sea salt mournings

Somewhere between the rice fields and the rain that hasn't decided yet if it will fall, I light what the store calls redemption— seventeen pesos, foil-thin, small enough to tuck inside a worry. First drag: the electric bill forgets its due date. Second: my mother's silence on the phone turns merely into weather. By the third, the neighbor's karaoke is almost, almost forgivable. This is not wisdom. This is chemistry pretending to be peace— nicotine doing, in under a minute, what the novena promised for nine days and never quite delivered. Still, the smoke goes up the way prayers are supposed to, unhurried, unbothered, past the tin roof, the mango tree, the whole small province of not caring, tonight, so much.