Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Philippines


Those were years of darkness and silence
when we learned not to trust anything, 

not even our shadows because they change 
depending on the time of day. The man 

in the clean, pressed shirt who sat 
next to you in the jeepney, the teacher 

who always had the latest hairstyle; 
the auntie who sold rice and swamp spinach 

at the corner, the man who ladled hot 
crisped corn into paper sacks at the edge 

of the school yard— our elders said we 
couldn't trust anyone. Everyone was afraid, 

because everyone could be bribed   
or threatened or bought. We spoke 

with our eyes or through the lean of our 
bodies, taught each other codes for knocking 

that meant friend or relative and not 
foe. When the curfew sounded at nine, 

we sat together with shades drawn, turned 
down the volume on our radios. They seemed

to age before their time, but we helped 
our children with homework and told them 

to say their prayers before going to bed. 
When we put their pencils and crayons away, 

the sight of a brightly drawn yellow sun on
kraft paper was enough to rend our hearts. 

You show up late to a wedding
reception, missing not only the Chicken
Dance and all the versions of the Electric 
Slide, but also the moment when the bride
and groom cut the cake and try to cram
the largest morsel into each others' 
mouths. All the slices have been served; 
only a few mangled pieces are left, thick
with buttercream and too little cake.
You think about your youth, that sequence
of finish school early, marry early, 
for fear of missing the train called 
adulthood. Should you have waited, gone 
to more parties, hung out with the shinier
and more ambitious crowd, focused on those 
with one eye on real estate and the other 
on trading futures? Now, approaching
the later threshold of life, you take
stock of what you have and what you 
can leave behind; some kind of bequest 
or legacy. Have you told your daughters 
your most important stories, what they 
should do with all these books and all 
the trinkets you saved from your other 
lives? You've never had a financial 
adviser but now you're standing in
the lobby of his building, about to take 
the elevator up to your appointment. Perhaps 
this means something in you still believes
in the future, something now willing
to join the game of risk and gain.

Sometimes it is small 
as a moth folded in the hollow

of my chest. Sometimes it circles
my wrists and ladders up my spine,

then takes hold of my shoulders 
to twist them into ache. Sometimes 

it has the heft of stone and I 
no longer remember when exactly  

it grew more weighted, or when 
I thought the body could make a little 

more room for what it can't actually hold. 
Though I want to forget, it shapeshifts. 

My only hope is that in staying and not 
simply passing through, it becomes 

the kind of root which remembers 
it can grow into something green.  

A salt lick, a watering hole, a thumbprint 
embossed on a clearing in the dusty hills. How 
did it become this fantasy of paradise, willows
weeping with the weight of untrimmed blooms 
as flat-bottomed boats circle the surface of 
a manmade lake? At first, only a handful 
of them. And then, more tourists clamoring for 
a turn. Now there are too many concessions, 
crowding the water that merely flows around 
and around itself. Concession, from the Latin
con + cedere: the grant of privilege by 
a government to individuals to engage 
in some enterprise. Or, the act of allowing 
or conceding. Who gave the first permission? 
They fight among themselves for the right
to the largest fleet. They name ghosts on 
business permits as their children intermarry. 
They forget the history of ruin, how the most 
accurate ledger is the one kept by rain.

The moon suspends itself above our cities, 

its seas a romance whose mystery we haven't 

plumbed entirely though we've sent men 

to leave marks on its deserts, footprints 

in its hills of fine lunar dust. We are always 

trying to bridge the distance between earth and

heaven, climb out of the nave where we bow

our heads like congregants in supplication.

When we look up, it is toward the apex 

of the vault and beyond. Cai Guo-Qiang 

built a sixteen hundred forty foot-long Sky 

Ladder, wire brushed with fireworks and

gunpowder, held aloft by a helium balloon. 

One June dawn at Huiyu Island Harbor, he lit 

and watched it blaze, rung by gold rung against

the still indigo sky. Shrimp boats, trawlers,

and skiffs paused where they were. Villagers

emptying their chamberpots caught their breath. 

It took only a little  over two minutes, but 

in that space, the impossible happened. 

The universe glowed, opening 

the door to every desire.

