ALL THESE THINGS
The Haibun Journal, Issue 5:1
Touchstone Awards 2023
In front of a store in Manila, mask on. A queue. People stand six feet apart. Men with guns check everyone who wants to go inside. They send some in. They send some away. She crumples a piece of gum wrapper in her pocket, while she enters. A quick walk along the shelves, in her hand a list of several people’s requests. What does this mean? She picks, unsure. Checking her list again and again, she calls, she texts. When she leaves, her eyes are smaller. She carries everything to others’ homes. Her friends’. Her family’s, where they complain about the things she has brought, about their lives, their homes. About Corona. She texts me, and we type “hugs” and “hugging you”. She asks me to tell the universe to answer her prayers. And I do.
her foot hovers
between metro and platform
warm up-draughts
On the table: a set of magnetic tiles. Each one has a word on it. Her hands move across the surface, pushing the magnets here and there, here and there. After a while, the words shape lines. The lines build verses. Houses made of verses. A poetic map. She reads them aloud and pauses. This is how she creates sense.
Before the lockdowns, she goes to the park to smoke. To write to her friends. To smoke some more. To breathe. That’s not a contradiction. She sends a picture of her hand holding a cup of coffee. The coffee is sweet and black. She sips. Her friends send random pictures of pets and selfies. I send a picture of my garden from a thousand miles away. A home in the rain in the park.
drips and drips
in the locked bathroom
a clouded moon
In front of her: a box of rectangular stickers with short quotes. They all begin with, “Hello, I am … .” Some people come to her little counter at the art market, read, smile and buy. Hello, I am a customer. What is not on the counter is: Hello, I am someone who listens. Hello, I am a human being. Hello, I am asking for help. I am stronger than I think. I am right by your side. I am weaker than I want to be. I am tired. I am …
Between, during lockdowns, she finds a marble. It rolls on the ground. There is a wild, white spiral inside which seems to be circling as she slowly rolls the marble between her fingers. This small, big thing. People rush by. People stop and stare. People’s voices mingle and mesh. She covers her ears to keep them from getting to her. Her fingers slowly clasp the marble. This is hers. The marble in her hand she begins to walk. Of course, this is not about a real glass marble. She knows it. I know it too. More importantly, it really is a small big thing, hope.
still water
maybe a carp deep down
taking a turn
In the middle of the pandemic, she says yes. In love. Very much so. And I wish I could have been there.
Love is: the way she insists on using her own kind of ellipsis . . just two dots and two spaces in between. The power of two. The impossibility of yes and no. The first thing that captivated me in her art. Another way of surviving: she writes prose that sounds like poetry because it is. Love is the way she says yes anyway and no without doing it, the way she writes the longest and shortest sentences. They run all over the place. It is a serious creative business: a rope she feels along and away from rooftops.
rock salt mango
another sleepless night
moongazing
She writes to me that she will move out tomorrow. That she will still do the grocery shopping, put on the mask. She will still help her father feel safe in a world that threatens to be swallowed by a tasteless fog. Tomorrow, all the weight of the illness will still be there, and there will be a home. She wants a home. She wants her home. She has an idea of what her home might look like. When she looks up at the stars, she sees hope like pinpricks in the blackness of everything. The blackout poetry that she has to create herself. That there will be someone to hold her hand. That she will take more small steps, and that she will pay attention to them. She writes, “Mother, I have kwento1.” And I read. This is what we do. We are making space for each other. She writes that there will be a tomorrow. That tomorrow is closer now.
It stinks. She rips a page of a book out, paints it almost entirely black. Over phrases, fragments, words. Then she moves on to the next page. But after a while the ink becomes transparent. There is less and less of black. The page would need another round of ink to become truly dark. In the end, it is what it is. The paper can only hold so much ink before it tears. There are only a few words left that can be read well. They combine in new ways. That too is a language: Where nothing seems to be, something is.
ulan sa hardin2
more than a starlit sheet
fills the cradle
- kwento (Tagalog) = story
- ulan sa hardin (Tagalog) = rain in the garden
pi & anne 