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

Garner is a biracial Filipina-Canadian living in the Greater Toronto area.

there's a layer of dust on my crocodile skin i've been in southern california so long the hawk cuts an arc in the sky and agrees

We watch the house wrap itself around her. Light and heat return to the earth.

We look up at the sky and see blue; uninterrupted and no one tells us we need to step out of the sun our skin a cloudless glow, we stretch

I haven’t figured out what good parenting looks like maybe a dollar to not skip class two

conjuring the Sahara in our orange hallways & together trekking across those impossible sands.

Khalisa Rae’s Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat takes an unflinching look at the racist legacy.

It has been three seasons since I last saw you, she hums. I was beginning to forget your face.

I’m running out of options. because I like the impossible sound of a typing speed that isn’t going anywhere.

homebody | cocoon | 2020 atrophied some of my hard won progress | change that officially by calling | 2021 the year of

& her handshake is an embrace. The second mystery is that she smiles the vowels of my name

It’s not yours until you bleed on it, until it tastes the kiss of Vancouver rain

Maybe that’s one reason why translation is not much-practiced in the Philippines

Would you buy flowers for yourself? Can you tell me all the people who would? The people who have?

My mother tells me of half recalled grandparents With possibility of tainted blood, of self destruction Of women who hid with their sisters

This is what joy looks like: palm to palm, radiant, mga kasama. Sing like every tomorrow is infinite

Finish Filipinx American History Month on a strong note and show Elsa Valmidiano your support!