Monstrous

In my hometown, a lady 
dressed all in white walks 
the streets at night, looking 
to hitch a ride. Another rises 
into the air on the updraft from 
her parasol wings. We also have 
a pantheon of gods and goddesses, 
thousands of nature spirits. They don't 
all live in one place, like the Greeks 
with their Olympus. Some of them dwell 
in the forests or foothills of Mount 
Banahaw or Mount Apo. Others wind 
through rills, or smoke giant cigars 
in the branches of balete trees. 
Whatever their shape, they too 
were born out of colonization
when all of us— brown-skinned and  
marked with the ink of centuries— 
somehow turned monstrous. When all 
that was spirit-filled in us was 
exiled, recast in forms of darkness.