Kidneys and Other Poems

By Gretchen Filart

Kidneys

I sat across the table, log-heavy, to offer you my kidney.
I was not over thinking. Neither was your head,

shaking incessantly like the weary maneki-neko hand
wobbling in your car, your pallored body careening

after the last dialysate drops into the vein. I thought
of my kidney as a key lodged in the door of your cavity,

locking in love too suave for softness.
On Sunday I cried over dim sum. Why

won’t you take something of mine? I wanted you to have it.
I still want you to have it. A living vessel spanning the distance

from me to you, filtering ale you drown your sharp-tongued father in.
Cleanse your blood. Rest it from knee-jerk-recycling old hurt.

That’s all right, you are giving him your heart,
they said. A heart is an oversold gift. Too often

I handed it recklessly
to my fellow reckless.

As far as I know, those bastards can have what’s left of
this black-and-blue fist. Slice it with whetted lies. 

Suck the blood dry with their fanged fickleness.
Leave it wet and parting as they always do.

But my kidney? Only one man
whose strait epicanthi bloomed

like lotuses in the sun whenever
my kindergarten feet rushed

to meet his brown suede loafers.
Whose yellow skin now rests, grey

sand in an urn years after refusing a kidney,
so his stepdaughter can walk away with two.

Outside the window, bougainvilleas 

Mauve mouths blowing in the wind, 
thorns brushed by soft morning rays.
Prickly as the stubble 'round your fickle lips
against the warm ochre night lamp. This is how 
torment works:
sharp edges in this world are kissed 
by light that even 
if they sting, you think to yourself, 
I still want to touch it.

Valentine’s notes

After Hala Alyan’s “Poetry Workshop”

Flower:
Your blade on my stem, bleeding sap. Remember
my lush, puckered lips only when you crave
someone else’s.

Bear:
You gift my synthetic body. Mistake me for tenderness.
Sleep with me only to shoot me when the kids come
running for my feral arms.

Cacao:
Can your tongue taste iron and rust?
Lick away crimsoned walls and cleared forests
in West Africa from your sweet fingers?

Earth:
A thousand ways to say I love you. I can’t remember
the last time you told me. Doesn’t home weigh more
than your fickle words?

I wish in the depth of your forest

After Robley Wilson

I am once again the cicada splitting
the silence and you are the sun's violin
hands. You will coax me from a 17-year-quietude.
I will brave my rebirthed voice, love,
dull hours when you are your warmest,
sunniest side up self. Look, it's getting dark
out. Soon the rain will arrive
to test these tulle wings, pull your strings
down heavy. You will let me sing
to your dimming. Night deadens us.
But tomorrow will arrive. Children will walk
this way again. Their little boots flapping
in the puddles, laughter bellowing
against our lyric.

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Gretchen Filart is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist based in the Philippines, where she embraces life while managing bipolar disorder and ADHD. Her work unpacks the complexities of grief, mental health, healing, motherhood, and love, garnering recognition from the Greg Grummer Poetry Contest and Navigator's Global Writing Competition. She is currently working on her first full-length collection. Connect with her via her website, gretchenfilart.com, and across social media as @gretchenfilart. She is usually friendly.

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