I was never Filipino to them, just someone who belonged to everyone else.

i wish for a universe that is not so delicate i cannot cope if it slips through my fingers if i shatter in every alternate timeline tell me

my grandmother does not know how to forget she has taught my mother the same reminiscence has learned to worship grief

What was the summer if it wasn't for us?

Wildflowers grow through the cracked mouth of the parking lot where I had my first kiss

and you’re crying in them. you were always crying back then, but you don’t remember anymore

Every crime goes unpunished under the watchful eye of empire. How else do you think revolutions are born?

let's drive until we reach Tagaytay. Drink coffee overlooking the Taal Lake. And imagine there’s no such thing as a pandemic.

Defiance will carry me through my last days, Amidst the terror of the night, over the coastal waters of Cavite

balik: fluid adj. state of return 🡺 to be home 🡺 to be bahay : to buy flight cab out of bahay when no one

the peak of sadness is on my PMS and packages of western countries for dousing my boredom.

But brave isn’t a word I’d assign myself, more deer-in-the-headlights, Rapunzel-eyes, diving into confetti night skies to avoid any mention

We need lines, where feelings distract and the way you — oh you! — look at me lingers and makes me forget

Beats, Beat, Beat, Beat Up music pours from the ever-shared vein waxes and wanes pads on shy feet. knowing what’s wrong in the mind, is...

Take a step— move toward the light, the dark, the moment.

I want you to be like me. I want you to have reasons to live.

Perhaps the greatest hold Valmidiano has on the reader is through collective memory and experience.

Gharib shares her honest experiences of being caught between her Filipino and Egyptian identities

or his throat, or his lungs, or his song, his body now gills all over, now there, all the way over there beyond this

the spaghetti tastes jollier when it costs a six-and-a-half hour drive to jacksonville, florida, the closest home of jolly spaghetti