Map of my Memories II

1

Echo the years of your existence through the lines

On my forehead. Tread with a point

Of your finger the edge of my hairline

To the tip of my nose.

Trace my scars, I wore them

Like badges of motherhood.

Pass the eyes, dead tired, wide

And white. Part my lips evenly

Like the red sea. And then as if obliged, hear my story.

2

Envelop my neck with your long fragile fingers

To measure the orbit of your days.

Cup my breast beneath your palms as I have

Nurtured your soft head between them. Measure the length

And strength of my arms down to the protruding veins

In my hands. Hands which many times

Slapped your cheeks

And healed them back. Outline

Every curve down to the thighs.

Let the image of birth come

To you. Nanay to me,

And me to you.

3

Fit your fingers between my toes

There the sand once passed

Through. When we shared a walk in the sand

That, I could no longer do. Mark the blisters,

One two three. For each time I ran behind your

Every whim and pain. Carry me now, if you can

Now that my feet can no longer carry you.

Rain! Rain!

You bleed like the sky you said.

Paisleys hanging on a string 

of dotted lines, teasing 

the half moon into

upside down.

Dashing. Falling.

Asking. Can you taste 

the ocean, before it hits

the ground?

You bleed like the sky you said.

I knew the pale drops 

were blood you shed. Everytime

I reach out inside,

to pull open my canopy.

11/365

Light and Weight

What is memory to those who forget?

To those who’ve mistaken weightlessness

as a gift of forgetting.

Flying is a curse to those burned by the sun.

A punishment to those whose warmth

of land is fading.

It is a disgrace to dying, to fall

gently like ashes to the ground.

Instead, the way waves hit rocks and shore

throw yourself where you’ve once begun.

One remembers even in dying:

A gift of delusions and flashbacks

for having lived.