Via Negativa

"Aanhin ang damo pag patay na ang kabayo?"
(What good is the grass to a horse already dead?)
                                         ~ Filipino proverb

Don't be a goody two-shoes, my father said: ma-
among tupa, head bowed meekly, just following

the herd. And don't be balat sibuyas: skin thin
as an onion, tearing up at the slightest injury. Malayo 

sa bituka, he'd pronounce—as long as the hurt lands far
from the gut, you won't die. Muster up a thick hide—balat

kalabaw.  But remember that nothing comes to those who
don't burn their eyebrows either—magsunog ng kilay, working

hard until dawn. Do you want to succeed, or do you want 
to wind up among those kalapating mababa ang lipad? 

Beware of scammers and sweet-talkers, those with matamis 
na dila. They'll hack their way into your soul and make off 

with everything, including the smallest nail, your cheapest 
piece of furniture. Don't cry. Don't let anyone see you

cry. You make a wrong turn, you get back in 
the saddle. You steer yourself right back again. 

In the matter of children—I didn't want
to inflict on mine the kinds of expectations

children of my generation unfailingly got from our
own parents: you will be a doctor, you will be a nurse,

you will be a lawyer or else; you will enter the nunnery 
or become a priest so there will be someone who 

can plead our case in the afterlife. At least one
of mine says she doesn't want to have any children,

given the state of the world. Which is to say, 
the decimation of human and nonhuman life,  

the terrible cruelties and hatreds that daily fly 
through the air— landing as spit on the dusky 

cheek of a woman on a train, falling as a rain 
of bombs on the defenceless sleeping in refugee 

camps. A grandfather kicked in the shins, a woman
thrown to the ground in the street—hate and harm,

harm and hate, their letters almost interchangeable.
A poet told of traveling through the nearly impossible 

dark where a deer lay rigid on a mountain 
road, the unborn fawn still warm inside her. 

Why is the end of suffering promised as a heaven 
no one can see, but that many seem so certain of?

I want to know how and when you came to be called
this—for even in the diminutive, it is a burden.

From watching you I learned each day was a race:
fifteen minutes' walk to the market, back at just past

the half hour, on your face the sheen of exertion
but also of pride. Early, rather than late. Fingers flew

over every one of our needs—we were blessed 
with nourishment, buttoned up to our chins, nothing

we could possibly want in addition to what you gave. But
I don't know what secrets you carried, besides me. When I 

look into the camera's eye I tilt my head like you. I smile 
without baring all my teeth. The part in our hair is where 

a brush or a comb moved through this little patch of 
darkness into which we climbed every night for rest.

Gabriela, saying your name like this will make
people think I'm writing to my youngest daughter. 

And yes she was named after you, but also after 
my father—himself named after the announcing

angel, the angel of prophecy and visions. As for us,
our visions are no less heraldic, touched by fire and 

the recurring dream of freedom known by whatever 
kind of name. Do angels have to sacrifice, Gabriela? 

When one falls in battle, does another take his place 
the way you moved without hesitation to the helm

of your husband's army after his assassination? 
It was 1762;  the British had just captured Manila.

He had hoped to overthrow the Spanish government 
in Ilocos, replacing it with native leadership. Gabriela, 

townspeople called you La Generala—fiery angel with
sword aloft, astride your horse, leading the charge on 

Vigan. It was not to be. Captured, you and your soldiers hung
like bells in the plaza. Even now, your name is resistance.