At this very minute, someone
has decided to die of loneliness. On his last day on
earth, he reads his favorite book and looks up at the sky
when he reaches the line that has haunted him
from the first. I won't tell you what it is because
the tree outside his front door has promised to keep
it a secret for him. At noon, he walks two whole
blocks just to find out what is happening in the world. The
newspaper man tells him what he already knows, Nothing
is new. Nothing is happening. His cat sleeps on
his cold kitchen floor and for the first time, he wonders
if it dreams of him. What color am I in animals' dreams? A
useless query but still, someone somewhere would
pay for that kind of information.
Then he sits on a stool and waits for a god. Aloud, he says, I'd like
to know you better now before I change my mind. But a minute passes
and the truth gently blows on his forehead. He believes
it is time for a kiss. He calls up someone
he barely knows and asks for it. She says she'd like to oblige
but she's too busy making tinola for a family dinner that night.
He, of course, tells her about this recurring dream he has about fishes.
The yellow fish, the one with the smallest fins,
says that it knows the code of a kiss. Why do they know this, he
asks the woman. She tells
him, I'm busy and shuts off the world.
How do they know this, he repeats to an empty room and it's the
afternoon light, this time, that reminds him of the hour, how
it would be better used if he breathed in a little less of faith.

My friend sends me poems during the days when I tell her that
I don't feel at all like myself. Because she is good, she believes
in me. She also believes that what other people say will convince
me that life is wonderful. There are days when I do not
want words; there are even whole months when I feel
that water is not enough. For example, on the way
home today, I sat close to a stranger and
challenged myself to stare intently at his mouth for a full
minute. This man never snuck glances at me; transfixed
as he was by everything else. I envied
his wonder. I'd like to pluck it out of his ears and attach it
to the side of my left shoulder so that everyone could see
it and say So that's wonder! Wow! Where'd you get it?
But I couldn't do it because I considered the man, how
bereft this stranger would be without it. There are days
when looking at the world seems
as strange as mistakenly stepping into a
house of mirrors. You look so
much like Dolly Parton, it kills you.
I am so petrified, I never think to look up.

I wanted to use a metaphor
for my sadness and translate
into a beautiful posey of a poem. I could say that
it is the hour stretched before one gets ready
for gaol but I've never been to gaol. I've
never lost a husband to cancer, never eaten a fish
cooked wrong, never stepped into a new
land only to find it more
imposing in pictures. I've never seen hatred;
I've never seen a miracle. The other day, I looked at a map
and saw that my
country is the color green and I believe it is so,
even in real life. Then I realized
that I do not know what it means to truly suffer,
if there is such a thing as a singular meaning
for a feeling; something so small and secular,
you can tie it around your finger to remember
to forget.

What are the things that console me now?
Is it this knowing that all things end?
Or is it the weight, the sudden tumult
of beginnings?

It was taken in the morning, first thing. All that
I remember of this day makes me laugh out loud. That day, I had
to be roused from my bed. I imagined that when my
mother turned her back to me to head downstairs, she
had that worry crease on her forehead because I had forgotten
something as important as this. My father was the first to go.
He seemed so brave all of a sudden, my meek father who never
raised his voice to the woman he married even behind closed
doors. He stepped in front of the blue backdrop and was asked to
put his foot on a stool. His eyes, I knew, were looking
at the person behind the lens. I knew this because
he once told me that he did not respect instruments. What's
important is the great mystery behind everything, he said. I'm sure
he wasn't thinking of that moment but was dreaming,
instead, of my mother, 20 years younger
in a red sundress. Then it's my mother's turn and she
preens in front of the camera, as if she is convincing someone
that she is leading a different life, that this is
who she really is. It is sad in an awkward
way and I drift off to somewhere safe -- to
that day when I was three and she was making a peanut butter
sandwich and stopped and stared at me for 15 seconds. I forget
that she is a body that is apart from my own, that
the cord has been severed since day one and
didn't even exist two decades ago. Then after what seems like a long
year, I am asked to step in front of the lens. I am unsure about
what I should do in front of it, of
what I'd need to know. The intricacies of this
activity is something that wasn't taught to me
or to anyone else, really. My parents are no
longer in the room; perhaps they thought I'd be shy and
self-conscious going about things if
they had stayed. I fix my eyes on that object and
shiver a little because I'm so ready for it. And after that,
everything else blurred into one and the same thing. You say that
you feel cheated, you were expecting something more personal, more
romantic. But don't you see me? I am staring at you
full in the face. I am alone and my hands are younger
than they've ever been. That is exactly who I am.

