on understanding daisy jones & billy dunne

by Melanie H. Manuel

there’s a man & woman 

in a hospital church, waiting 

for news, where they talk about 

god & what it means to come 

together. they sit there, side 

by side, only a breath 

away from touching skin. 

i think about last week 

when we talked about seeing 

each other. how we’ve always 

done this, looked past persons 

standing beside us, as if those 

bodies could stop this moment—

an intersection of lines, etched 

by time & chance, to believe

in this: the lingering, a kind of 

holding beyond hands, rather 

bodies—your chest pressed firm 

into mine, warm, steady, like 

a weight that brings my knees 

to kiss ground, you’re there 

to tether me to the expanse of this 

apartment. we hold ourselves 

pressed flush together underneath 

the technicolor lights & muted 

instrumentals to some song forgotten 

in darkness, another kind of falling. 

how in that is slick skin on slick 

skin, a melting between our 

bodies in an unbothered crowd. i dig 

my nails into your forearm after 

the second wave of unmooring. 

feel you tighten around my ribcage. 

watch you hold the light, the 

only one, pull me, back to center.

Melanie H. Manuel is a Filipina American poet. She obtained her BA in Asian American Studies and English from UC Davis and is currently attending SDSU for her MFA in poetry. She has been published twice by Third Iris Zine. She has been awarded the Prebys Creative Writing Scholarship, the Master’s Research Fellowship, and most recently, the Sarah B. Marsh-Rebelo Scholarship. She is currently the Production Editor for PIOnline and teaches in the RWS program.