I send my mother 1.5 million pesos monthly for my postpartum wife. Coming home early, I found my wife eating spoiled rice with fish heads. Furious, I confronted my mom, who sneered, “She doesn’t deserve better.” Then, I checked the family safe and found…

press my lips to Hue’s clammy forehead while our newborn son breathed in soft, rhythmic hitches beside her, cocooned in a fortress of blankets. Her cheeks would invariably be hollowed out, carrying the ghostly pallor of a woman who had spent the night offering her body as sustenance, yet she always managed to conjure a fragile smile. Go to work, her continue reading …