In the Garden
I step inside and the wind announces my presence.
The hydrangea blossoms are a microphone offered to my mouth.
A voice hides behind a boulder of a home shattered in my chest.
There are things I cannot say, difficult to divulge, unwilling to spill, so I move about — trimming root-bound areca palms in a genuflect, repotting caladiums mobbed by fungi, and weeding unwanted sprouts before they become huge baobabs taking over a planet.
On a leaf, a dragonfly stays in prayer for a miracle to move the boulder. It dies there waiting.
The butterfly is a visiting queen above me. It claps its wings over and over as if tutting me to speak. She doesn’t return after three days.
I imagine what I want to say to be small like the seed of an eggplant I bury in a pot. Each day it grows taller until it flowers. But withers away and bears zero harvest.
The voice is louder every day and yet, it is drowned out by water springing from a hose.
I prune the money tree, rearrange the lady’s fingers, pick rosemary, position the alocasia in gentle light, and tie back the towering crown of thorns as if gathering hair in a ponytail.
They all offer an arrangement of flowers and leaves. Bless me with this stage of comfort — hoping any moment, the voice will come out and walk on the moist soil.
When I leave, the hydrangea halts me. Indigo and pink blossoms say: We are here.
A crack forms on the boulder.
Julienne Maui Castelo Mangawang finished BA Asian Studies at the University of Santo Tomas. She is taking up her MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines — Diliman. Her poems are published in 聲韻詩刊 Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, ALPAS Journal, Inklette Magazine, and is forthcoming in The Rumpus. Her interests include esoteric practices, Japanese studies, and Jungian archetypes. She likes sleeping but sleeping doesn’t like her. At the moment, she is tending to a garden in Makati — anticipating vegetables to be harvested soon and for the hydrangea to be, once again, in full bloom. Email her at maui@voxpopuliph.com.
