If I lay on the streets gasping for life,
Will you take me from the gunfire,
Will you come back for me and run to my aid?
If blood starts to comingle with my body’s perspiration,
Will you shower me with your tears
And bathe me in your love?
If on the streets I die like the martyrs of Mendiola,
My shouts for change reduced to a whisper before the reign of darkness and
The flag I bear soiled by the blood-stained ground,
Will you raise me in your arms like the Pieta or
Will you be a Saint Michael drunk in pride,
Come spit at me, the deviant whom you always told-so?
When you bury me, Mother,
Will my grave also hold the future I envisioned,
The future that once gave me life, that you now hide beneath the earth?
Liane Carlo R. Suelan, born and raised in Davao City, is a BA in Literature student at UP Visayas.