Dangwa

By Virginia J. Pasalo

 

LATELY, my body seems to function very slowly. The many things I used to do in a day spills over the next day, and the schedules for that next day, gets spilled over to the day after that. There are only two possibilities, that I have slowed down or the world is just going so fast.

Or is it the nature of things, that when something new begins, our bodies relax to accommodate the change? Whatever it is, it is disconcerting, and I hear the quiet call of a familiar place, in a different time zone, with my feet floating in the morning mist.

Suddenly, I am in Dangwa, moving with the flowers. I smell once again, the innocence of baby’s breath, the everlastings, the sunflowers. My fingers travel through the crispness of statice, the carnations and the palm leaves. I feast on the colors, the texture and get pricked by the thorns of the roses. The soft wind brushes on my cheeks. My face, turned up, gets drizzled on, and I instinctively put out my tongue to taste the little drops of rain. The mist of darkness flirts with the pores of my skin.

At the break of dawn, Dangwa breathes, as people haggle, and exchange stories of themselves and others. I listen to the voices floating everywhere, imagining possibilities, as scissors cut through stems and leaves. I am among the cut flowers, in their transition zones, as they move on, from the nurture of the soil to the unknown, fulfilling a destiny they have not chosen for themselves.

Dangwa, host to the beauty of the transitory, inhales life, as it cradles the last breath of the flowers.

 

Bukel

makalkalnan kimmurongak
ta anapen ta ka
ed bilunget
giyak so na pitik na pusom
tan say maples ya ingas mo
diad bilunget, simmayaw ak
tan mantetlek ak a singa bawet
ed kiterak,
kamamanta, balon bilay

 

Seed

slowly, I grope
to find you
in the darkness
guided by your heartbeat
and your quickening breath
in the dark, I dance
I spin like a top
in the burst,
a new life.

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