"Since Metro Manila has an elevation of around five meters, it seems to be living on borrowed time."
Philippine Inquirer, 2019
i am the daughter of a girl without a mother
born on an island bordered by water
my closest ones live too far away from me
scattered like dozens of inlets floating on water
in Tagalog the verb mag-alala [ to worry ] shares a root with pag-alala [ to remember ]
every year i grow older & more likely to drown from water
my home is a country joined together by a liquid border
in thirty years the city that birthed me will be under water
every poem i write has become an elegy mourning the loss of a country i invented
that only exists in my childhood memory and memory is as fragile as water