Fiction editor Esperanza Elizabeth Vargas Macias on today’s bonus story: There’s so much I adore about this short by H.K. Agustin—the tender melancholy of the prose, the hopeful persistence for love, the grief for the past, the present, and the future. “Maybe” is poignant, deeply human, and unforgettable.

Maybe

Before we started, we were running out of time. You stood there at the pharmacy, peeking behind your mother’s back. We held hands. We did laundry. We washed the dishes in the kitchen where you kissed me. You kissed me a lot. You were my first kiss. My sister saw us kissing. I told her I wasn’t gay. This isn’t the only lie I’ve told her. She doesn’t know that I kissed you on our bed, in the cathedral with twin square belfries and pyramidal roofs. You wanted to get married there. I wanted to marry you. I didn’t know what I wanted. My mother didn’t know that I wanted you. I cooked french toast for you inside a rice cooker. I chose your clothes for you. I wrote poems for you on the back of receipts saying, Again, I fell in love with a girl I could not fight for. For you, I fought. All teeth and blood. For you, I fought my mother who says gays are hellbound. I’m gay. You’re gay. But you tell me your God had a place for us in Heaven. My God asked for Isaac, the most painful sacrifice, given to be taken away. Love, we almost made it, but didn’t. I wish I had the courage to tell you this before I left. We parted ways at the Metro Rail Train station after spending the day knowing we weren’t seeing each other for five years. We were happy as the world burned around us in slow motion. We were happy. I kissed you in the dressing room of a shopping mall in the heart of Manila. Our tears kissed through our cheeks, so little distance between us. Distance is both granular and infinite. We are two years away from that memory. I am 8,058 miles away from you. And with you gone, I am no longer tethered to the homeland, to a future in the mountains where hell can’t reach us. I’d kiss you when dawn breaks and in the kitchen, we’d dance to Elvis, The Beatles, and kundiman. Then I’d hold your hand and make a covenant with you before the God who loves us both in the cathedral of our bodies. In this future, we could have had all the time we needed. We could have had all we wanted.

H.K. Agustin is from Manila, Philippines. Her work is found and forthcoming in Guernica, Prairie Schooner, The Margins, the minnesota review, The Maine Review, and elsewhere.

Tip the author: Venmo @hannkeziah