There’s No Such Thing As A Natural Disaster
after the North Luzon, Philippines earthquake, July 2022, for T.W.
Rain lashes a zinc roof
while Nanay is slumped asleep
like the rice bags lining concrete during monsoon season.
Anak, when my hands give up,
Bury me under our house
So I will never have to leave Cagayan Valley.
By the grace of God, we will rebuild
And by the grace of God these hands go up; to separate
fact from fiction, or the truth from its husk;
because only human failures could turn His art into a disaster.
And life-giving waters become life and death —
when mangroves become concrete and glass
a storm will take you before your time.
Anak, that’s just the thing
Call landslides natural
But poverty here is not
Say eruption is natural
But our corruption is not
From her mantle, stretch marks ooze cool mud
and that is natural, but we wade through the muck of many many years,
of built-up runoff
in a broken world system.
There is no such thing as a natural disaster.
Tomorrow morning the world will wake up and call this “a tragedy”.
Tomorrow morning my hands will go up, and to you, and back up again, while we rebuild the waterlogged pieces of Cagayan Valley.
Tomorrow if you ask me? I don’t pray anymore.
But anak, God gave us voices to sing and to sing is for free so in concert with the birds and the trees my screams will come in waves;
I will sing for some peace, for the spirits that live above and below concrete.
I will sing let her breathe, this earth, groaning and creaking like your old bones
or aching like a tita’s breast.
I will sing creation, destruction, resurrection
and a bed of fresh soil
to rest.
It is my turn to finally rest.
Dianne Aral is a Philippines-born and Singapore-raised writer interested in tender speculation. They've also been a queer nightlife organizer and urban farm worker; you can find their writing in Tiger Moth Review, the Fragmentary Institute of Comparative Timelines, and Literary Hub. Their manuscript-in-progress was selected for the 2023 Singlit Station Manuscript Bootcamp, an incubation program hosted by the literary nonprofit Singlit Station.
Image Source: AP Photo/Harley Palangchao