Self-Portrait, Partly in Manila

There's a song that's an ode to it, made popular by
a '70s band with the name of a sausage brought over
in the 1800s by German immigrants to the new 
world. 
               The wife of an older cousin on my father's side
was given that name at birth; that's why her nickname 
was City. If you learned to drive there, you should
be able to drive anywhere in the world. 
By which I mean, in a city 
                                                       where six lanes of traffic 
cram into three and where it might take nearly half 
a day to commute to school or your place of work, 
unless you leave 
                                     your house at four AM. 
Though I was from a different city seven hours 
away by bus, I took a job there for nearly two years.
This was the time I'd become a newly single mother 
trying to raise  three children on a single paycheck
without  
                  the benefit of a formal divorce—which is
nonexistent in that country. In fact, it's the last country 
in the world besides Vatican City where divorce is illegal. 
For a while I rented 
                                          a miserable little room next to
a Seven-Eleven selling bao buns and instant ramen,
in a gated compound close to the university on Taft. 
All other residents were women. It felt safe, I suppose, 
until I wondered why all my comings and goings 
seemed under surveillance. Perhaps 
                                                                                 in a city with 
currently 1.7 million inhabitants, privacy is practically 
impossible. I didn't miss any of that when I left.
I've always loved my solitude, 
                                                                 trying 
to hold even the tiniest silvered moth of it 
in the clumsy space I form with my hands.