attached.

∗

The lake lengthens into a bridal
veil, into a bridesmaid to carry it, into a groom.
   I protest at first—Why would I marry myself?—
and

I wake.

∗

On a tree hangs a noose
full of flowers, soft light filling each baubled
dewdrop. Underneath, a woman tries to sell
fabric. My mouth opens
as stubborn as a stolen lock refusing
   the key. Instead, I buy

the rain.

∗

Nanay used to say each lake
is merely an evolution from the ocean. She said,
   It’s smaller, more contained, but stagnant.

I do not know what hides in the soft flesh
of my mouth: an ocean, or
a lake.

∗

In a forest is a pond, its surface a grimy
window, and the water slippery when I
catch it. A boy next to it tells me
that it has been stagnant for decades. My tongue panics
   when I try to reply, so I wade a stick

into the glass.

∗

I restrict my walks
to the backyard, resting under the pained
   back of a sampaguita vine as it shudders

into labor. The falling blooms brush
like wings, a remnant of their former
bodies. I ask them what it feels to fall
before their parents
do.

∗

In our house, the Lady Friend sits. She visits
daily. I yearn to say, Bulok, but I can’t speak
her language. She smiles at all the wrong silences, actress
of the only one in a stand-up club who finds the joke
at all. But she smells like the ocean, and our house stinks
of ponds and lakes. As she leaves, she glides the way
a sampaguita falls. I cannot speak to her as I can
—not speak to my father, the woman under
the tree, the boy by the pond. It is the language
   of the water breathers that I simply have

no gills to swim into.

∗

Nanay used to smell like the ocean.
   Nanay used to move like the ocean:
      a body riding the water into mountains.
         Nanay, you used to sound like the ocean.
      Nanay, I cannot hear the ocean you loved
   in the shells you kept among wilting sampaguita
petals. Have I grown deaf—

∗

When the phone rings, I don’t answer, and the house is shuttered
softly with veils. I know what they’ll all say
   anyway. My father knows

not to ask, or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he is too
busy staring at his empty finger

to notice.

∗

I hide under
the sampaguita vine. The fallen petals bunch
together like the folds of a wedding
dress, and in the house I hear the Lady
Friend and my father, their laughter kissing
in the air. I stare at the basket cradled
in my arms. What was I looking for? I turn, shaking,
to the house, but the petals crush
   my feet
like chains.