There Is Still Something Worth Fighting For

Will you leave, someone asks.
Will you board a plane and never look back?

I wish the answer came easy: like wind
sailing, caution be damned; like departure.

A dozen storms have tried to uproot me and
failing that, Yolanda tried to drown me in her tears.

But I am here bone-dry, refusing
to give up gnarled feet for rainbow wings.

And why should I, when the sea of my foremothers
constantly tug me to them, beseeching me

to keep a memento: a tooth blessed by brine,
bottled-up moonshine, the family kris.

There is a battle, there is a war—
one I cannot idle, one history keeps burying.

By Saquina Karla C. Guiam

Biography:

Saquina Karla C. Guiam is a writer from General Santos City, Philippines. Her work has appeared on Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Djed Press, Outlook Springs, The Maine Review, and others. She is the Roots nonfiction editor of Rambutan Literary and the Social Media Manager of Umbel & Panicle, a new literary magazine about all things botanical.