When they ask me what I remember from before
the tides crescendoed with a ferocity beyond any
of our scientists’ best predictions, I will tell them
about summers: summers my mother braved
mosquito swarms for figs, ducking under broad
leaves for purple globes bursting out of their own
skins in the heat; summers my mother would trade
her figs for teaspoon tomatoes and shiny eggplants,
poblanos and shiso leaf, grown by our neighbors.
I will tell them about the way I used to stand
by the school fence drawing out honeysuckle stems
for the smallest drop of sweetness. I will show them
how to make a whistle from a long blade of grass,
how I grew a soft spot for the yellow garden spider
that made its home on the deck because I discovered
its other name is the writing spider—how splendid
her zig-zag script. I will tell them that I miss
the symphony treefrogs and field crickets made
outside my window. That I miss when the air carried
less salt but still, somehow, miss the beach.
Living by the ocean, I learned that moon jellies,
near the end of their lifespan, let the tides pull them
to shore. I’d find their clear bodies on afternoon
strolls: water droplets the size of the cup
of my hands, scattered and glistening on the sand.
—
Gabriela A. Igloria is a Filipino American writer, artist, and daughter of immigrants. They are a graduate of Old Dominion University, where they were awarded an Academy of American Poets Award. A 2022 Anaphora Arts fellow, their poems have been featured by Paloma Press and Whurk Magazine, among others.
