Atang

Dear father, forgive me the times I forget 
to put out a plate of food and a cup of water 
for you. Gifts of food in small portions: 

a spoonful of steamed rice, flesh scooped from 
the belly of a milkfish. Has our hunger dwindled, 
diminished? Sometimes I stand in the middle 

of a grocery aisle, lost in a warehouse of choices. 
Shouldn't desire also have its own limit, shouldn't it
at some point hold up its hands and say No thank you, 

I have no room for dessert? You, who used 
to instruct: The nearer the bone, the sweeter 
the meat. You, who pried the still-warm tongue   

out of the roasted pig to place on my newborn one, 
and also on each of my daughters' in their time.