By seventh grade,

night already owned my walk home.

Skies pulled shut,

streets holding their breath.

Alleyways and drainages decorated 

with the remnants of daily life.

I could name the same craters that tripped me.

My foot stuck in the cracks,

my palms scraped along cement.

I would look up the lamp post,

that which blinks like a tired eye,

deciding whether it loved me tonight.

The flawed walkways taught me soon enough,

I am made to be agile and nimble.

It wasn’t too hard to memorize the road.

No older than fifteen, 

I was told I was small

by the sidewalk that narrowed.

And when September came,

Jose Mari Chan would find his way back.

Singing in new speakers and old radios 

notes dancing in the parol workshops

which lined that Old Cabuyao Road.

Stars are waking up then the light glows. 

On my way to school,

the road would be noisy with metal ribs 

bending into stars.

The ground littered with shards of shells,

cellophane stretched thin as breath,

housing a droplet from the sun.

I still smell it to this day,

almost a decade later.

The smell was sharp and warm

of heated wire, fresh paint.

Unlike the usual bellow of smoke belching,

this was a conversation.

And by night, on my way home,

the blinking streetlight is replaced 

by winking strings of fires.

Truthfully, and intentionally,

one after another.

The road came to know new constellations.

Colors paint the dark.

Blue, green, and a patient yellow,

they turn to tiny fires.

Have you seen lights sing?

Have you walked beside stars?

Me? They walked me home, hand in hand.

Flickers in time with my steps.

I catch a light in my palms,

because it promised to keep me safe. 

This hope had fingerprints,

a rhythm that hums.

And we greet the new year

By taking down these stars.

We relearn the roads—

Count the holes again,

Walk alone again.

Acquaint with the night again.

The dark will return as it was

because the lamp post is still broken.

The cracks remain, the cement is still flawed,

Feet will still get caught in these holes.

We can only remember how the street is lit

by a celebration, a livelihood, the people who made hand-made stars.