Shutters

December Two Thousand Fourteen

We installed wooden boards on all our windows.
Shutters, they're called,
If they were beautiful, intentional.
Another typhoon, they told us.
Our house darkened.
Quieted.
We waited.
She came. Ruby, they called her.
A howling that seemed no end.
She was no Yolanda. But bore
the same last name. Or first name.
It did not matter.
At least the boards
muffled the loudness somewhat.

August Two Thousand Sixteen

The wooden boards have long been dismantled.
Save for those outside our bedroom windows.
It's still not beautiful. From the outside it's not.
It still darkens the room, muffling the sounds.
But when I draw the curtains aside,
Slats of light seep through
And sounds of day and dusk still enter--
Birdsong,
Only what is necessary
Only what must,
Such as,

When I reached down to kiss you,
Our little boy seeing this, then said,
"I yuv yoo."

The wooden boards--
Shutters, I call them now.