My Filipino is a party trick

Reserved for Pacquiao boxing matches and Jollibee commercials, tagging friends in SFT memes that I don't always get

My mother’s lilt seeping out when they haven’t eaten enough, or when I’m full of fury.

But like any good trick I know when to put it away.

I play telephone with my Lolo’s last words through layers of Google Translate, and find the references for this poem in BuzzFeed articles. Choke on Tagalog syllables like fish bones caught in the gum.

I am in the canteen line at JoFen, trying to order in a tongue deserving enough to appreciate these flavors 

 A trial: A plea

To prove that I belong to this culture as much as I insist it belongs to me

I’m gasping for air, grasping at air

As I rack my brain for the right word for pinakbet but settle for 

“That one, please, thank you.” White, Styrofoam, Thank You Come Again plastic

For my class presentation on the Philippines, I am a blank slate. I look online  

In the hopes of scraping some semblance of identity from the Arial script. 

I play the Wikipedia game with my heritage.

Filipino Cuisine

See also: Diniguan 

See also: Blood

See also: Sacrifice

Redirects to: We gave up everything for you to be here.

Redirects to: My father’s tears on rejected job applications for poor language skills

See also: Whitewash 

See also: Identity (disambiguation)

Uncanny, lock-jawed salmon swimming upstream

I type in, “How do you pronounce home in Filipino” into the search engine 

Google Translate spits back out, in English of course,  “What do you tell a house?”

What do you tell a house when its walls are made of glass but you can’t find the key

When the flickering TFC white noise sounds more like a foreign film

When you can smell the pancit from miles away but the hearth used to cook it is sputtering.

Just as I’m wondering how to confess to this crystal mirror chapel if I can’t pronounce the apology 

I realize the door is open, I walk in 

I’m greeted with a wave of humidity and the cicada hum of electric fans, the smell of bulad and the 

crackling of mahjong tiles tripping over each other. 

I hear the shadows of my Lola’s prayers sink into the drywall

And I feel her calling on the ghosts of ancestors I will never know the names to. 

But as the cigarette smoke of my kuyas fill the room,  I realize that I know this.

I may never know the beauty of the sun rising above the hills of Bohol or the correct way to pronounce “Pakikisama" but I sure as hell know what it means . 

I know this.

I know this 

I know you. 

Thank you for being living, breathing proof that home is so much more than a house 

And even then, when have you ever known a Filipino household to turn away the hungry?

I know that I am home.

Even if it means having to carve our initials into the doorstep,

Sing late night karaoke til the windows shatter

Mano po, show respect, to the hands of mahal that welcome you into their warm embrace

Even when you arrive late.