To someone who’s heard “I love you” too many times [“Who among us has not followed a pattern”]

Who among us has not followed a pattern

devised by someone else? I ask Tita Nena how

she wrote during martial law. She tells me,

                                                                Be brave. Stay safe. As for me,

I went underground. There is no comparison 

except the comparison. During those years

is another question. When Tita Nena wrote this sentence,

half her sisters worked overseas. Those years

she wrote underground, collected no SSI, left my nanay

with responsibilities. A friend says, Tell me more,

and I wonder if I’m particularly sensitive to this demand.

During those years, Nena’s lover created effigies

for those who’d disappeared but without hands

or a head (almost like a costume). He’d create a white

space for the audience to insert themselves

                                                             into a history they’d rather avoid.