Listen: the ones in my past lives tanked my heart
in a war zone carved by weapons of mutual destruction.
But as a sign of trust, I will enter into a treaty with you.
Any war-ravaged land knows how ash rises from the wreckage.
Swordmarks constellate my people’s moon-
silvered flesh 400 years after the Spaniards stripped us, skin to soul.
Yet, on the Pacific shore: tawny dawn gleaming in our eyes.
Whenever my feet reach foreign lands, they long
for the comforting chaos of jeepneys; warm-as-Manila
paabot po ng bayad after the Americans seized Intramuros.
The hearths of boxcar trains in Capas where the Japanese squeezed in
battered ancestral bodies like spent matches. Fatal love bleeding
into the peace of expired cannons in Corregidor.
In my country, I learned how something left for dead
by men who took and took and promised
“I shall return,” but never did,
is still a place worth sharing with strangers who arrive
to mend and stay. Still the only place that feels like home.
This was first published in San Anselmo Press’ chapbook, Memory and Freedom, published in November 2023.
