our Christmas lights

Made of wood - old unnamedwood - our tiny home. Fragilein the surface. Look beneath.After a minimum of 20 typhoons per year, it's still proud after acouple of decades. Unlikethe tamarind tree, the acacia,the guava, the hibiscus, thebanana. September is clothe in blinking little lights. The countdown forthe manger starts. It is a season of…

one of eight mouths

rain, they say, is the heaven pouring blessings. when i was a child, it means flood, tickling my chubby ankles, choking my father’s chest once. it means waiting for free food rations and escaped shrimps from spilling ponds. it is a memorised, annual struggle. a sweet, repeating chapter of our wooden, dining table (too small…

variations of the word uprooting

as a toddler these chubby set of tiny toes were buried in brown cake of forest's earth, as the plump fingers reach out for blood-red wild berries, as a student these leather-covered soles wandered through cemented schools, universities, as the mind gulps data after data, oh so, committedly, as a two-decade lady these desperate feet…