Can I unlearn not being me? Can I accept me? Serve me? When I’ve lived for so long in opposition to my true self. Learning the rules. Living by the rules. Expressing my self truly only when
I
have to break
almost every rule
I come across...
F L O O D W A T E R S
(Published by Anomalous Press, 2023)
Grandma Inang was nine going on ten when her mother Inay went completely blind. That first morning when Inay saw only darkness, Inang took her hand to use the outhouse. Along the bathroom’s bamboo slats, she washed Inay’s hands and face, and changed her sleepwear to a daytime saya and kamisa. Gently she talked to her mother and eased her into the dining table head chair. Patiently, she took her younger siblings’ hands and faces and washed them one by one, changed them to school clothes, and sat them at their respective places around her Inay’s table. Without missing a beat, she also doused her own hands and face and dressed not for school but for the labors ahead. In open kitchen pots, she warmed yesterday’s supper: leftovers stored in a wooden aparador afloat water bowls that served as “moats” to keep ants at bay overnight. At breakfast’s hurried end, Inang shooed her siblings to the local public school. Her young hands were forced to take over everything the only adult could no longer manage, though she could not manage a cry to wash away her young girl’s fears and sadness.
At the crack of dawn on the second morning, (Read on / Listen to Audio via link)
You’ll find me here, there and everywhere, eager to share stories with you.
Dear K,
I wish us both a most excellent new day!
I am Rose, a New Yorker—on the C-line, 23rd Street stop; alternately on the #1, 28th Street stop—if one day you are so inclined to visit. My hope is that you’d consider it. This morning again I write you, seated at my desk, with a mug of fresh hot Kona and a leafy view of the Freedom Tower—yes, I am surrounded by city birch!—feeling especially eager to reach out as this city begins its COVID-19 quarantine reopening.
Perhaps today is the day, I say. To explore. To take a leap. To be happily surprised.
Liquid gold
soft and heavy
Raised by grandmothers maternal (Rosario) and paternal (Rosario), the author has danced along the breezy island edges of the Philippines, North Borneo and New York City. On this site Rosario Rosario shares threads of her letters, poems, scenes, twists and constantly shifting island life stories. The author also invites and shares voices from around the world through Writing on Water (WOW!), a creative cultural platform she founded in 2016 (www.writingonwater.net).