so tell me
when the lights burn low and the music fades
do you still like who you’ve become?

Last night it rained petrol, it started pouring.

The rain merged into a senseless storm, and somber water and omen drops slowly trickled down the wrinkled silken sheets that Mom never ironed, but always loved.

The drops fit perfectly through all the cracks in the broken roof,
that Dad never fixed but promised he would, and black mist began to fill the rooms.

The storm was brute and merciless, and it soon came knocking at the door. Thick air tainted the bottom of the mossy walls,
where Sister knew she shouldn't, but still painted purple dinosaurs.

The asphyxiating wind ran fast across the narrow corridors,
it took pieces of the broken family portraits that Brother sang to on his ever first encounter with alcohol.

Petrol fell endlessly for days, thunders echoed on the dense raindrops, and the whims of the winds covered the desperate whispers to make it stop.

---Neighbour's house always had sun, and Mother and Father and Sister and Brother years ago had moved to another town

And sitting there was I, watching as the petrol poured down---

My daughter was born in 1995,
born with curly brown hair, and plum dark eyes.
She started walking at the age of two,
The smartest girl in her class,
would sing the ABC front and back

By the time she was four, we moved to Peru.
She picked up Spanish like she would pick up a flu.
At times she talked like an adult,
a half- sized human with so much attitude.

We lived in a pent-house on the 11th floor.
Best view in Lima, we had a pool in the apartment block.
In 1999, I left her in the room playing with Polly-Dolls,
And that’s when she climbed up to the open balcony door

as a kid
there's nothing
like wasting away inside a tiny
room
sitting on the backrest
of the couch
looking out the window
and seeing her
tread through the rain

a red umbrella covers
her.

Mother

she's going back
to the liquor store

It takes Corona waves,
For the world to stop crying.
If you listen closely,
maybe you will also embrace the silence.

Would you still love this land after it has been destroyed by those who claimed it as their own?
        
Would you still fight to protect it, after they burnt the wheat fields and the green canopies to the ground?
        
Would you still respect it, after time and again it has been cracked apart and exploited until there was nothing left to take?
        
Would you take pride in a forgotten land with no name?
     
Would you still wander the land, after it's soil has been poisoned by foreign nations?
        
Would you still look at this land with tenderness, after it has fallen in the hands of filthy pirates and conquerors?
        
Would you still find beauty in this land, after it's diamonds have been traded for stones?
        
Would you listen to the wind of this woman, that has nothing to offer but ruptured songs?