NO TITLE YET

that night we curled up on the overturned table made of narra

and what served as our roof was a piece of plywood - the wooden board

we put under our karagumoy mat where we sleep.

 

but that night we didn’t sleep 

we couldn’t blanket ourselves with that sheet of peace.

the anahaw upper coverings of the room,

the walls in the kitchen and in the sala-- Shattered!

Swept away! 

 

the house was almost naked!

the coldness of the night kept growing.  

 

my shoulder curled over my chest,

my sister sought warmth in the confined spaces of the table.

we couldn’t take our eyes off the light from the flashlight in front of our faces - hoping

for it not to die before the morning comes.

we waited for the sun. 

we waited for the timog - the assuring course

that could tell that the ravaging wind is soon to exit

her way to our place 

we waited for whichever of them would come first.  we could no longer calculate;

we lost track of time.

 

we lost track of the time that night.

and when morning came, we found out  that

we lost our old house too,

we lost the Niño on the wall in our old room,

we lost the anonas tree. so, from that night

i have not seen anonas tree except on the internet;

i had not sweated ever again  from running after my sister; 

i had not sweated ever again from tossing

each other over a better looking ripe fruit ;

i had never tasted its fruit again nor smelled its leaves. 

i could no longer revisit our ancestral house except in my sleep.

i could no longer know if I would be holding back nor be at ease 

without Niño in our praying room, where our mother tied our hair

to each other’s while on our knees whenever we misbehave.

all I knew was no matter how good girls we may be, 

no matter how strong our house would be, the wind could break everything in

one night!

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

devastating in so many ways...the tragedy of storms, the loss of life, the loss of home...the loss of security...
we cannot fight mother nature....she is stronger than we.
We are at her mercy.
j.