By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

FOR most, long-distance relationships (LDRs) don’t last. But there are success stories. I know some who met only several times and spent long years sustaining it. I know others, especially overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) whose marriages and relationships prevailed, despite so many challenges in between.

The challenge of distance overwhelms, but also empowering, as it forces the imagination to compensate, as in this poem I wrote 17 August 2015, entitled “Distance Between Two Points”: “The shortest distance/ between two points is a touch/ of your finger/ there is no distance/ distance is just a long bridge/ between two fingers/ I can touch you, here/ in my mind, with images/ beyond your fingers.”

“If you love someone, cross the distance”, a reminder I wrote to myself on 25 November 2017, at the point when the situation became doubtful and teetering to the brink.

The heavenly bodies, or any presence in the sky, often become focal points of communication. In a post dated 14 April 2022, I remember having written, Cotton Island in a Blue Zone” : “The color of distance, the color of love is blue. The cloud is a vessel of sadness, falling as rain, forced by its own weight.”

In the poem, “Distance”, written 20 December 2023, I spoke to the moon: “Here I am again, looking at you/ you are the turmoil in my heart/ braving the onslaught of time/ the inevitability of endings/ my doubt, my fury/ you are calm, you are beautiful/ from this distance/ up close, what’s your story?”

Meanings abound in the smallest raindrop. In the poem, “Conversation” written 28 July 2023:

in the rain, I listen
I listen to you, in silence
in the distance, I hear you
the rhythm of your breathing
the sound of your body
the pulse of my universe
a very long pause
a walk through a track
very rarely taken, very rarely spoken
deep into the forest of knowing
a quiet, tight, reassuring
embrace
I love you, I love you this way
in a very, very long engagement
of unspoken words
unknown words
of feelings beyond words
unknown, even to me
living, flowing, profusely
whispering, caressing
all of me

In the absence, it is refreshing to embrace an eternal presence: “She was gone, but never left. In between the words, spaces of silence, distance became a bridge. She was always there, a soft breath weaving among the foliage of trees, a lyrical psithurism sang by the nymphs …This song he recognizes, a comforting union with his own breath, in the rare moments of his solitude.”

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