Carla Estella

from Chai: Travel Poems by Marc Nair feat. Neon & Wonder

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lyrics

Carla Estella
(YMCA, Baguio City)

Carla Estella sits in Jorap’s laundry shop,
piled with bricks of newly-pressed clothes.
She writes a receipt for my muddy jeans
and rankled socks and, as I leave, asks me
quickly, where I am from, if I have time.
My day waits patiently, so I sit, and we talk.

Carla Estella from Zambales, a little nowhere
further south, works twelve hours, seven days
a week to save for college, dropping the dirty
and picking up the clean. And in between is
Carla, only seventeen, always ready with a smile,
‘But Sir, sometimes I just get so tired.’

I look around at these stacks of laundry
that are her walls, wanting to find a way out
for her; but I, who have been given everything,
cannot even tell Carla that her heart is clean,
washed with a simple wish. How honest
am I to even think these thoughts?

Carla Estella wants to be a teacher,
and go back to Zambales to help her people
with new ways forward. “All my life people tell me,
‘You’re so good, so kind, Carla Estella.’
Sir, please tell me, what is truly important –
the tiredness of now or a hope for the future?”

Night falls. Carla Estella rattles down the blinds.
A van waits to take her back to a house,
the one that she shares with strangers.