The Love Affair and the Long Haul

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

A short story, Anna,
is the tricycle ride you took
with that boy from Section C
on the last day of intrams.
You held on to the sidebars,
barely touching,
but your heart?—
your heart was already
writing poetry
in the spaces where your elbows almost met.

It’s the sari-sari store moment,
two hands reaching
for the same bag of Piattos,
then laughter,
then silence,
then the world shifting
like someone had turned on
the sepia filter of memory.

A short story burns quickly—
a summer afternoon,
a festival night in Miag-ao,
where lanterns float like
love letters sent too late.

But a novel?
A novel is waking up next to someone
when the roof leaks,
and there’s no more powdered coffee,
and the dog has peed
on your last clean banig.
It is the long line at the LTO,
the shared umbrella
in the middle of an argument,
the bills,
the birthdays you almost forget
but never do.

A novel is knowing
that love will smell like garlic
and laundry and sometimes
the perfume of someone else—
and choosing,
still,
to stay.

A short story is a kiss under fire trees.
A novel is planting one,
and waiting years
to see it bloom.