Part 2: Pasensya ᜉᜐᜒᜈ᜔ᜐ᜔ᜌ

The word can sometimes mean ‘Sorry’ …
But it doesn’t actually mean sorry, ‘Patawarin’ is more accurate in context

I remember telling a full blood at a wedding
‘Some people use it as excuse me’

‘Oh? Are you sure?
I’ll have to ask my mum that when I get home’
‘Do it, ask your mum!’ I reply
The frustration I’m so used to,
Translate what I know is true
To be made a feeling of shame

A reminder that this skin faded light
Brown tongue twirl childhood responses
Is given nothing more but the stigma of ignorance
Why bother re-learning if you’ll always be excluded

These microaggressions stay with me
For months, ironic that the translation is closer to ‘patients’
They always think we are wrong,
Not authentic enough,
Even if they don’t understand they’ll never take our word

I had pierced coins in the concha of my ears as it reminded me of a time we had no pockets,
The barangay taught me that, the slick aspiring salbahe school kids taught me that

One time they told my dara
We were just going to the Tindahan
Before I could understand we went to the mountain

It was on the other side of the main dirt road
I remember the wild grass being almost as tall as me

I remember the other one didn’t speak much
I remember he looked bigger than any kid my age
Even me

I don’t remember when it was
But I remember falling
And the grass whipping my skin, rocks, me tumbling
And then seeing an arm reach out
And me reaching back for it
He caught me
The big quiet one
Pulled up my whole body weight up to safety and Jag looked at us and especially me and said ‘be careful’
This was the biggest mountain I’d ever climbed
There was no pathway up, just rocks…

I remember when we got to the top, Jag pulled out a Yosi like a trophy. I almost forgot the conversation completely
We didn’t call them Yosis back then, We called them Sigarilyo’s.
The last syllables of the word became the term in my return.
The words lost jigsaw pieces, inside my trilingual locked memories.

I wanted to pitch a rock towards a pick-up truck I saw in the distant valley on the other side,
Jag said ‘Don’t, they will know we are here’
And I don’t remember much about here
And maybe we weren’t supposed to be here

At 13 angry that I had been left stranded in another country
Lost not realising why …
Betrayed for all the good I had been,
To feel no reward but punishment
Split like the sides of the mountain
I don’t remember much
But I remember looking at the little shack next to the pick-up truck, on the other side of the mountain,
surrounded by nothing
Other
Than dirt

I remember feeling the piso in my ears on the way to the way to the tindahan or knowing it’s just enough for the jeepney ride sa mga araw
I remember the rocks thrown at me in a circle of people that thought I was too privileged to exist in a public school on the other side of the world
I remember the cordial poured into my milk box when I left it in a room full of aussies

It maybe why I don’t press accent, cause I’ve had white men with brown girlfriends put it on in a patronising way at a food van when I was just wanting to talk with the kuyas on the grill

I remember how easy it is for you to say that white man is basically one of us,
How easy it is to tell us we’re not

How hard it is for you to remember
How many islands we have,
When we had our independence
How hard it is to remember Carabao,
But how easily you can feel comfortable with identity

I remember being on the plane back being asked how a kid so young is allowed to travel alone

I also remember not being alone

I remember the teacher
Stepping in the circle after the fight broke out,
Him back handing the other kid that I pushed just before throwing hands

I also remember the ones that accepted me,
When I helped unlock memories
Because they accepted me within uprooted land
Where we have been taught to forget
everything of who we are

And so when I say ‘Pasensya’
Know I am learning how to accept you not accepting me,
For trying to relearn and remember who I was,
When you have forgotten what it was to be patient

Pasensya kana
For everything you think is weird and foreign but have chosen to not believe it is of our culture

For the times you’ve arranged make up
And being taught to be ashamed of your English
So in turn that self-hate made us ashamed of trying to remember how to pronounce Paranaque
To know what it is to bless

So we are forever the ones
Stepping in between bamboo sticks to the beat

Hoping to connect
With a moment
Where we can just be