The Binding

These days the wind blows differently. The kind of wind that makes me want to write how

strange it is. But I can’t write anything about it. I don’t know its shape, its ripeness, nor the way

it slopes, only the damage it leaves. There it rebels in the vegetation, doing what the wind

sometimes does, whistling tiny grasses into more tiny grasses, tearing apart space to fronds,

almost like fear. I can say this because I live in a country that acts as a crossing for typhoons. I

remember when the strongest typhoon hit us, my little sister curled up in a corner and screamed

in a shrill mix of horror and protest at the wind as it tried to uproot our house—uproot us all,

sweep everything away with it, like a dream sequence in a darker interpretation of Oz. A tragedy

we had to overcome and most especially had to laugh at, as everyone expects, as if we just didn’t

experience the supernatural. Cold and strange wind. This trade wind became our trademark. A

racial identity. It can tell our history, I feel, that I could finally write about and mourn our long

periods of fourfold colonialism. But I don’t, or I tried to. Or I still can’t refuse the silence. Can’t

avoid its touch. Instead I stay and listen. The wind howls beyond recognition.