Mayday - Arvin Narvaza

Today, Mama called me in panic over black ants
rivering along the main door’s step—heads crowned
of white pellets, processioning toward something I could not see.
 
When I arrived, the midline had already broken.
Citronella hung in the air—sharp, intrusive,
slicing through what once moved with such precision and tranquility.
 
She had already sprayed before she remembered:
black ants meant money was coming,
a sign of wealth about to enter if you let them pass.
 
But by then, the fortune had splintered—loose coins flung from a hand too eager,
some drowning in the slick, others fading at the threshold.
Each carrier still held on—tiny jaws locked onto something heavier than themselves.
 
She feared the trail led to our dining table,
but when I knelt and followed them closely,
I found they only reached the corner beside the door--

a small hole, a home, not a conquest.
They weren't asking for space,
only passage.
 
And maybe if we’d waited,
the small mercy they bore
might’ve reached us
whole.



Arvin writes poems that dwell in the spaces between memory and forgetting, presence and absence. His work moves quietly through loss, longing, and the unnoticed transformations that shape a life. He lives and writes in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. His poems have appeared in local and national journals and magazines such as Dagmay, Bisaya (Manila Bulletin), Philippines Graphic Reader, and internationally in Voice & Verse Poetry (Hong Kong) Magazine.