The poet recalls a mother who, amid the heat and noise of a jeepney, used the dust on the window as a blackboard. She did not want the child to see the potholed road but the order of the world through words.
A Mother's Quiet Devotion
While neighbors enjoyed television, she fed the poet with the silence of books. She borrowed a dictionary—a heavy tome of paper that gave breath to him and his students.
The poem is a map of letters, a verse that his father Goniong and she etched into his skin. He is the child born after the three sisters born in '71, '72, and '73—the body blessed by the Bishop inside her womb in 1980.
Freedom Over Remittance
Now, in the musty classroom in Bangkok, she did not ask for remittance; she sought his freedom. On the phone screen, her face was a ray of light. "Don't come home yet," she said. "There are students waiting." She exchanged their last conversation for his lesson plans.
She passed away peacefully a few weeks later. Fourteen years have passed, and he is still here—translating the love of a mother who bought the world for him through monthly installments.
