Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
In the hush of dawn, I walk alone,
with sleepy steps and thoughts half-grown.
The trees, they stretch in silent grace,
as sunbeams paint the morning’s face.
The birds begin their tender song,
and somehow, I just hum along.
Each leaf it sways, each breeze, it stays,
like God walks with me here today.
My shoes find joy in fallen leaves,
a crunch beneath the cool-kissed breeze.
And all at once, I feel it there,
the light that filters through the air.
At sunset too, when school is done,
I chase the gold behind the sun.
A jeepney ride, a fading hue,
the trees all bathed in honeyed blue.
Through branches stretched across the sky,
the light peeks in, a soft goodbye.
It dances, dreamy, light and free—
a glimpse of Heaven: komorebi.
--
Komorebi: A Japanese word that means sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees.
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2025
|
Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
There was a field behind our grandparents' house in the province.
A wide one, green and glimmering, where the rice stalks swayed and the dragonflies danced.
Back then, we were just kids—barefoot, loud, and always in trouble for staying out too long.
My cousins and I would chase dragonflies until our legs were scratched from the grass.
We’d run along the muddy dikes,
pretend we were explorers or heroes or just anything we wanted to be.
Our grandparents were always waiting.
Our grandma would cook lunch and wake us up in the mornings with the smell of garlic rice.
Our grandpa would sit by the window, pretending not to smile when we ran past.
The whole neighborhood was filled with voices—
kids shouting from nearby houses,
aunts gossiping by the water pump,
grandparents calling us in before the sun disappeared.
But everything is quieter now.
We’re older, scattered in cities with work to do and alarms instead of birds.
No more cousins running around barefoot.
No more children laughing in the fields.
The trees still stand, but no one climbs them anymore.
The dragonflies are gone.
Still, when I come back and walk through that old field,
I see us.
Running, chasing, shouting, laughing.
Worrying only about how to sneak out again after lunch,
and what game we’d play next.
And sometimes I wonder—
maybe if we had just let the dragonflies fly freely,
just watched them instead of trying to catch them,
they might still be here.
Maybe they’d still come back,
like we did.
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2025
|
Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
When I was a kid,
I only knew the sea from a distance—
from the deck of a ship,
sailing from Manila to Bacolod.
I’d lean against the railings,
watching the water stretch limitless,
wondering what it felt like to touch.
It wasn’t until high school
that I finally stepped into it.
Waves around my legs,
sand between my toes.
And just like that,
I fell in love.
There was something different there.
Not just salt air and sun,
but a kind of peace I didn’t know I needed.
I live in the mountains,
where clouds kiss pine trees, and the fog hugs you tight.
But the sea… the sea pulls me.
Sometimes, when days feel so tiring,
I catch myself daydreaming—
of sitting at the shore
watching the sun disappear into the horizon,
waves brushing my ankles,
nothing else to do, nowhere else to be.
Oh, how I love the sea.
I can’t wait to meet it again next summer.
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2025
|
Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
He drew maps for a living—
not of roads, but of promises.
Soft lines where her laughter once lived,
tiny arrows where her eyes used to point
when she couldn’t say stay.
She was the sea—
ever folding into herself,
a hymn of salt and leaving.
No harbor could hold her,
no anchor dared ask.
He traced her tides in silence,
built cartographies of could-have-beens,
and marked in inkless ink:
here be ghosts.
She tried, once,
to live on land,
to breathe stillness,
to fold her waves into windows.
But the sea is not a creature meant for ceilings.
So she left—
and the world kept spinning
in the wrong direction.
In some other verse,
some bend of time,
she learns to stay,
he forgets to wait.
But the ending, like gravity,
refuses to rewrite itself.
Every love story has a map.
Theirs had no destination.
Only a compass
that spun
and spun
and spun.
--
April 2024
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2025
|
Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
We grew up in a home of half-spoken things.
Affection lived in chores,
in a plate set on the table,
in someone asking if we already ate
as if it was the only safe way to say they cared.
We never became good at speaking about feelings.
Our voices always seemed to hesitate
when affection was the topic.
So we created a different language,
one made of small gestures,
of someone saving the last piece of food,
of footsteps waiting for another pair
before going to sleep,
of gifts wrapped in simple ways
because giving became our version of saying
I love you.
Maybe that is why I learned to write better than I speak,
why my heart spills easier on paper
than from my own mouth.
