After Gina Apostol
Portrait of notes app / as eclectic collage / wherein I love choosing more than one toy / at the
$0.99 store in Tracy / I gravitate toward cute stuffed toys / or pens / or diaries / I love / having
leftovers from a large meal / fridge bursting at the seam / in what our families / promise is love / I
watch the sunset / and think of ghosts / who wouldn’t be / happy / with the storm brewing inside
/ my palms / a storm / I tend / daily / collage as fragments / meaning I love the wind / as it
caresses / each windmill / and kisses Lola’s flowers / and the hush of papers / from an open
book / fragmentation as memory / because I love the still / between 12am and 1am / right when
my virtual Cebuano class ends / because they’re based in Melbourne / and there’s a time
difference / before I even set down my headphones / I know / Lolo is sleeping. / I step outside to
grab my books / and journal / and Lolo is snoring. / Memory as love / as I tiptoe toward the main
bedroom / stepping over the creaky floorboard, / but never before whispering / goodnight.
Keana Aguila Labra (they/them/she/her) is a Cebuana Tagalog Pilipinx genre & genderfluid poet & writer in diaspora. She works to provide a safe literary space for underserved & underrepresented communities as the co-Editor-in-Chief of literary magazine Marías at Sampaguitas & the co-Founder of the BIPOC/LGBTQIA+ focused publishing press Sampaguita Press. She is also the Assistant Director of the Santa Clara County Youth Poet Laureate Program alongside Director Janice Lobo Sapigao, a fellow of the Kearny Street Interdisciplinary Writer's Lab cohort summer ’21, & served as one of the Honorary Santa Clara County Poets Laureate of Oct. ’21 with Lorenz Mazon Dumuk.