in the storage area
beyond our kitchen 
boxes often wait
to leave one home for another’s
taped and overwhelmed with the new and old 
pleather girl boots,
men’s polo shirts starched anew, biscuits
destined for manila city
mothers send human-sized containers
bearing gifts of hard-won labour
with as much as their hearts could fit in
to make up for absence. over the distance,
little girls hear their nanang’s quiet voice
for them
each box
 holds infinite longing:
childhoods slip away
as they wonder why other mothers
can afford to work where they are loved,
families stretched thinner by unseen parents
hiring surrogates for

a fraction of their time

 the price of living is

deducted from life itself
so that one body gives
(the other)

succumbing to the years 

for a handful of plastic marbles—
dreams thrown deep,
deep inside

taking more and more

until both become weightless