I want to write your name
on random places—
on the back of my notebooks
during boring and sleep-inducing classes,
on papers where I test pens
before buying a half-dozen of them,
on receipts from fast foods
when I can't afford fancy restaurants,
on movie tickets when I watch
cliché plots or cry over tragic endings,
on the other side of name tags
where it would flip and strangers would think I'm gay,
on my social media posts at nights
when you're online but messages don't come anymore,
on certain pages of newly-bought books
where a line reminds me of you,
on the doctors' prescriptions on days when
I only need you to ease the pain,
on the literary pieces I write about you
when everyone thinks they're for someone else.

I want to write your name
and leave it behind my sojourns
like a trash I want to dispose,
in hopes that you will stop
messing with my life
and decay where I left you.

I know I can scribble
your far-from-unique first name
anywhere I want to,
and no one would know
whose it really is among
the billion people same as yours.

But I just couldn't.

Your name is a poem
I'm not allowed to write
because I can't claim it mine.

You were never mine.
–Myka M. Obinque

Photo: ester_peaks