IT’S TOO LATE TO WATCH THE SUNSET
It’s 7 pm on a Sunday, one of those
hey-let’s-be-alone-days, not
particularly out of choice, but I like it anyway,
because I can do what I want, listen to what I want,
eat what I want, act as I will.
I’m hungry, going out for a bite to eat
on Taraval Street, the winter day outside
is dark except for a few lights
Breaking on the horizon.
I walk out and head down the street,
I have nowhere to be and nobody to see,
Nothing to do but travel.
I have nobody to be, out here
On these streets, the Avenues ticking by,
23rd, 24th, 25th, tick tick tick.
These streets looks like a modern Old West, tired
The tumbleweed and the gun slingers replaced by
Cars and old buses,
the heads that droop to the ground.
Like everything in San Francisco, Taraval operates on
hills
Something almost unnoticeable to the walking feet of
Daily lives, going from
House-to-grocery-store-to-Laundromat-to-dinner-out.
The L-Train passes by, grating roar on the tracks
26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, nothing
But bars and dry cleaners.
In mystomach and my chest
Is the Desert.
I want something to fill me up.
The 30’s pass quickly,
And there is nothing outside
Or inside the Desert.
41st, 42nd, 43rd Avenue,
The rise and fall, the barren stone buildings,
The lights are all out
44th, tick, the sun is disappearing into Ocean Beach.
I can still see the faintness of light
As I pass the dim street lamps
The 7/11 and the parking lot villages.
I crash into the ground, my feet
kicking up the light sand rocks.
On the beach,
There is no sun, setting or naked,
And around me I can see nothing but
The Ocean swaying gently
Blackness without light.
I take off my shoes and walk into the water,
cold and moving, the wet sand is
harsh on the skin of my feet, the salt water
crashes on my legs, eroding the
cracking pillars.
Out in the distance, the sun has fallen off the face of the
World,
Disappeared. Now lost. Now gone. And the

water stretching out along the coast
Into the fleeting West.
I try to find my shoes, but I find nothing
except debris turned into sand.
The stars appear,
And, I,
I remember a diner I had been to a long while ago, a
diner by the Ocean, and I remember wanting to visit it
again
with my feet bare and sandy and wet,
I see the night along Taraval, the burnt out bulbs
shedding rings of light,
I listen to the Great Highway’s Silence, the cars
rumbling along every two minutes or so,
I stare as two people pass with their dogs, making sure
not to tread on the sandy road,
I look South and see a port stretching out into the
Ocean, burning with lights, orange and red and white,
trying to extend out into the great black panes of waters
I watch as the stars appear, and the star appear, and the
stars appear, until they dot the sky to the horizon,
twinkle and remain, reflected in the Ocean as pale dots
of light.
And I sit on an empty L-Train, taking me back
up the avenues, staring out the window because I don’t
want to sit alone.
–Colin Yap

class of 2016

from “The Divine Feminine“