Those slow afternoons, she'd lie 
on the couch and rest her head on its arm, 

then gesture for me to come pluck out the white 
hairs from her head with a pair of tweezers. 

Five centavos for each, she winked. Perhaps 
I earned twenty-five. Her hair, still thick 

and glint-dark then as a tidal pool. 
Sheened with a slick of coconut oil,

it needed no other adornment. But
she tried out trends— pixie cuts, 

kiss-me curls. Now I'm the same age she was 
when she began tinting her hair with henna, 

as the shoreline above her forehead slowly 
receded. I touch the scalloped curve 

on a barette, the crosshatched tuft from 
my own hairbrush, look in the mirror 

at the part resembling a trail as the moon 
raises its tortoiseshell comb into the sky.

Frost builds up in the freezer
where crinkly bags of peas and blocks 
of butter live next to wrapped and dated
cuts of meat, dumpling wrappers. It's either
because of a faulty door seal, or a problem 
of air circulation: too little, too moist, 
too warm. There are times I am hot and
cold at the same time: icy with rage,
cheeks flushing warm from the snap 
of indignation or curt dismissal. 
As the afternoon grays with sleet,
water boils in the kettle. It's 
the type that doesn't whistle, but 
we're supposed to know the signs.

Certain scents cling 
to your hands, your hair, 
though you've barely touched 

them— citrus spray, garlic 
oil. And there's the way sunlight 
fills a water pitcher at the edge 

of the counter— you wonder at  
that kind of brightness, its taste,  
how you might cup a handful 

before it evaporated. There are 
things whose passing you'll grieve, 
sharp as a shard of laughter 

floating in a hallway long 
after the one who lofted it into 
the air has left. Once, the shape

of the future was a mere speck 
in a wilderness of tomorrows, but
now the light has shifted. Mourn

the wasp that expired to sweeten 
the garden inside the fig, and also
the woolen sock whose mate went

missing. Days later, you find it
tucked into a sheet corner: a message 
saying Not yet gone, not yet gone.

"I am not of the common daredevil sort..."
                - Annie Edson Taylor, 24 October 1901 



There's a place at the oceanfront 
where you pay sixty dollars to be sucked 

into a vertical wind tunnel simulating free-
fall conditions in a skydive. Or you can find

an instructor to do a tandem jump from a plane
thirteen thousand feet in the air. In 1982,

a man tied forty-five helium balloons to his 
lawn chair and rapidly rose through the air,

disrupting flight traffic near LAX before landing 
in a tangle of power lines. Was it the culmination

of compulsion, a dream he'd always had from 
childhood? I read about Annie, who on her sixty-

third birthday in 1901 thought of going over 
Niagara Falls in a padded barrel with an anvil

for ballast and her cat for company. She lived, 
first human over the falls. Conned by her manager,

she never found fortune and fame, her name 
on a boardwalk tote or trinket, people lining up

for an autograph. Soaked stockings and skirts,
the water's loud hum outpacing her heart, she

walked in a swoon stepping out of that cloister,
the world's drum tumbling as if without end.   

Before the small plates even arrive,
one of us asks for recommendations
on who to consult for drawing up  
her will. Another confides: a daughter
urged her to put a Go Bag together. 
What would she put in it? Keys, papers,
meds; snacks, water, change of clothing,
warm jacket, flashlight... But where
would we go? How could we possibly 
rehearse for something we're unsure 
about? The weatherman predicts rain, 
some wind tomorrow. Or it could turn 
into a storm, a blizzard with zero
visibility. I remember the letters
I used to get in the mail from my
mother: thin sheets, blue envelope, 
a little plane aloft in one corner. 
Packed particles of handwriting 
drifting from one line to the next.
They're in my house somewhere.  
How do you leave such things behind? 
When we clink glasses, our sleep-
deprived nights run down our throats.
One of us says, when it's impossible
to go back to bed she gets up and looks 
for something, anything, to do. Fold 
socks, make tea in the kitchen, start 
laundry. Many conditions can exist 
at the same time: terror and wonder, 
heartbreak and hope. Have we always
lived in the flimsy spaces between?