It occurred to him he had not yet learned to speak or to breathe. And so he grew himself into taut stalks, breaking soil, anticipating sky, while tendrils pulling water through his veins toughened him. He did not know his own name, but he knew rumors and dreams of air and mischievous birds.

This place before him was not a void but a crawl space, a tunnel he carved for himself inside his mother’s body dying all around him. He broke right through her. He knew no other way.

There is no known portrait of her face, he now laments. Only my mosaic of many scattered stones.

CROSSING

CROSSING

Long, long ago, in the north, it was said the mountain opened herself to the people. A stream of the clearest water once flowed, there, where she provided shelter from windstorm and rain. The people of the mountain moved as shadows with their bows and spears through her forests. They gave thanks for she allowed them a crossing through her folds. Among these hunters, there was one who was blessed, for a diwata visited her.

In dreams, the diwata instructed her, and she instructed the others—with voices together, silver-winged birds trilling, then turning and curling like the mountain stream itself, it is said they sang songs of thanks and lament to the hunted, while in a stark vision, thunder and black smoke. In the sweet waters of the mountain stream, this stream she knew soon would rot, she cleaned antler, bone, and hoof as if she were bathing her own children. She adorned her robes and headdress, so that by firelight, she came to resemble these fallen animals. Then she called to the midnight sky.

I did not see this for myself, for this was many, many years before even my mother’s mother was born. How tall the hunter woman stood, graced as she was. It is believed she crossed that bridge, the one between village and ancestors. She spoke words no one living could understand. She saw what no one living could see. Seas seized by great vessels, she said. Our men, huddled in the blindness of their hulls, bound.

VISITATION

VISITATION

Often, she speaks of the one-eyed cat, natty-haired, gangly and gigantic. It visits her and corners her there, between the tomato patches and the rickety fence. It springs from the dirt and into the lemon trees’ boughs. It stares with its one milky eye. It yowls like no creature she has ever known.

As its wailing body finally disappears with the wind, news arrives of a loved one’s departing soul. An elder succumbing to illness, an accident in the fields, flesh sliced and broken by so many rusted blades, invading armies’ guns and gasoline.