Far from the Tree

Orange clouds: not sunset,
but Manila burning in the distance.

You and your mother fled to Taal
through coconut groves that night.

From the bottom of a ravine
you heard the people screaming

flushed from sugar cane fields
on fire, shot as they ran out.

How did you get through that night?
How can I be brave like you

when just entering a room
full of people frightens me?

They might as well be coconut palms
looming in the dark.

Nada you’ll say to me, your shorthand
for You’ve got this. Easy for you to say.

You played ball with your father’s ghost
when you were only three.

Cristinia Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. She is now a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in America Magazine, The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, The Journal of Medical Humanities, Diaspora Baby Blues, Dappled Things, Plainsongs, and FOLIO.