after zeina aboushaar
they say when you lose a language you
lose a generation to the river that has
dried up in your mouth the ocean that
birthed my lola and left nothing for me
my lola grew up without a country
only to watch her apo have to leave
what was left of it leave, to go
back to the country she once fled to
leave, to go back to the country where
her generation’s tongues were clipped until they didn’t
know what language to make the word for “liberation”
to help americans understand the blood my people
left on their hands flowing like the ocean
that birthed my lola left nothing for me
the blood of my blood has always flown
through the rivers of broken land of diaspora
so yes,
i could go back where i came from
but i would only find myself back here
*Poem is in a quartet style the author is experimenting with and the distance between lines is meant to be evocative of the distance often felt by Filipinx womxn in the diaspora*
L.M.B.F. (she/her) is a writer born to Bicolano parents and raised in Metro Manila, Philippines. She enjoys exploring language in all its forms – through rhetoric and speech, through poetry and prose, and through the intersection of English with her own native languages, Bicol, Tagalog and Spanish. As an incoming high school senior, she completed the International Writing Program’s (@uiiwp) Between the Lines: Identity and Belonging program in July 2019 through a full grant funded by the Doris Duke Center for Islamic Art. Although she is new to publishing and performing her writing, she wants to use her work as an educational tool to help other young Filipinx-Americans connect to their culture in the diaspora.
Contact Info:
Insta: @haliyapoems / @liaa.melissa
Originally published in October 2019.