I don’t know why, or when,
I started hating May.
Is it because I don’t know
whether to bring an umbrella
or not—
when the season’s supposed to be dry,
yet I still get rained on?

Is May so suffocating
because the humidity
weighs down uncertainty—
a month too far
from the beginning,
not yet in the middle—
where everything feels foggy,
my flesh and bone surreal,
and my soul, empty?

Was it because it’s the bastard’s
birth month—
the one who colored me
black and blue,
who taught me what freedom means
only when I slipped away
from the palms of his hands?

Perhaps it’s not even personal.
Perhaps it’s the blood spilled
in one May—
when the youth peaceful protests
for our right to speak,
to feel, to be,
greeted by bullets.

I find nothing jovial
amidst the fickleness
and the plague of precarity.
I don’t long for June either—
but at least I don’t
despise it.
I just wish I could
skip to November—
not because I was born
early that month,
but for how grounded it feels,
how close to the end,
with a measured leisure
to wrap things up.
Where rain is not a guest
but a tenant.

The goddess Maia plants nothing here,
and the shower doesn’t bring us flowers—
it spoils our crops
and crushes the hope
of the hands that nurture them.
May doesn’t promise a new beginning—
even as workers march the streets
demanding conviction.

Perhaps there is no particular reason—
just a restless heart
and excessive burnout.
So don’t tell me to love May—
I stopped checking the calendar.
I will only ask myself,
whether I am still here today.