1.
Dear Reader, this is to let you know my address has changed—though since words cross unspeakable distances in slow motion, I am likely to have (been) moved again by the time you muster a reply. All the same, it is 484 Sunny Square Drive—a nondescript, even cheery, address all the houses, hovels, and shoe shops on this street share. You can imagine the confusion regarding electric bills and boxes sent by relatives from abroad. My mail, when it arrives, comes to me folded, having passed through many hands.
2.
A neighbor said this street did not exist 15 years ago, when this area was all swampland. It may still not exist on your road map (which does not show the earthquake fault lines creeping under the city either). What does exist: a sign at the corner where it intersects the main road. SUNY SQUARE DRIVE STREET, it announces. There are days when, arriving at that corner near the line of tricycles and the hot pink urinals, I feel like a phantom in one of your fictions. Though I wave, no vehicle will stop.
3.
But you are not interested in these details. You want to know about the shoes, the world’s largest. Here are the facts. They are brown Oxfords, 5.5 meters long, using up leather that could have shod 250 men. It took 10 shoemakers 77 days to build, to make it to the Guinness Book of World Records. (Another town in Cebu has taken on the mission to beat this record. I’m reminded of playground bullies trying to outboast each other.) When I went to the sports center—now a tourist attraction—to gawk, two girls were sliding down one shoe’s front curve, while a frantic guard shouted, “Bawal! It’s forbidden to ride on the shoes!” Monumental sweetness must have been denied him in childhood.
4.
Perhaps you read the article that began, “The 46.5-meter-high Statue of Liberty could make do with a new pair of shoes: a pair that is sturdy, reliable, and made in Marikina City.” She would have to make do indeed, the shoes being men’s style, fitting a giant 9 meters shorter. Can you picture her stepping off her pedestal, tiptoeing around a continent, doing the butterfly stroke across the Pacific for those shoes? In my mind, she rusts somewhere near the Marianas Trench—being, after all, only a creature of copper and steel. If you think she is unworthy of this fate, please, write back. Perhaps you can help me figure out a way to save her.
This poem is part of the collection that won Second Prize for Poetry in the 2005 Palanca Awards
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