after Esteban Pichay Villanueva’s The Basi Revolt (1821)
The sound of horseshoes
on stone lures me to slumber
as I stare at this lampshade,
a volcano of amber lava upwelling
on its crater, the debris
of a promise I once made
to a girl who lives in this city.
We finish high school now, but
in three years we shall meet again,
I told her, a promise I was eager to fulfill
the first time I returned to this city.
In between visits to a nearby town
where a river once turned red
like basi, I waited for her response.
But a fern is not a comet.
And on that afternoon,
the sky like a phone screen
was an omen of blue paper
soaked in vinegar.
My revolt against a prohibition
to fall in love with an unbeliever
ended on that long bridge,
the city leaving nothing
but arrows buried in chests,
severed heads inside bird cages,
bodies hanging from the gallows.