Would you have loved me If they called me Jasmine Instead of Sampaguita

the showers are too weak in our new house, or else I am too weak, letting water pass right through me

how do we show up in our stories, when elders are no longer around?

When asked why I still have faith after all these years, I wonder how could you not?

conjuring the Sahara in our orange hallways & together trekking across those impossible sands.

It has been three seasons since I last saw you, she hums. I was beginning to forget your face.

homebody | cocoon | 2020 atrophied some of my hard won progress | change that officially by calling | 2021 the year of

& her handshake is an embrace. The second mystery is that she smiles the vowels of my name

It’s not yours until you bleed on it, until it tastes the kiss of Vancouver rain

Maybe that’s one reason why translation is not much-practiced in the Philippines

Would you buy flowers for yourself? Can you tell me all the people who would? The people who have?

My father insisted that I should have perfect handwriting.

In the refrigerator: an unopened bottle of orange juice with half the sugar already missing because my mother remembered

My mother tells me of half recalled grandparents With possibility of tainted blood, of self destruction Of women who hid with their sisters