The Garden of Beings

long, long serpent slithers 

close with his male human 

lovers wrapped in each other’s 

skins but the aswang does not 

envy a small bit—her lips occupied

with her diwata’s own pair

a vision of brown and ethereal 

whiteness beside the tree that expels

a sigh of contentment as its exposed

roots clutches close its mermaid sweetheart 

underneath these couples grow a grass—green 

as the Eden’s but holy only to us.

This literary piece is part of Katitikan Issue 4: Queer Writing.