Encanto*

Childhood is an abandoned pathway
leading to the old molino,
where you hid from Nora and Tonio,
your neighbor’s children who never found you
after you crawled into the kawayan
where Primitivo, the encanto, lived.

Your playmates lost you, sorely,
and never knew where you went
until dusk when your brother found you
in filthy clothes, your face spent as ash,
hardly breathing near the kamalig.

No one cared, then, if you still knew
night from day. You were possessed
by the primitive spirit, your folks said.
Hardly sober, you looked for
your Lolo Kanor the whole evening,
and then kissed his hand a hundred times.

Everywhere you went after that taraguan,
you’ve always sought to hide, maybe scared
of being seen or found—out in the recesses
of the subdivision; in the college parking lot;
inside a dilapidated movie house; all over
the city streets of ill-repute. You were
looking for Primitivo, the savage
spirit that enchanted you, they said.