good things just keep on happening

by Theo Itchon

long after I’ve set the shovel down, and forgotten 

if I had been digging my own grave or if I was searching for treasure. 

Oh, how the light leaks through my blackout curtains,

how the phone rings even when I’ve kept it on silent. 

Unfathomable that the tides would fight me if I tried to drown myself,

how my body would kick and scream and run to extinguish the fire I’d set myself on,

how the good would fight through the grit and the silt and the rage.

Even in hospitals, life keeps bursting forth. 

There are as many people that arrive in airports as there are that leave. 

As many mornings I wake up certain today was going to be the day I killed myself,

were as many mornings I thought, 

I am going to live a beautiful life today. 

The plant in my home has learned to live with so little water for so long,

it just wouldn't die from my neglect. 

I tell the man I love to leave and he won’t. 

I will the earth to stop its cruel orbit,

curse a God I don't believe in,

and spit on the ground, a bit mad from loneliness,

and too much fluoxetine still in my bone marrow.  

Then I see the golden sun, dipping in the horizon,

and the wind blows a similar breath as the last day of my childhood. 

My mother calls me to tell me our favourite thrift shop has a sale on. 

My cat sniffs my face on a morning I thought I’d forgotten how being myself feels. 

All the good in the world,

one by one, then all at once,

in their orchestral way, sing to me:

don’t leave us just yet, sweet girl. 

all the rest are restless to meet you.

Theo Itchon is an Ilokano writer and author of The Divine Mundane (2024). Her work has appeared in several different publications such as Thimble Lit Magazine, Rat World Magazine, and fifth wheel press, among others, and her poems have been anthologized in Ligáw, a collection of poetry by queer Filipino authors. She lives in the Philippines, where she studies classic Ilokano literature. Read more at theoitchon.com.