling as I once did to the open sky, when I couldn't lie still. And somebody said, she was looking for doors to open, she was crossing over.