T

he Manila Bay breaks

under a spring storm. I am again five

& watching the flood rise

out of season. There goes a dog

straining to swim. The flashlight dies

so my mother lights a candle

we reserve for birthdays.

The wax slips down the wick. Hours before,

I’d watched the weather gray

& believed it benign; the weather forecast on TV

had promised safety. Still, my mother prays

& prays as the rain comes with a holy vengeance.

Hours later, when the rain stops, we are ushered

downstairs. There goes the TV, shivering

in the water. Our chairs float, but my mother’s sobs

keep my childish hands from riding them. I am five, & the water

is still friendly, the TV always empty

of the numbered dead. In America, I tell my classmates

about the floods & laugh at the memory, preferring not

to let them know of their hellish weight. How they could drag

a five-year-old down under, provide homes

for malaria-infected mosquitoes. An American friend

tells me she drinks water straight from the tap, so I return home

to stare at our dripping faucet, remembering my mother’s warnings about how

the Manila Bay is gagging with trash,

how tap water is not as clean

as we’d wish it to be. I am again five

& listening to my mother tell me it wasn’t

always like this. That the water was clean once. That we could trust

the forecast once. In America, I look for photos of the original

Manila Bay before its waters turned

sluggish with human waste. Instead I find hordes

of people facing a flotsam shore of garbage, trash pickers

in hand. I must be five again with this newborn belief

that there is still time for the TV to find itself empty

of lost lives & homes to report, for us to remember

that the water is not too far gone. Yes, when the Manila Bay swells

with fish & carefree beachgoers, the floods flushed of its greed, I will be five again,

relearning to drink tap water, to dance

at the sight of rain, to trust

freely, safely.