When my mother told me the news / I waited all night to smell the sampaguita / wanting to be the first
grandchild you visited before leaving / the first after only my father / who might not have seen you
from the bathroom light filling his room / To tell you the truth / I was scared for the darkness to claim
your form / to rinse the grief from my face and see your eyes in the mirror / milky with sadness / I
curled my toes beneath my blankets / thought of my mother / her father’s palm curving into the arch
of her foot / Of course / she flew to the Philippines for his funeral / and this was his way of welcoming
her home / I wanted to show you Mississippi / Our trees are blossoming / Some nights / it rains so
hard / there are sirens that wail / I don’t know if I explained the life I am living / I learn about things
like elegies / and when they take on meaning / I have to stay home / You used to say you didn’t
understand Confession as a sacrament / or how a man in uniform could be any closer to God / Let me
tell you this without the intercession of angels / I’m sorry I never wrote / never called / sorry I built an
altar without having anything to offer / I smelled the smoke / not the sampaguita / I found the
invisible candle your son taught me to wait for
grandchild you visited before leaving / the first after only my father / who might not have seen you
from the bathroom light filling his room / To tell you the truth / I was scared for the darkness to claim
your form / to rinse the grief from my face and see your eyes in the mirror / milky with sadness / I
curled my toes beneath my blankets / thought of my mother / her father’s palm curving into the arch
of her foot / Of course / she flew to the Philippines for his funeral / and this was his way of welcoming
her home / I wanted to show you Mississippi / Our trees are blossoming / Some nights / it rains so
hard / there are sirens that wail / I don’t know if I explained the life I am living / I learn about things
like elegies / and when they take on meaning / I have to stay home / You used to say you didn’t
understand Confession as a sacrament / or how a man in uniform could be any closer to God / Let me
tell you this without the intercession of angels / I’m sorry I never wrote / never called / sorry I built an
altar without having anything to offer / I smelled the smoke / not the sampaguita / I found the
invisible candle your son taught me to wait for
//
the sampaguita
leaving my father / you
the light filling his room / I was scared to claim
the grief / I
thought of
the Philippines
blossoming /
living
elegies
a sacrament to God / Let me
tell the angels
/ I smelled the smoke / the sampaguita /
the invisible candle
leaving my father / you
the light filling his room / I was scared to claim
the grief / I
thought of
the Philippines
blossoming /
living
elegies
a sacrament to God / Let me
tell the angels
/ I smelled the smoke / the sampaguita /
the invisible candle
//
the sampaguita
filling the grief
of living
angels
smell the smoke
filling the grief
of living
angels
smell the smoke
Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and she is also the author of There Are No Filipinos in Mississippi, forthcoming from Porkbelly Press in 2024. Her work can be found in AAWW’s The Margins, Sundog Lit, and Depth Cues, among others. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and studies poetry in the MFA program at The University of Mississippi, where she is working to document and elevate stories of Filipino Americans in the Deep South.