Gumamela Girl

December is so shameless in its revelry,

all orange-pink, sun-puckered,

rain-laid beyond these garden walls. 

There the land becomes all open mouths—

blood red blooms, lipstick parted lips.

I gaze the gumamela, its luxurious perfume

and palm-sized blossoms. How proud the plant stands.

Before humans— the Americans, the Japanese, the Spaniards—

the gumamela burst through the soon-to-be provinces.

Now nestled into courtyards, mall entrances,

parkways, knuckling the farmers’ paths winding through

the smog filled streets, and even across oceans as hybridized daughters,

the flower grows fat and beautiful.

I wish I could be proud like that. Shameless and self-loving

as pretty things are. What is identity when it’s suspended

between two places like light in a prism glass? A weed that is not white

nor brown enough. Too tutong, matako, morena, maarte to be anywhere.

Next to the gumamela, I stand like a colonizer,

eyeing this land like my prize. By the fistful, I shove

each fiery petal and plume until my mouth bleeds

hibiscus ink, spilling down the sides a sick,

sweet wine. Even the koi circling one another are an O,

an open mouth which swallows me.