We understand no love that is not in excess – Urvi Kumbhat
My sister.

Manang.

Kumusta? It has been

a moment

and I know you still feel stanzas

in words

fearing they will take us back

to a federation

where walls spoke. /
I never questioned why redemption

kept moving:

hilltop halls behind a yellow-

brick church, the Filipino congregation

evangelical in the valley

toward the river,

further west. 
We tithed then

on stackable chairs, on knees

of kuyas and titos

our lips, tambourines

to sugared bread. /
By fourteen, we’d saved five hundred

for the Build2Reach fund.

The pastors were blue-eyed

desperate to own

second-hand buildings. 
You were banking
forgiveness.
By then, we’d survived pesos                                                                      
 hand to mouth
in parking lots. /
And I earned too
a fiver
selling three-piece feeds

gravy, breast

rib and roll

to older people driving through

custom spoilers

and a muffler scraping

to clear the gutter. /
But I write this to you now

from a tiny house.

A residency on wheels.

(It’s a thing).

You see if I write the browner poem

I get distressed

linen, a compostable toilet

cassettes of

Joni Mitchell.
And aloneness.

We always wanted to be

this close.

The red brick flat. Two beds built in.

Eight of us trying

to model minority. /



(It’s been a long time).
And you’d be proud

I’m learning to squat

on Darkinjung country

Yarramalong

above a creek, inland from 
MacMasters

Copacabana

Lake Macquarie
Names we were taught, but that leave

 as memorial. /




There used to be so much more
cedar here.
Of course, I also grieve infinity

pools,
water births.
You are, in fact

 pregnant – 
I remember you called once
 before you left these parts
a wreck.
I listened to you FaceTime and fret
your fingers would find
the child inside you. /
So let me cry uncle 
for the dresser and vanity

the split-level living,

and for you

to take the room

to return a first-born

in full terms. /