It was a raining evening
“Someone wrote a letter to you from Africa,”
Mother was flapping a puce envelope in front of you, “Gold Coast?
Who on earth should mail you from such a place?”
Pulling back your glasses in place, you recognized its handwriting
It was from her, not from any Mum-Terrifying-Black-Continent
But from a bourgeois beachfront next to Brisbane, Australia,
“A Holy Land of Surfing and Spring Break Party,”
That’s what you learned from her in a phone
When you told her Brisbane would be the capital of the future Earth
According to Yoshiki Tanaka’s Sci-fi novel
She scorned you, from another Hemisphere, “What a nerd you are!”
And you protested, in a proper geeky way, and you both laughed
It was when cell-phone was still a Sci-fi like luxury
That evening, at a phone booth, you squatted side by side
Not with her, but with a Filipino housemaid
Pacifying her left-behind son over an unstable phone cable:
“Patawad mga anak
Sa pasya kong kayo ay iwanan
Upang ako’y magtrabaho
dito sa Taiwan.
Labag man sa loob,
subalit kailangan,
Na ako’y mapalayo
at sa inyo ay mawalay.
Kinabukasan ninyo sa akin nakasalalay.
Kaya’t dasal ko, sana’y makamit
ang tagumpay,
At nang sa inyo maibigay, pangarap
na ginhawa sa buhay.”
(Forgive me, child
Making the decision to leave you
and come to Taiwan
was against my will.
Even though it is necessary,
I am away
and separated from you.
The future depends on me
So I prayed, hope that I will be
Successful,
And you can, at that time, dream
A comfortable life)