kalachuchi me

…work in progress. must find inspiration 

i’m writing about home because i miss it. when i don’t know anything, when the future is too scary and the present is too dull, i look to my past because it’s the only thing that feels permanent. i can’t remember ever being so happy and my heart sure won’t let me forget that.

Church bells toll and I can smell them
Sampaguita necklaces hanging from the dirtied hands of street children peddling the chains of flowers in the shadow cast by the cathedral in the late afternoon
Don’t talk to them, I would be told
Why not, I would ask
I could not see the grime in their hair, the holes in their clothes, or the mud on their knees
I can see they were as big as I was, but I could sense they were far older

I wanted a necklace made of flowers although I knew the brightness would fade and the petals would wilt
They smelled like cleanliness
Ironic of the digits they rested in
Strings of whiteness, of purity
Brown children with too much hardness in their eyes
I didn’t buy a necklace, but I did pay its price

Gumamela plant that grew in the front yard of the house I grew up in
That waved goodbye to me every morning when I left for school
That watched the only child that I am play by my lonesome
The sound of my solitude you accompanied with a rustle of leaves to tell me I am not alone
Like a guardian, loyal and unfading she grew
She braved countless storms that struck fear in me, she stood outside and still bloomed the next day…surely, for me
Your fuchsia petals and yellow pollen that seemed to smile and tell me I am home
You remind of the days I was happy to be incomplete, unknowing of life, and at peace with uncertainty