Lullabies

Noreen Ocampo

photo credit: Noreen Ocampo

my left ear started ringing six days ago.

it grew a tiny voice
that sings & sings, just like my father’s.
just like my dearest friend’s.

the vents in my bedroom like to sing, too: a song
like computers deliberating something
impossible.

sometimes
they sing the voice away.

if I close my eyes & listen, I see
the deep teal I add
to the shadows of my photos after scrutinizing
them so long they are no longer beautiful.

I see my mother
sitting at the old family computer, sunshine laughing
through the blinds & the room humming with
familiar noise & maple syrup.

I can never return to these places.

rust always seeps into the teal,
& the tiny voice sings &
sings something inexplicably off-white.

it only quiets
to let the cars on my new street drive
with an appetite that worries me.

where are they all headed, anyway?

& at this late at night?

Noreen Ocampo is figuring out how to write. She is a Filipina American student majoring in English and film at Emory University, and her poems appear in Marías at Sampaguitas, perhappened, and Versification, among others. Say hello on Twitter @maybenoreen.