POEMS ON RECEIPTS: A Collection of Poetry and Prose

By Hannah Valerie R. Cabahug

A reminder of one’s brief youth and its complexity, from childhood resounding through young adulthood, bearing raw emotions and authentic grasps of labor, fruition of love, loss, and life’s wonders. Poems on Receipts is Hannah Valerie’s first published book under Xlibris Publishing which dives into life’s gifts and curses, generational trauma, innocent nostalgia, and celebration of simple yet impactful breakthroughs for all brave yet fearful trying 20 somethings

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369423912

Hannah Valerie R. Cabahug

Born on February 14, 1996, Hannah Valerie Repunte Cabahug, is the eldest daughter of Roberto and Noemi Cabahug. Born and raised in Manila, she ventured back to her province to pursue education and started working in Cebu City in 2017. A graduate of Bachelor in Secondary Education Major in English of Biliran Province State University and a licensed professional teacher. The author loves reading, writing, traveling, film photography, and is a pop-culture enthusiast by heart. She has one sibling, Robert Dominic Cabahug, who resides in Cebu City. The author is currently working as a contract representative at Author Solutions Inc. Ph. Her work, Poems on Receipts,heavily revolves around the themes of life, love, loss, trauma, and healing, waltzing to the beat of her modernist and contemporary approach to poetry.

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Copyright © 2024 by Hannah Valerie R. Cabahug.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/14/2024

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Contents

Poems on Receipts

Scribblings

Acknowledgements

To my family, you ground and elevate me all at once

There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, ‘Consume me’.

― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

I say, embrace me naked.

Poems on Receipts

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Receipts from Grocery

I hate it when I see fragments of you

In crowded cafes and khaki pants

Black headsets and big backpacks

In between sighs and 2 a.m. goodbyes

7-eleven dates and sudden walks in the rain

Smiles flashing and silences between laughs

We might have worked out past the sight of now and today

But everybody’s gone home

You did what you did

And I said what I said

This is where I should write, I hate you, and I wish we never met

But in between the lines—with every inch of my fiber

I do not think I could.

-First draft

I feel utterly stupid for being stuck in the same zone when a year just ended last night.

- New Year

My head is filled with musings of what ifs and why nots

Yet you are the why I could never quite decipher

I’d rather live in this pool of uncertainty

Than have the answers

Leaving me heaving with

I wish I never asked.

-Coffee break

I hope for