words

happy one year

5/12/2019

october 20th, 2018

happy one year anniversary
i whisper quietly to my first breakup. i’d say heartbreak but it’s not that i’m mourning anymore. it’s one year ago today that i went through one of the hardest times in my teenage years. and after so many months and writing prompts, i’m tired of talking about the hurting.

i do mourn the first time i ever felt true, requited love. and when we broke up, i first started to write poetry just to cope. it’s my outlet now, but i will say the beginnings—its humble roots—are not my favorite part to tell. how can the one year anniversary of one of the best decisions of my life also fall on the same month my teenage world fell apart? why must the breaking be a catalyst? i guess i do have some things to say about it all, still, after so many months.

the boy loved me and it was simple and ever-present and i will never forget how he made me feel. he was a nice boy with the best intentions and i was a naive girl who never knew what she wanted. we weren’t perfect, but we weren’t too bad either.

he was my first love.
i was his middle girl.
it was unfair from the start, i suppose.

but it was young love and it was first love and it was something i could never get back. i took it for granted. like when you grow up and you realize that at some point, you and your friends went out to play for the last time without knowing. it’s like that. i was never aware the last kiss or phone call or piece of tangible love would be the last. it all happens without the knowing.

the rehashing.
i would never have been able to write like this a year ago; i was all hurt and anger and revenge.

since then, i’ve been in several flings. nothing ever real. nothing ever coming close to what we had. it’s not that i want to stay single at this point; i’m just too tired to start over. too tired to try at love again and fail.

to my first love—to any of my future loves. if you ever read this--
thank you for treating me how you did; loving me how you did. you didn’t set the bar too low; you were the best person to ever break my heart. i wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

this world has existed for thousands and millions of years and for some odd reason, we were able to exist in the same space at the same time, living off of dust from old ancestors and creating more for future first loves to meet on. you remind me that it counts for something.

-jess

jessica ison

she/her/hers
-
my poet’s note: it took some vulnerability submitting this piece. my first love, to be frank, has a god complex and i figured that i would never want him to know that i wrote this piece about him. but, if it helps me, i suppose i have to forget what any other person will say about it. if i am proud of this work, then that’s the end of the conversation. and i figure his ego might blow up once he finds this out, and i’m okay with that. i am very grateful for him. i learned that there is a difference between being appreciative and grateful for something, and wanting that thing back. they do not go hand in hand. i am very grateful he was my catalyst, but i’m okay not getting it back. i grew from the shadows of heartbreak; i am the light.

0 Comments

do i have to be filipino? / compatible

5/11/2019

0 Comments

do i have to be filipino?

I was born in North Carolina and raised in Bakersfield, California. As a preschooler, teachers accused my older brother of being “retarded” for merely speaking Tagalog in class. Consequently, my parents abstained from using their country’s language in an effort to distance me from any potential impediments to my education and assimilation to the United States. As I grew older, my parents slowly shifted back to speaking Tagalog, but at that point, that ship of learning the language had set sail. The period of learning through osmosis had passed, and no seven-year-old is going to go out and buy a Rosetta Stone to learn a language they didn’t even need. I never could, nor needed to, understand the content of my parents’ conversations: “adult talk” was a universal mystery among all children. With all my relatives on the other side of an ocean, learning Tagalog was as necessary as learning Latin. From a superficial level, I resembled a Filipino child, when I was really a child who happened to be Filipino.

I don’t fit the narrative of a typical second-generation child, the Joy-Luck-Club-esque rejecting of my parents’ culture, only to realize its significance towards the end of the second act. I can’t reject something I was never given.

It’s an ironically alienating feeling to watch a tinikling dance with performers who look exactly like you being cheered on by other surrounding clones. I’m drawn towards this mirage, this sense of belonging. In reality, I was never in a desert to begin with. I had loving friends and family, and I never felt the need to pursue anything more than that. Despite the comforting sense of fellowship the Fil-Am community strives to provide, attending their events engenders uneasiness in me. Because of the second-generation narrative, I’m compelled to think that Filipino culture is a missing puzzle piece that will complete me. However, its absence never made me uncomfortable until I was told it should.

compatible

Shelton checked his watch, sighed, and began tapping his foot. Kat normally wasn’t this late to their dates.

