Simon Floris
Obituary
2AM,
Miguel and I can’t sleep.
He gets out of bed,
lies on the carpet we bought the night before
and grabs his guitar.
He starts playing the sweetest
and saddest
songs he knows.
Very quietly,
I hum along to the melodies
I recognize.
He gets back on his bed
and says something
vaguely humorous about masturbation
or racism towards Asians.
Miguel Hallare,
born and exploded on New Years’s Day.
“Put my ashes in a firecracker,” he’d say,
“and blow me up in North Manila”
He kept talking about the Philippines.
Where had he been?
Palawan? Puerto Princesa? Linapacan?
Did we walk the same streets?
He kept talking about his wet nightmares.
He kept saying he hated music
but he fronted three metal bands.
He stomped up and down the room
when he couldn’t find his pack
of Turkish Royals.
He dyed his shoes blue,
he circled the world in a paper canoe.
Miguel Hallare,
Sunshine all over me,
Moonlight down on you.
Simon Floris is an Italian and Danish student attending the Savannah College of Art and Design. His poems appeared in the Beijing Youth Literary Review when he was living with his family in Beijing from 2016 to 2018. This is his first poem published in the United States.
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