I Am

I am my mother's oceanic heart and the descending sands of my father's mind

I am sensuality in the contours of my lineage

blaspheming Western geographies when I dance.

I am the fertile farmlands of our islands, generous and skywards facing

I am prose, unaccented and undogmatic

And just a little maarte.

The Babaylan call in my dreams

the poets call in the secular

Or is it I who call them?

To be swaddled by their native gaze and dressed in the couture of the oblique

to soothe my skin and its glistening scales

and know belonging like bangus.

I am residual fear but also resilient becoming

I am my mother's name and my father's dream

I am the miles in their journey to a new home.

I am tending, I am feeling

I am numbers that do not add up

yet reason when reason is confounding.

I am water who plays with dolphins

and the scurry in chipmunks' delight.

I sing to the divine, I pray to my ancestors

that I may always know who I am.