Code Red
Ian Salvaña

Witnessing the slow dying of a vast fruitless land, 

you feel a slight tinge in the back of your head saying, I’ve been waiting 

for this all along. You who’ve grown up to fear change, regret that 

regret cannot undo what’s done. And you take it all in,

what pestering heat is cracking the earth, undoing your harvest, now that

the field resists tilling. Time loops to remind you if

this is what the gods call gaba, and you who only did a childish thing—

would the world make you pay for not listening?

It’s funny how, as a child, you were reprimanded not to pee 

wherever whenever the time calls. Ma said the duwendes demand basic 

courtesy—and yet amid playing buwan-buwanan 

on the dusty road one night, you suddenly paused and pissed

on her yerba buena. These days, you still do it for comfort, with a ritual 

perfected throughout the years: approach the nearest tree, 

look around for eyes spying on you, and finally say, Tabi-tabi po.

Indeed, would the little ones mind this heat of

a waterfall coming from your body? At night, it’s a different form of

conquest, man to spirit, and in the day, man and spirit, 

all of you host the visiting, staying, unceasing heat.

Your head a burning incense, pores of your body isolating islands 

of skin from sweat, your dehydration, your breathing, your 

erratic beating heart, you ask if they who must not be disturbed must not 

really be disturbed. Too late now, you kneel facing a boulder of 

termites, offering apologies for a child’s mischief: 

bugas, mais, maskin onan da kuman. Still, heat remains heat. Eyes dry,

no more water in your body, you began to howl

but, sheepishly, you realize, spirit-calling, no noise brings 

any peace—it just disturbs disturbs disturbs