Tomorrow is a Long Way Back Maria Bolaños
After the one who reached the sky-world, from Ifugao
Follow your dog into the forest. Walk where the trees grow gnarled and wild, misted thickly with ancient coolness. No one remembers the last breath that warmed this place. The dog knows the way. The tree trunks knot themselves around you as you venture in, lattices for the weaving vine and creeping moss. Sunlight dapples softly, then sparsely, then snuffs out altogether. You begin to lose your sense of time, in this quiet room in the heart of the earth. This is incidental, and this is fine. You shed your time like old skin with every exhale. Create yourself with every inhale. Mark your passage with footprints dropped like grains of sand in the glass. Keep walking, you will find it. The city shines as if made of sky. Its lights, so many mirrors waiting.
“This piece was inspired by a Philippine folktale, of a man who visited the afterlife, called the SkyWorld. The poem depicts the journey to an unknown sky-world like an unknown future, where time and travel defy direction and are not linear, and the best way to go forward is to go back.”
Maria Bolaños is a Filipina-American poet and book reviewer. Her writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Marías at Sampaguitas, Chopsticks Alley Pinoy, and Touchstone Literary Magazine, among other places. You can follow her work on instagram @mariabeewrites.
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