WE WERE children whose fathers lived elsewhere. They worked abroad for most of the year. We waited for them to show up at the door. Once in a while we forgot we were waiting for someone.
We met when we moved to the same street named after a mountain range, into unfinished houses with garages waiting to be filled. Our mothers ran each month to remittance centers, picking up money wired from America, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, or an M/V in the middle of the sea. We lived in a cut-and-dried community, but made to sound exotic with the name of a Caribbean country. We lived close to the gate that stayed half-open with a guard who let everyone in, on the side where the smooth pavement started and the bordering barangay’s tight, rutty roads ended. We lived here, and our fathers didn’t.
Inside, the furniture reminded us of an absence. We repurposed empty dining chairs
