" para kay lolo/for grandfather"
in my most stubborn dreams
your eyes still speak
our secret language
foreign even to our tongues
awake, i am not six but
twenty-one and
half a world far from the furthest stretches of my frantic fingers
you are shuffled from bed to bathroom and back like a house of falling cards
a deck of failing hearts.
You
who masked me from mom's manic depressive madness
and I
a manifestation of you and lola's melding midnight magic
We exchanged lives in our glances.
You saw me,
frustrated flightless
My nails bleeding my own palms
My tongue burdened by my whiteness
I saw you,
healing Billie Holliday roots
Reflecting strange rhymes of wartime scars and crimes
And stranger Filipino fruit.
And no one mourns more than me
For the silent waters of your eyes
And their eternal mysteries
Eighty years of history glazed over like frozen oceans
Ice seeps into your tongue, your feet.
And while I am here confined by my destiny
Your shadow staggers next to me
Your body ticking double time
Harvesting hours
Measuring minutes
Stretching all the seconds you can
To make it till May
to trace your fingers on my face
so you can feel my eyes
again.
© 2002 Resuri
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