7. Naive Gascon & Sophie Ip

Ignite, rewrite, someday you might –  

Leaks of light spilling, spreading, sprawling across
Over and over, grids of hope framing stories untold
Valleys between concrete walls; tales of the old
Entangled within metal spines and metal veins 

Hold on, this wandering soul 
Open your ears and let in the nighttime chimes 
Music of the rich, voices of the poor
Enchanted, loud whispers against silent calls 

Kings and queens, gazing through the locked doors
Owning their palace, for one day more
No one ever told them; the brightest star only
Glows and glitters in the darkest night 

Dancing, tiptoed on damped grass 
Onto a new life, under the roof, the purest mind

Years have gone and days will pass
Only remains, in the moist summer air  
Unveiling the mystery of relentless souls 

For Tessie Gascon, 
Foreign Domestic Worker in Hong Kong (2002–2017)

I think about my mother.
Cheerful photographs by statues
lovingly tucked into pages
of yellow pad in an envelope 
stamped “AIRMAIL”. A solo pose
arms akimbo or huddled 
with friends on a striped picnic mat, 
unclogging weekly grits
then laughter after laughter. 

Containers brimming with homecooked 
pancit and adobo wrapped 
in crinkly layers of plastic bags.
Pre-loved dresses to share – the one 
that didn’t fit her. Dreams saved 
in worn wallet compartments. 
A dollar for my school fees,
another for my brother’s shoes
from the ice cream or donut
she refuses to spend on.

As friends dissolve to their fated streets,
she waits on park benches 
staring at light-speckled windows.
She thinks about her family, the house 
she is trying to build, a sink heaped 
with dirty dishes under her employer’s
dissecting eyes. My mother packs her lungs
with the night’s calm, before ascending 
to a home where she churns in shadows,
doused every time she flickers 

to light. She remembers every local child
she looked after, the vegetable seller 
who always gave five-dollar discount 
so she had extra for sugary tea, 
the secret spots they hawk class A bags.
She remembers every alley of the city – 
Will they remember her 
and the remnants of her laughter 
drifting from tree to tree? Like they remember 
the father in the statue that rises from the sea.

First glint of sun wakes the city’s circuitry. 
Her hand leashed to me. We tread together
with a sense of duty or escape.
Turn left. Rain trees, a saber arch
to a soldier’s wedding. Her eyes wired
to crooked branches. She vanishes
I take the lead – investigate

wafts of morning smells, spiders
abandoning webs. Snout down to twigs 
and rotting leaves. I raise a leg, mark
my districts in bushes. Outside 
cement trail, broken vases merging
with dirt, creepers advancing territories,
two birds clawing their meal. Above, 
a squirrel sprints, charging my muscles.

Sunlight marbles leaves, beams 
through jagged frames of trees.
She is entranced deeper into 
her mind’s forest, until she is forced 
to arrive to an end. The end of the road
a greeting from a friend or when I drag 
her to our fate, to a precise place
that precise moment – I defecate.

With wilted face, she hauls me back 
where we began, at the fork 
where grasses are inviting,
a highway bursting in our ears.
She throws a last glance to the trees
before we march home and roll over
to the next errand of our day.

To where we go? 
To home, she said –

I wish I could be tall enough 
To touch the trees looming above 
A runner’s jog, a fractured log 
Tied into to a sniff of a dog 

Beneath a branch was a blinking eye
Destined to vanish from your sight 
A rapid turn, a freed-up hand
Waving goodbye to motherland 

‘Tis the exhilarating greenness 
That’s centuries old, mysterious 
Like drifting cars roaming the road
As the ordinary tales unfold –

To where we go? 
To home, I said