#RememberYolanda: Mother

Mother,

i know you always tell me to smile. That i

always look better when i lift my head and stretch

my lips sidewards, curving up to the heavens.

You say the outstretched lips is like a prayer.

It will bring good things to me.

So if i could, i'd try

so hard to smile, mother.

But the truth is smiles are not magic prayers.

They cannot make our home rise

out of the rubble,

rebuild concrete tiles

from dust, debris, clay,

fallen trees.

cannot bring me back

my washed-out mattress

or our ruined kitchen, our tables

of sunday mornings with family, and roast fish,

and the beatles, and apo hiking

nostalgia that you'd play on a sunday.

i know you loved

those songs, grin and force me to sing

along whenever Sharon or maybe the Carpenters came on.

But a smile would not fix us, not even

our black waterworn radio

mother. The stormsurge sang too

great a song,it seems. 

With the waves, all the shelves where we kept

 the baby photo albums,and the ceramic cookie jars

with Anne's long letters, the family memos, notes, bills,

post-its, have gone downstream,

even the golden rolex lolo gave me.

Now I can’t tell the time.

So how do I know,

when this will all end, mother?

After the waves comes the sun that burns

through time, it hisses at all that's left

all the rocks and stones that were once home.

It does not stop.

It does not give way for a smile.

So of course under this sun

i cannot smile while i

pull you,

you, mother,

out of the pile of broken walls,

radios, and shattered ornament glass.

i cannot smile while I set you

down at the side

with others lining the battered street.

Look, you do not even smile at me.

So tell me mother,why should i?

Come, stretch your lips wide and tell me.


***
This poem for #RememberYolanda is written by Alsteine Diapana.