the dead follows me to the bedroom

For All Saints’ Day, let me share a poem, “The Dead Follows Me to the Bedroom.”⁣

⁣An earlier version of this piece was part of a 14-poem suite titled “The Shape of Days” which was first published in Agwat-Hilom, an anthology produced by the National Committee on Literary Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), which gathered literary works on the COVID-19 pandemic from writers across the Philippines back in 2020.⁣

⁣Five years later, pandemic or not, the losses we continue to endure, especially those fueled by mismanaged state funds, still haunt us just the same.