Waiting for someone to come in.
Her gestures can mean something --
Is she confused or does she want a meal?
For a whole day, she won’t speak,
Just wailing
like a child in her nursing bed;
Her frail body looks uneasy and tired,
Her skin hanging from her bones.
Gone are the smiles from her aging face --
Driven away by loneliness or by sickness?
She clings her hands to a caregiver,
She calls her brothers and Tatay as if they were
around;
She calls for those who have long been gone down the
grave.
Her tear flows when she talks of her father's name
As she relives her memory of the old town.
Her eyes and mouth which used to flow with life
Now hangs empty as she sits on her a wheelchair –
who knows how long will she stay there?
Trapped within the four walls of her bedroom,
What else can she can do?
Her new home, a prison.
I remember when I was a child --
After baking the whole night till dawn,
Watching the fire, and adding some
"gatong";
Without an hour of sleep
Mother would prepare our breakfast –
"tuyong
inihaw at kanin".
She was out before the day broke,
Selling " kakanin" in the street.
Her loud voice echoed the village.
At late noon, she would call us home,
With her power she knew where we roamed.
So strong in her youth
Her voice now is cracked from a stroke;
She who used to hum and sing lullabies
to put me to
bed
Now utters very few words
Which no one can understand.
The once focused mind is now astray,
Can’t recall any names, not even mine.
Who can't even remember our names;
The arms that cradled us on a rocking chair
Can now hardly move to form a sign;
The hands that
cooked and cleaned,
And wrote poems and made a beautiful drawings
Now hang limp, limp in the air.
The voice that taught me to love and sing,
To recite the alphabet, to kneel and pray,
To mend clothes –
O how I long to hear that voice again;
But mother, I know, I feel your heart
Do speak to
my heart in myriad ways;
And I shall listen as long as I'm breathing.
Miss Ina
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