“Does she not care about staying together as much as I do? Having a weekly coffee date wasn’t asking for much, and we'd decided it was a sure-fire way of keeping our followers ‘Awwing’, at least for a few months, ” Shelton thought.

He looked around. Shelton went through his mental checklist. The coffee shop was local, not like a “basic” Starbucks or a Dunkin’ Donuts. “Check,” Shelton thought. The menu was written on a chalkboard. “Check.” The back of the cafe had shelves filled with poetry books, which no one was going to read - not that they were there for reading in the first place - and the walls were made of slightly worn down bricks. “Check and… check. Perfect aesthetics.”

He observed the couples around him. It looked like other couples were trying to boost their ratings here, too. Towards the front of the coffee shop by the window was a gay couple. One of them was filming the other, who nibbled at a cheesecake. The one filming watched with a straight face, only smiling whenever he faced the camera back at himself. They looked desperate. No one would be live-streaming in the middle of a crowded coffee shop unless they needed a serious amount of Awws. “They must be close to termination,” Shelton thought to himself.

They weren’t the most attractive pair of men, but being in a gay relationship alone had its perks. Being openly gay nowadays meant you were “brave,” and therefore more “endearing,” no matter the quality of your relationship. The same applied to interracial ones. Seeing the couple reminded Shelton of his college friend Jack a few years ago. Even though he wasn’t gay, Jack started to date men because it was his only chance to stay in a relationship that lasted longer than a couple of weeks. His short stature meant he was never ever able to meet the “height aesthetics” that everyone expected from straight couples. Four or five inches was preferred height difference, that is, unless the female liked to wear heels.

Shelton was too busy staring at the gay couple to notice that Kat had walked in. He jerked a little when she suddenly plopped down in the seat across from him.

“Where the hell have you been?” Shelton asked her without saying hello.

“My alarm didn’t go off. Besides, I don’t know why you wanted to schedule a photoshoot this early anyways. It’s 10:00 on a fucking Saturday morning,” Kat said.

“Because I planned it all out,” Shelton said, “Maybe if you had gotten here at 8:30, like I asked you to, we’d have a lot better lighting.”

“The lighting’s fine right now,” Kat said.

“Fine?” Shelton asked, “Don’t you know how good our followers’ eyes are? They aren’t just gonna give out Awws to posts with ‘fine’ lighting.”

Kat was silent. She started collecting her things.

“Wait,” Shelton said, “I didn’t mean to lash out at you. I just don’t want to lose you. I mean, just look at our ratings.” He pulled out his phone and placed it in front of her. “We’re doing so well right now. I’ve never been in a relationship this highly rated.” The sound of a harp came from the phone, and he pointed to the “9.7” hologram that flashed in front of Kat.

Kat stared at it for a bit and then made a downward swiping motion in front of her, and the hologram retreated back into his phone. “Maybe we just look good together,” Kat said.

“What are you talking about? We have a nine. Point. Sev-”

“You know what I mean.”

The two sat in silence for the next few minutes. A harp sound came from both their phones, and matching holograms came out: “9.3”.

Without saying anything, Shelton took his phone and pointed it at her. Kat looked down and to the side.

“Babe, we’ll talk about it later, okay? Can we just get this over with, so we can at least be together long enough to argue about it some other time?” Shelton said.

Kat sighed. She slowly looked back up towards the camera. She turned her frown into a smile, tilted her head 40 degrees to the left. He took the picture.

anthony lagunda

he/him/his
-
"compatible" originally written for enl5f

0 Comments

self-portrait

5/10/2019

0 Comments

Loving, nurturing, and dependent: these are core values of the traditional ideal Filipina woman that my grandmother grew up with. As both of my parents worked full-time to make ends meet, I spent most of my life being raised by my grandmother. Born and raised in the Philippines, my grandmother was taught that cooking, cleaning, and childbearing were the most important and only duties that a woman should know. My grandmother was married at fifteen, like many other girls around the Philippines. Throughout her marriage, she endured years of abuse and infidelity, yet remained with her husband because he was the only thing she knew. My grandmother encompassed what it meant to be a Filipina woman. She loved and nurtured her family with a love so deep that I could taste it in her cooking and feel it in the way she hugged me when I came home after school.