We rarely sat at the same table.
One ate in the living room,
another by the counter,
another at the dining chair closest to the door.
Yet there were evenings
when we all ended up in the same place,
talking more than usual, laughing together,
sharing food and future plans,
as if togetherness was something
we only remembered in flashes.
When we hurt each other,
we did not talk about it.
The room would feel heavier,
and we learned to walk around the memory
of the words that cut deeper than we meant,
instead of touching them.
Time became the bandage we depended on
because none of us knew how to unwrap our own hearts.
But distance changes us.
When someone leaves for work,
or stays in another city or province,
or takes even a short trip away,
we suddenly find words we could never say face to face.
We say take care.
We say I miss you and I love you.
We send messages with hearts
we finally feel brave enough to deliver.
It feels strange sometimes.
How miles can soften our mouths
in ways closeness never did.
How we open up more
when no one is there to watch our voices shake.
Maybe that is simply who we are.
A family stitched together
by gestures and distance,
trying to love without shaking,
trying to speak without breaking.
We are closer when we are apart,
not because separation strengthens us,
but because space gives us the courage
to finally say what has lived inside us
for years.
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2025
|
Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
Shhh! Can you hear the hunger’s moan,
Children hollow, left alone?
Silent streets where shadows yearn,
We burn, we burn, for you to learn.
Shhh! Feel the hands that grasp for air,
Empty bowls, and vacant stare.
Your quiet gaze lets chains remain,
We rise in fire to break the chain.
Shhh! Listen close, the walls will speak,
For every lost, for every weak.
The flames of truth cannot be tamed,
Our voices roar, though you’ve restrained.
Shhh! See the pain behind your door,
The hungry cries you can’t ignore.
If silence kills, then hear this plea,
We scream for justice, for you to see.
Shhh! Now feel the embers grow,
From broken streets, the fires show.
No longer whispers, we claim our turn,
Hear us, stand with us, we burn, we burn.
Shhh! The silenced rise, no longer still,
Our voices rise against your will.
For every life ignored, unseen,
We fight, we speak, for what has been.
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2025
|
Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
The cosmos keeps misplacing you in my sky,
A planet too near, yet forbidden to collide.
Our paths redraw like stubborn lines,
Sacred geometry, cruel design —
Close enough to burn, too bound to defy.
We split one song through borrowed wire,
Two pulses climbing the same burning fire.
Your shoulder brushed the edge of mine,
And silence swelled like holy wine —
A hymn restrained by higher choir.
Years pass; the ink refuses to fade,
A letter sealed, a promise mislaid.
It sleeps like a blade beneath my bed,
Sharp with the words I never said —
A relic of vows we never made.
You stand in pews of different light,
I kneel where faith divides the night.
Yet still we trade our careful hellos,
While under our ribs a river flows —
An ark that aches but won’t take flight.
So we remain in measured spin,
Two orbits tight beneath the skin.
If speech were freed, we’d both give chase —
Undo the stars, abandon grace —
But gravity is God, and God won’t bend.
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2026
|
Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
Each morning when I’m half awake,
I look outside as daylight breaks.
Through my bedroom window’s frame,
that little bird appears the same.
I don’t know why it chose that spot,
a tank, a wire, a sunny dot,
but every day it comes to stay,
and so I look for it each day.
It feels like we have our own way
of saying “hi” without a say,
a little friend who doesn’t know
how much its presence makes me glow.
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2025
|
Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
Golden skyline burns,
ambition dressed as virtue —
dead smiles sharpened thin.
Compassion becomes rumor;
even kindness costs too much.
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2026
|
Details |
Patricia Anne Fonseca Poem
If every river longs to find the sea,
what shore is waiting for a soul like mine?
Why was I taught to count the passing years,
yet never taught what they were passing toward?
If mountains rise by carrying the earth,
what unseen weight am I supposed to bear?
Why does my heart recognize homes
my feet have never found?
If every star is placed within the night,
who scattered us across the dark?
Was I made to bloom,
or merely to become the seed
of someone else's spring?
If time is only borrowed breath,
who is waiting for its return?
Why do we spend our lives becoming,
yet never arrive?
Is the horizon always distant
because meaning was never meant
to be reached—
only followed?
And when this small flame
returns its borrowed light to dawn,
will I finally know
what I was meant to become?
Copyright © Patricia Anne Fonseca | Year Posted 2026
|