Suffuse

In the market, no walls separate
the coffee seller's stall from the rice 

vendors, and burlap sacks stand hip
to hip. Sometimes, the steam 

from your rice cooker smells faintly
like Arabica grown in the Cordillera 

highlands and harvested between 
November and March. Sometimes, 

a bird flies over the bayabas tree next 
to the clothesline. A splotch of ripe pink 

dapples your shirt front; you can't remember
which mouth unpeeled the thin skin of green.