The Prodigal
The Prodigal
Isabel Cristina Legarda
Luke 15:25-32
I dreamt of carob pods one night,
bright green in bunches on a tree
—spherical seeds just visible through the skin—
ripening to reddish-brown and falling all round me.
We used to forage for the fallen husks,
my brother and I, suck on their sweetness,
their taste of honey and dates, and something darker,
lingering on our tongues.
I awoke before dawn with a rumbling hunger
and wondered where my brother might be.
Melite, perhaps, getting drunk on carob liquor,
or a brothel in Jerusalem, burying himself in flesh.
He’d left me with all the labor, the oversight, the care
of our aging parents, lonely duties that had me
up before sunrise and exhausted by nightfall while he
roamed free, spending unearned coin on opium,
sex, and Roman wine. I never imagined him hungering
for husks, the scraps fed to swine in a faraway place.
When I heard the music of revelers at dusk,
saw the house lit golden from within
with torchlight, I knew he was back, knew
our father had recognized his haggard legs from afar
stumbling with the sting of grit on bleeding knees,
heard that our father had gone running to embrace him.
I wept hot tears at the ready extravagance of his love,
how new it was to me, how unknown, how unfair.
My anger covered me head to foot, a membrane
in which I couldn’t breathe. My hands formed fists;
my arms couldn’t move. But because my father’s pleading words
were brambles piercing through the caul; because outside,
the night was cold, and my fury burned
but offered no warmth; because, slowly, its amnion
tore and split apart—I was unhusked, my hardness
expelled, the mud I was wallowing in wiped off.
Because he met me, too, on the road
and clasped me tight in his prodigal arms.
Isabel Cristina Legarda
Physician & Poet
Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to the U.S. She is currently a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in the America magazine, The Dewdrop, Presence, Dappled Things, and others. Her chapbook Beyond the Galleons was published this year by Yellow Arrow Publishing.
Photography by Marija Leilynn