maybe this time
you hear the echoes of questions
people have asked before
with the hard answers already spilled on the ground
and you step out from the doorway of your house
into the streets of this thrumming city
and you let your flesh flow into the spaces
let your voice grow like thunder shakes the horizon
like you belong here
without apology or excuses
for ignorance, for complacence
and you name your dead, a long line of shadows,
and you are afraid to drown in the speaking, to drown
in your own accumulated pain, in the words you’ve kept
in the cage of your heart and the ghosts
at your shoulder cheer with you, weep with you…
the storm knocks down the walls they have built
and the river bursts free to wash across the dry earth
and the ground is shifting in the mud under your boots
and you stomp harder at the cracked asphalt
create crevices for weeds to shoot through
and you feel like red ink dashed against the statues
trailing down to stain the earth
and you feel like thorns pressing into the meat
of their palms curled up into fists
around the stems of white roses
with petals arrested in the act of falling
and you hear the echoes of questions
people have asked before
and they offer you the same non-answers—
the blunted edges of old rhetoric, lip service,
as if you cannot follow the threads of history
on this labyrinth-path you are walking now
as if nothing has ever changed,
or can change again
you are tired of the fear
trembling under your tongue,
and maybe this time, this hour, this place…
Christine Fojas is a Filipino-Canadian hailing from Las Piñas City and currently living in Metro Vancouver. She has a BA in Comparative Literature from University of the Philippines and works as a library technician at Douglas College. A list of her publications can be found at her website. She is also on Twitter as @chrisfojas.
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