Fish Traps

She stands with her black face some six inches from the moist window-pane wondering if it would ever stop raining. Her clothes barely warding off the cold, she gripped the cold steel of her umbrella and sighs, ten minutes more. She watches the puddles on the street as rain drums on endlessly on her rusting roof top. Gray clouds stretched on for miles. She worries of Marcelino’s fish traps.

Raspberry

 

The umbrella lay on the sidewalk, oblivious to his anger. That was the last I saw of him, cursing and beating the poor thing because it was stuck—not being of service despite the beating rain.

His Daughter

I shivered as I felt the cold wind brush my cheeks as we drove on the bare streets of our neighborhood, past still trees and sleeping houses just an hour before dawn. My father and I were headed to the bus terminal where he would, for the third time since I got into college, be seeing me off.

 

“You study hard now Tin.” he said as he slowed down the pace of his motorcycle.

 

He was making more time, more time for his words of advice. Weeks ago I would refer to it as a sermon, but this time it’s different.

Dama de Noche

 

The sound of bells

and silent chatter

from each side of the isle

and white petals that spread on

the crimson stretch

Behold:

A fairytale of maharlikas and

village maids.

Mother

 

When I was eight

I would climb up Lola’s mango tree

On sunny Saturday afternoons

And perch on a branch, I would look down

To see my mother’s smiling face

And wonder why she was not afraid

While Lola would go out of the house

In panic and screams.

A Long Wait

The tree beside the

mailbox burst of orange blooms

over finger-shaped

leaves that stretched across the sky.

That Tuesday his letters came.