My mother embodies a new kind of Filipina. She was born in the Philippines, but lived most of her life in the United States. In the Philippines, she lived a comfortable life filled with family and nannies, but that was all stripped from her when she was nine as her father received a series of death threats and was force to immigrate to the United States. From a lavish life in the Philippines to a frugal life in the US, my mother was forced to quickly adapt to the new world around her. When she became pregnant with my older sister at nineteen, my mother was forced to juggle between being a full-time mother, a full-time student, and a full-time employee. She became the embodiment of a new type of Filipina that blended the values of the independent, free spirited American woman with the values of traditional Filipino culture. Though she was loving and nurturing, she did not rely on anyone to support her.

Born in the United States and raised with Filipino culture, I embody what it means to be a Filipino-American woman. My childhood was filled with fond memories of endless family gatherings, learning how to make my favorite Filipino dishes, and trying to communicate with my grandparents in broken Tagalog. My grandmother’s stories taught me the value of family and how important it is to understand where she comes from. My mother’s existence shows me the importance of hard work and independence. Though different sides of the same coin, my mother and my grandmother both demonstrate one of the most overlooked traits of the Filipina woman—her strength.

Loving, nurturing, resilient, and independent: these are the core values of the modern generation of Filipina women—the generation I belong to. It is these values that have driven me to be a leader and to be unafraid of the unknown as I venture off into the future. In showing love and compassion towards those around me, I am able to empathize with them and gain a greater understanding of their situation. From there, I can think of ways that I can help them. It is because of this empathy that I strive to one day change communities and build a brighter future for those around me. Regardless of my failures and shortcomings, whether it be never launching a project that I had always wanted to start or getting a low grade on an exam, I have always persevered and strived to improve. I believe perseverance is a necessity to move forward, because without making an the effort to try again, we will never know if we’ve become any better. It is the strength of being a Filipina that has allowed me to persevere time and time again. Whenever I feel weak or when I want to give up, I think of what my mother and my grandmother went through to be where they are today. It is their unwavering strength and determination that helped me stand where I am today.

kara asuncion

she/her/hers

0 Comments

van ness ave

5/9/2019

0 Comments

How amazing it is
To remember conversations
And how someone made you feel
Months after events unfolded
When everything in the present
Seems to have turned upside down
And nothing is at all the same

I can still recall the butterflies
Instilling in me a feeling
Of excitement I have not felt in a while.
I heard your voice, gentle and tender
And no matter what the medium was,
On the phone, In person
Knowing that your voice
Spoke to me and only me
Sang a melody to my ears.

That night, I witnessed
A transparent, strong, blossoming woman
Unlike anyone I have met before
From a timid makahiya
To a flowering, vibrant rose
Opening up and willing to trust
Elegant, yet still not without some thorns

It was an ephemeral night
With all the magical thrills and compliments
Captured within a fleeting snapshot of life
A night like that may never happen again
And no opportunity left to treasure
More of your picture-perfect smiles
But regardless of time’s passing,
Half a year after an innocent night in fall
The beautiful thing is
I got to know you more at all.

0 Comments

used to

5/9/2019

0 Comments

My mind is always used to running
It's actually kind of stunning
Because everything always seems to start crashing and burning
My heart wants to be alive and have fun
But my mind always tries to sprint and run

My heart is used to falling
But my mind is used to recalling
The terrible memories and feelings
Of the times my heart broke while trying
Love hasn’t been good to me
Or maybe my mind is going too fast for me to see
the world that loves you and me

When my heart makes a decision
My mind decides to finally pay attention
And slow down and let me look
At the heart that is all rattled and shook
From the times that I was just too late
To let my heart speak with truth and faith
That I want to be happy and that I want to be honest

So please mind stop holding my heart hostage
Please work together to let me live
A life where my stomach is filled with butterflies
And not my mind holding a magnifying glass to analyze
Trust my heart that its doing the right thing
And help it to make us more than just a fling

Lets us care and let us walk
Lets us smile and lets us talk
To the one that makes us happy and laugh
I know it seems like a scary task
But it's even scarier when we are alone at our last
Hour or breath, knowing that we stopped trying

So please,
Let's stop being used to running.

cameron gonzales

he/him/his

0 Comments

<<Previous

words.

happy one year

​jessica ison

do i have to be filipino? / compatible

anthony lagunda

self-portrait

kara asuncion

van ness ave

used to

cameron gonzales

jessica ison