In my dreams, it is always summer

and the boy in those dreams is always picking pockets. He

never tells me why. My mother, she

does not know this boy

but he looks a lot like her. I am waiting for him to step

up to me and say On my watch, you're never

going to die. And I dread that day but in my dreams,

everything is still in place so I try not to be too afraid. The dreams

aren't always about the boy. Some of

them are about how the wind

makes the red kite fly. The kite is a miracle

making zigzag patterns on a sky

that is overcast with sadness.

I think I've never seen anything lovelier than that, except maybe for

the boy's hands, how small and

insignificant they look. I'm sorry,

I could've sworn that the dreams were not all

about him but they were.

Strangely, he moves me. The kite never has, honestly. Like

many things, it acts as a disinterested constant, floating around and

doing nothing spectacular. But the boy was fast

and careful, always

making someone's load less heavy. In today's dream,

I see him lifting the sun out of someone's

beach bag. For a moment, he

makes believe he is stealing from God.

But I know he is not; I know he knows the truth for

God is not here. He is in someone

else's summer dream,

picking someone else's pockets with

bright, small hands.

death 101

it struck me as funny the other day how no one in this country explains death. no one i know, that is. when i was 5, i lost my dog to it -- death, the culprit, always sneaky and unannounced. no one cared to explain the intricacies of how it happened and why. death takes things from us, this is the fact of life, my mother once said. that was all the education i had about the matter. but once when i was 10 years old, i watched a movie where the American parent sat next to the American child and patiently explained where the child's dog has gone, but not necessarily why. because death is an inevitable part of our lives, i propose to have an introductory course that would discuss it. why not? there's a course about sex, a course about botany; almost all the courses taught here are affirmations that life does exist and continues to exist. i want a semester that could teach me what to do if one of my aunts, in the middle of a party, mistakenly chokes on an artichoke and keels over on the spot. i want a full three months worth of discussions about sudden-deaths, mid-deaths, temporary flights. it would be good to have someone sit 256 students down and explain to all of us why some things need to be lost forever, if it's true that nothing here would continue to go on indefinitely. if by chance no one is capable enough to teach us about it, then i'll settle for someone who'd be able to announce it before it waltzes in, the way maids inform their employers about guests in victorian novels. the maid hands you a card and says, "madame, death is here and he's calling for you, this time." okay, so it doesn't really matter who does what, i was just thinking that it might be good for us if there's someone who'd be able to explain death at length for us to be able to appreciate what we have. so many people are throwing precious minutes away, stuck in jobs they don't want to be in, stuck in a marriage that's empty, stuck in a world they're not doing anything for. don't you see, there should be someone who would be able to give us back those lost minutes we drowned in as children, seeing death for the first time. a favorite saying: time heals all wounds. it does but it never leaves out the questions or picks up pieces of your wondering then hands them back to you and says, here you go. i'll help you get it all back in no time at all. i wish we had a compass all pointing us home but wishes are unreliable, like bubbles that can't stop forming then bursting into this air. so i guess i have to make do with you. travel with me. tell me what it's like for you, what you also need to know.

so much remains

On the last day, you may find it hard to remember
most things. You consider the laughter but
laughter, sadly, is common, too random,
anyone else's. You try to think of their
hands, however, hands
are not as sacred as they once were; even,
admittedly, hers, resting on his bare shoulder.
Faces would be another popular theme, but faces change with
time, no matter how hard we who are left behind try to tell ourselves
that they have not. What I think I remember
are some moments --- her sitting beside me while
riding to town, or a morning when the sunlight formed an
almost-circle around his head, a likely halo. And what about that day when everyone was laughing about
a dastardly private joke and they were both looking
at me, as if I were responsible for that moment, among
many other laughable things. It's sadness in a box,
the birthday boys chant. Our primary skill is
saying goodbye. No one leaves but everyone seldom returns.
They know this because they are older now -- men with
ghosts for companions, their bare backs toughened by all their
lost afternoons. But on this last day, they brace
themselves for new goodbyes. Au Revoir. Sayonara.
Paalam. However you say it, it remains the same. However you
remember it, so much remains.

late birthday poem '08

my mother used to
tell me when i was younger that
my face was not hers, not her husband's, as well.
it belonged to the sea, she said, and my small poems
were fish that kept
moving with the waves. they move because you are, she used
to say, in that conversational manner
of hers that irritated me. now that
i am 26, i hardly believe that anymore. i mean,
what i really want is to hold on to that smirk
she had while she said it. the
years confused me, made me bored
with memory and atonement. but i have forgiven this woman ---
my mother --- and her hard eyes, so dark,
they were almost golden. if it is at all possible
to end this poem the way she had,
nakedly losing and having everything all
at once, this is how i would have done it.