To have written it down

Wrote this during a conference, right after my phone died from over-usage and during a talk that was boring me to tears:

I'm thinking about all the calls and texts I'm missing right now (on top of the e-mails that I'm missing by not being in the office). Those calls and texts and e-mails will never end.

I'm thinking about everything else in life. How I suddenly had a flash of inspiration this morning, while driving in traffic. I mentally wrote a few lines of poetry:

On Being Filipino

An accident of birth
a bittersweet heritage
of slavery and independence
An unbreakable net of
hope, rising across
the earth
a hope as persistent
as the smell of
bagoong
a hope as sharp with
longing as
green mangoes
in summer.

How this came into my head, I don't know. You begin hearing it somehow. Even in the midst of traffic, without pen or paper. The poem begins to be heard by you. You have no choice. You must write it down because it is your life. It would be a betrayal of sorts not to have written it down.