& 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

My lola is the kind of person to rise earlier than the sun

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?

How many spoonfuls of shame must you measure out To start the recipe of my humanity?

I find a sunny place to survive. Every morning, a new magnum opus greets me & I am so awake & my parents don’t have to worry.

the pen pierces the point in the plane of my graphing paper, at rest before it swoops, curves, and loops, where am I?

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

The darkness of The past frightens me For I once lost Myself, trapped in Society’s idea of perfection

A hit a sip then a chug then the lights start to strobe with a flash as it blinks as the thrill of the night hits a peak

Every morning in paradise, the locals go out to bury the remains  tourists have left in their wake under the sand.

heliotrope sprouts from the palms of his hands, the dirt sifting between his thin fingertips

Love expanded like a thought in my head circling like a snake made of smoke whispering of an endless hunger.