Author: Luisa A. Igloria

You were taught that love—
the "real kind"— means giving

as much as you can for as long
as you can, until you hear

the clink that means the tank
is nearly empty, the stone

falling from a long way away
has finally hit the bottom of 

the well. Don't you know better, 
don't you realize after all

these years the flower doesn't need 
to be shorn from the vine in order 

for anyone to distill its fragrance?
Jasmine, trumpet flower, throats

that open in the deep of night 
to announce their need. But yes 

of course, you know: of the many
forms of service, survival is one

of the hardest. Add to that list
falling apart, losing yourself, waiting 

for the world to pour light back into 
your hands like a debt finally paid.  

I never did get into the sourdough 
starter trend, jars of fermenting 
microbes named Herman, Sophia, or 
Suzette passed down from family 
to family to friends, and now
to anyone on Etsy who's curious. 
They boast a long lineage: a thousand 
years or more, back to when wheat 
was gleaned from hillsides and plains 
in the old world. Water and flour 
mixed with bacteria from unknown 
hands continue to bring their 
backstory forward. Haven't we 
also carried the spores of what came 
before in our bones: history of old hurts, 
litany of losses? Was there ever a time 
when the body did not wear these kinds 
of heirlooms, when it knew only 
the simplicity of air and water before 
the blunt alchemy of change? To leaven
means to rise, but the body can also choose 
what bread to cultivate— feed what blooms 
into nourishment instead of sour replication.

 
These days, it seems the sky has some difficulty
remembering light is for softening in the early
morning and at twilight, for ferrying birds 
instead of bombs through its curtain.

Ships and schools and cities burn. 
People crowd airports, clutching documents
and a few possessions they can't leave behind.
A child chews on the ear of a stuffed toy.

His mother can't stop crying. Meanwhile,
the Filipina tennis player wins another
match, smiling and poised through an opponent's 
accusations— her fans were distractingly loud

in the stands with their joy. What is too much
joy? I want to say we work through the strain
of our own battles, but life goes on because 
that's what it does. Meanwhile, we clink 

glasses of iced mint tea in a Lebanese taverna 
by the harbor, where tourists line up to see 
the insides of a sloop-of-war from 1854. Fog-
draped, from a distance its masts look almost 

shrouded in smoke. If only the madmen of the world 
would stop behaving as though they could own it all. 
If only we could find a way to continue, to give 
our children their own futures not yet broken.

Centuries ago, it was believed
that something could be made holy

by singeing it with fire, letting 
its blood drip into a cup to offer

on an altar with prayers and song.
A blessing once meant a marking,

the hand touched to the wound 
to gentle its turn toward grace. 

Under the well which gives water, 
tunnels deep in the earth snake 

through thorny bramble and rock, 
seeking the root of things. Without 

having known what it’s like to fumble 
through darkness, would the pearl-

light of morning feel less of an 
astonishment? Bodies that bore 

a hundred hurts, that carved of 
themselves an offering. A warbler 

balances on the tip of a branch, 
its weight barely enough to break it. 

From light to light, breath seeks a path
to brilliance unencumbered. What we endure 
proves more than survival. To be spared— 
really, what are the chances? No one’s anointed. 
Tempered in leaves and ash, brine yields a coarse 
and smoky salt. Time has worked this way too 
on the planes of your face. From darkness 
hammered on the anvils of the past, how 
you remake the world each time determines
how you rise. Your first home's receded into 
the archive, so you tend to think any venture
could be a homing. You choose to go out again 
into the wide world, believing your life 
is both the oldest and the newest song.

*

What you worked hard for, you know  
you’ve earned. First author, clear byline.

Your name spelled correctly— how hard
could it be? It seems more than a lifetime, 

this work of standing up for your due. 
And yet you haven’t lost excitement for

things you still hope to do. Teach and write, 
make books, read books, exchange ideas to find 

elusive delight; discover how lives shaped 
in heaviness and endurance might breathe. 

Shed scales close as armor, feel the blade joy
can touch to your chest where it finds a place of

softness. Remember sweetness after years 
of strain, how skies widen from light to light.

*

Some things are simple, like kindness.
Like looking at instead of looking away,
standing as witness; finding ways to return 
some grace in the harshness of the world. 
You try to remind yourself you are not only
the things (you imagine) you lack. How else
could you honor the roster of unnamed
acts that made it possible for you to hold
your place in this moment?  Yet you know
there are things you still need to deflect,
rephrase, insist on. Remember you 
can rewrite the narrative, insist on your
truth. Walk into the room because it’s
true— you worked hard, you own it too. 

*

Remnant energies, sheltered in stone
through seasons of debt and sorrow.

War and rebuilding, then war again. 
Fortresses chiseled with towers 

from which sentries could witness how
wind turned the waters’ brined pages.

Repeat as cities hum into being 
and warehouses fill with the resin 

of trees. War today, war tomorrow.
What is the difference between 

revolution and insurrection? History
might not want you to remember survival

shouldn’t mean turning into stone, that
the simple energy of kindness exists.

*

Fragile spark, flame you cup to keep
from sputtering. Mind it doesn’t die out,  
this fire handed down from one to another 
down the centuries. An edict, a wish, a talisman.
A dream, messages inked on your bones by forebears 
who knew to find the hinge where the tip of a spear 
could find its target. Bloody skirmish on the shore
(it wouldn’t be the last),  after a portal opened 
and three-masted ships with broadsides and
falconets brought their hunger from across 
the ocean. Bite of peppercorn and cardamom,
burnish of clove and cassia bark. The letter 
from the ancestors is brief: Don’t let the heat 
turn remnant. Shelter its energy in stone.

*

Living is the oldest war in the world. Out walking,
and twilight leans in. Streetlights blink as if everything

needs to grow accustomed to the dark. Hands
in your pockets against the cold— when did you  

learn to curl them close into themselves, in secret? 
People gather in lit-up spaces filled with song 

and noise. You push the door open, slide
into a seat. Here too, while joining in,

you’ve learned to rearrange those parts of yourself 
at once rawer and softer, the ones you learned to

shelter from even joy.  While glad for welcome, you
never entirely lift  your hand from the dial, always 

taking measure. The list of the wind, any draft 
that could snuff out the fragile spark you carry.

*