On Coming Home

I started writing this piece after I moved back home to my Dad’s old place in Tagum in 2010.

I stopped working on it when I had to move back temporarily to Davao in 2012 to earn a living, help support my son’s schooling, and keep food on the table.

After my son left around 2014 to be with his Mom and start a life in the US, I found the unfinished poem among old work notes I was about to throw away. I decided to save the page.

Then, of course, I promptly forgot about it.

In 2021, I was back home in Tagum, still grieving the loss of my life-partner and looking at the leaking roof of Dad’s studio. I remembered having some verses about this old place, but could not, for the life of me, remember which notebook I’d tucked that page into.

Now it’s 2026, the evening after a stressful barangay summons, and I find the page in an old 2018 day planner I had used for farm notes.

I sat myself down with my cigs and a coffee, the TV on as usual on some random channel, and finished the verses I’d started.

There’s a sad kind of joy
coming home
to your Dad’s
slowly crumbling old house
empty now
a shell
of a house
really

Does it matter
that I wish
to crumble too
in sync with
what’s left of Dad
and his life

So the two
of us meld
in heartfelt
embrace

finally

Amidst the moss
carpeting the
clay-brick floor
and the grip
of this old balete
that insists
that it belongs
here too

with roots
holding
the floor
and the walls
together

striving to
replace
the roof
with spread canopy

The roof
open
to the heavens
in adulation
of the sun
and the rain
and the thunder
and the lightning

All slowly
releasing their form
to return
to the folds
of the universe
and be one
with the stars

And the echoes
of son and father
both old and gray

physical
embracing memory

form
embracing spirit

I’m finally home, Dad

Welcome home,
my son.