They came before the day began,
before I was ready to be seen.
Pink lilies, shyly unfolding
against the raindrops of morning.
Too early,
and yet, how touching,
that someone remembered,
and could not wait.
A student once,
her handwriting still a little unsure,
has sent these blooms ahead of time,
as if to say: I’m still thinking of you.
And I, suddenly,
am thinking of her, too,
of the long afternoons of talk and snacks,
the faces that pass through us and keep going.
I set the lilies by the window.
They open a little more each hour,
as if practicing tenderness.
Their scent follows me through the room,
a quiet persistence,
like love that never quite learns
when to stop returning.
Hope Sabanpan Yu
Hope Sabanpan Yu is a poet, essayist and fictionist. She is currently the director of the University of San Carlos Cebuano Studies
Center and the chair of the Division of the Humanities of the National Research Council of the Philippines.
