Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Pages of inked cursive beginning with My darling
or My sweetest and ending with Yours faithfully
until the end of time. Not this I love you
to the moon and back or I love you to Neptune
and back nonsense. Yet I don’t think I’ve 
ever seen or heard of a single letter or card 
my parents wrote to each other, or if they did so 
at all in the history of their courting. 
When one was away on a long trip, 
I don’t recall the other receiving a postcard 
in the mail. What gestures signaled the turn 
from friendship to more than friendship, 
what form their desire might have taken 
in the face of social pressures to be reticent 
or discreet? In yellowing pictures: his hand
on her knee as they smile formally; her hip 
curving slightly in the direction of the little
flip of her hair, standing against their second-
hand car and the grimy backdrop of a garage.
 
  

Where do they all go, the letters 
        and cards that were written 

and mailed but never arrived at their 
        destinations, or got returned to 

their senders? Sometimes the moon 
       looks like the flap of a creased 

envelope— whatever message or instruction
       it bore has slipped into its dark 

pocket. Now it is swimming so far out 
       at sea, to a country not yet discovered.

Flourishing in the same pot,
each green heart is a poem
working against the same
constraints.

There is no need
for rhyme or meter. Time
and space are endless- 
ness enough. 

When we can, we like to sleep in 
on weekends. For brunch, we make 

coffee the slow-pour way. It feels 
luxurious just to have eggs, bread, 

papaya cut into squares and laced
with honey and citrus. In our other 

lives, our mothers and grandmothers 
were up before the leaves of the chayote 

unfurled out of the cold. In our other 
lives, they calculated expense vs. need 

vs. desire; they boiled rather than fried, 
mended until a thing fell to pieces from 

the mending. This morning, though the world 
doesn't lack for terrible news, I changed 

pillowcases shiny with oil from our heads, sheets 
humid from the island shapes we rocked into place 

through the night. Envelopes lie on the counter
demanding what we must pay and by when, how much  

we still owe in order to lie under a ceiling the color 
of eggshells. Leaving a cafe a few months ago, I pinched

a sprig of sambac— Arabian jasmine— from bushes massed 
by the entrance. The dream of its scent plucked 

at my sleeve, ghost flower even now, its roots waving 
in water until I can marry it again to the earth.   

 
There's an outdoor elevator that would take 
              an hour to ride to the top of its   
       building. Leisurely ascent, time to experience  
              a kind of slow suspension, though that's  
nothing compared to trees in an olive grove 
              which have persisted for almost  
      a thousand years. Two leaves have yellowed 
              on the monstera. Plant guides say  
it could be from either under- or overwatering;  
              it's hard to tell for sure. No one  
      would mistake a violin beetle for the actual  
              instrument though perhaps that  
might not be entirely fair to the insect,  
              which may produce its own type of  
      coherent music just below the range  
              of your hearing. You hope   
you'll see in this lifetime the Picasso moth,  
              miniaturist bearing a gallery display  
      on its back. As long as there are bees,  
              there can be honey; and also that myth  
about how they defy the laws of physics with   
              their bumbling flight. Anything  
      is possible. To take the poison out,  
              change wasp to was, grieve 
to veer; strife to sifter, human to hum.

What is lyric but a thread 
             embroidering the shroud of our days,
      a feather clearing mirrors of fog
for a visitation of ghosts and ancestors?  
      It's damp again tonight, which means
             our memories can leak through thin
spots in the fabric of time and find us. 
             The wind has knocked down summer-
      colored umbrellas and now their ribs,
open to the sky, are streaked with pollen.
      I am pulling on this thread 
             which reminds me: everything
      I mourn is also everything I loved,
cannot help but love; love even not knowing
      whether something will endure after  
             its passing. There are spaces 
      for rest like there are in music; 
when the rain clears, gardens open like poems.  

They are not mute. They've earned
the right to silence, having rubbed  
against centuries of substances with 

varying hardness, sometimes more than 
their own. They are not just pallid grey 
or brown or black. They wear not only 

the drab mineral uniform of those 
taught to keep their heads down 
unless called, and the rest 

of the time remain in unobtrusive 
service. On closer inspection, even 
the smallest of them holds 

fortresses with a hidden arsenal 
of color: speckled ochre and verdigris, 
milky bands smaller than a millipede's leg. 

And my favorites— those who hoard 
russets like fire, like blood, everything
that pulsed within range of their absorbing.

Drone cameras brought back 
images of thousands upon thousands 

holding up signs saying how much
we love this world, ransacked  

but not yet in complete ruin.
In order to keep loving, we'll 

have to keep living for those 
deprived, no longer alive, taken

too soon. Pollen dusts the porch, 
and new maps of the world appear 

before our eyes. Hydrangeas 
from last season stayed tethered 

to their stalks, as if guarding 
the plant until its return to green. 

*

Addendum, 06 April 2025:

I woke up to this post from poet, translator, 
and professor JUNLEY LORENZANA LAZAGA 
(based in Baguio City), who was moved 
to translate this poem into Ilocano 
- I'm deeply grateful. 

Sumagmamano a Banag nga Ayaten Ita nga Aldaw
(Impatarus iti Ilokano ni JL Lazaga)
 

Insubli dagiti drone camera
dagiti imatang dagiti rinibribo

a mangipakpakdaar iti no kasanotayo
nga ay-ayaten daytoy a lubong a naasak 

ngem saan pay met a narsaak. 
Tapno mataginayon ti panagayat, nasken

a itultuloytayo ti agbiag para kadagiti
napaidaman, dagiti saanen a nabiag, nasapa

unay a pimmusay. Natapukan iti pulbos ti sabsabong ti balkon,
ket agparang dagiti baro a mapa ti lubong

kadagiti saripatpattayo. Dagiti milflores
manipud iti naglabas a panagsasabong, agtalinaed 

kadagiti sangada, a kas mangbambantay
kadagiti puonda agingga iti panaglangtodanto manen. 
 
 

 
They call it fasting
blood sugar— how you're not 

to eat or drink anything 
from midnight, before a sample

is taken for the doctor. The lab
technician comes in and binds

your arm with elastic, then
inserts a needle into your vein.

As the vials fill with crimson,
you think of all the times you tasted

rust in your throat from a nosebleed,
saw poppies bloom in front of your eyes;

the day you clutched your mother's skirt
as a thick line of red flowed down

the inside of her thigh, and she waved
and waved, trying to flag down a taxicab.

"Who trusts a mouth that does not abandon
itself/ to...ripeness?"
                          - Albert Abonado

Yes, too much salt 
billows in the blood.
Too much sugar hardens 
the kidneys into clappers. 
Too much fat hoists
sandbags to the rafters, 
from where they will drop 
one day soon on your feet. 
Too much bile burnishes 
the coins of each envy,
reddens the nets that swim 
in the backs of your eyes.
One day, one way 
or another, you 
will die.
But you can't starve 
the hunger planted 
beneath your navel,
the hunger squirming
under the white 
roof of your belly.
It digs its points 
into your flesh 
and wakes you up 
at night, dreaming 
of crackling pork rind
and blood stew, green 
bulbs of bitter melon 
glowing on vines
in the yard; soft
tongues lapping up
vinegar. You will slip 
out of bed and take
your sharpest knife, 
crush garlic cloves, 
pour oil into 
the heated pan.