She tells me
Lumpia is her taste of home.
Traditions she had with her aunt when she was small
Hands *****,
Dark hair messy,
But she smiled as she hovered over the hot oil.

Halika dito, Come here.
Gutom ka ba? Are you hungry?

She tells me
Her mother
Would have her scrub her nails,
Before sending her to set the first few servings
In the oil to fry.

She tells me
That warm phillipian-lumpia memories
Have their own special place
In her heart,
In her mind.
On her tongue.
Warm times standing speckled with youth.

She speaks soft sweet days to me
As she hands me the tongs to place the first servings in the pan.

Mom is drunk, talking ****
Grandma is drunk, laughing at her pain
Dad is drunk, yelling
Aunty is sobbing
Brother locked himself in a room
Cousin won't stop crying
Uncle passed out
I clean up all of their broken pieces with no one left to clean up me

There is no worse pain
than seeing babies grow
into kids who hardly ever
call your name.

It's hard to compete with the world,
it's glory, it's beauty, it's fame.

Is my generation to blame?

It was 3:30 in the morning
The aunt died, heart attack they said.
I only have a pale memory of her
The pink-house, protest and abuse.
Grandfather plucked us from there
the next day
The pink hibiscus my mother planted
did not depart.

She is dead today
I went to see her in black clothes,
The house, an empty aluminium box-
With kids playing ‘ring around the roses’,
Uncles debated politics and aunts gossiped
And some moaned inside.
I waited outside with few strange women,
They asked me questions
plenty of them
The anti-social me smiled.

The morning was usual
Mother made noises in the kitchen
with her steel plates and old radio,
Father forgot the fish on his
green kinetic honda,
Cats had a feast that evening
I did yoga, read newspaper and did-
not take a wash.

The dead body arrived late noon
in an ambulance with her expatriate son.
There was a sudden burst of cry-
inside- her daughter and grandchildren.
She looked like the fish to me,
The fish my father brought that morning
from the market, cold and dead.
Her daughter’s cry reminded me of-
an elapsed day in my pink house.

My father kept pink flowers on her feet
and prayed
I did not move, sat with the same chitchatting
women
The chanting became loud and it reverberated.
The body was finally taken to the fire
My mother came late, she wept.
The body burned down in minutes,
Dear relatives decamped.

I sat on the same chair
with my cousins
drawing the family tree, locating stories
and laughed over family jokes.
Then we sat tight lipped with brandy fumes
and cashews.
I came back home with my father
in the green kinetic honda,
I looked for the fish and the cat
I could not find both.

I did a little research work
And you know I'm glad to say
I found out about my history
On ancestry.ca
I typed my name and there it was
A family tree of sorts
With leaves appearing eveywhere
My family and their warts
There were places on the listing
That I had never been
And the names of the all the people
Well, most....I'd never seen
My grandad married seven times
My nanny married four
My mum was not my mother
And my dad...was out the door
The leaves kept showing up there
Beside each and every name
I sat there for eight hours
I was really glad I came
England, Scotland, Middle East
Nevada and Wales Too!
It seemed that all my family
Moved when the rent was due
I had cousins in Zimbabwe
I had cousins in Peru
They were scattered all through Italy
There were some in China too.
I learned things that I never knew
Tales of family and their kids
I  learned of all their countries
And of all the things they did
Four hundred names in all I saw
And each name had a leaf
I didn't know we were that big
It was truly beyond belief
The pictures too were something else
People, places now long gone
There were photos too of Mexico
And my dear old Uncle Juan
Tomorrow, though I  will sit down
And I'll do this all again
But this time I will make **** sure
That I don't forget the "n".

I believe, God put his view on the world in new borns eyes, and when you stare down into the kaleidoscope wonders, you see the natural beauty of what this all use to be. And when I look down at you Cooper, know I'm standing in the Garden of Eden, with tears rolling down my cheeks, splashing against a phone screen, preventing me from watching you blink. Aunty loves  you Cooper.