writing · angela acosta

01

to define is to limit

i turn 30 this year. and the question keeps finding me. at gatherings. on forms. in my own head. what do you do? what are you? say it in one word.

i never have one.

i am good at many things. not great at one. i write. i make things. i organise. i photograph. i draw. i notice. i pick something up, learn it fast, get bored, move to the next. maybe it's the adhd. maybe it's just how my attention works. either way, i have stopped apologising for it.

at 30, you are supposed to know. you are supposed to have picked a lane. specialise, they say. commit. brand yourself. all the verbs sound the same. all of them ask me to take a knife to whatever parts of me don't fit the box.

i have tried. i have chosen one thing for the form and felt the others go small inside me. and every time, i walk away feeling smaller too.

to define is to limit.

so here is what i'm choosing instead. i am letting the answer be long. i am letting it be more than one word. i am letting the box stay open.

i turn 30 this year and i still don't know what i am. to define is to limit. so i won't.

02

ikaw, ako.

03

mother tongue

my mother tongue stays behind my teeth. it comes out when i'm annoyed. when i'm counting. when i hurt myself. when something slips out.

i hear it again in calls home. in my mother's voice on the other end. in the way my voice changes. in the speed of it. in how much we laugh. how easily it returns there. how little effort it asks from me.

outside of that, it appears unevenly. a word i know is mine but cannot get to fast enough. a word for a feeling english does not have. a pause where there used to be none. a sentence i begin one way and finish another.

i notice it when i take too long. when someone is waiting. at a counter. in a meeting. across from someone i barely know. when the right word is already there and i still go around it. when i choose the other one because it will pass more easily. because no one will stop me there. because i have done it enough times for it to start sounding natural.

but my mother tongue is more than the times it shows up. it is the language i was a child in. it is my mother, my family, the food on the table. it is who i was before i left, before i learned to change myself to fit somewhere else.

so every word i go around takes me a little further from her. from home. from who i was. the other word gets me to the end of the sentence. it says some of what i mean. never all of it.

and i always wonder this after: why am i speaking around something that was already mine?

04

nanay

A black and white photograph of a woman in a garden

nanay spoke in doing. water fetched. rice washed. a shirt mended before you noticed the tear. she came from the mountains, from soil that never gave without a fight. mornings were cold. money was scarce. everything she touched had a purpose.

she didn't grow up learning softness. there was no time for it. she grew up learning how to last. how to stretch one meal into seven mouths. how to be still so others could move.

she carried what she had to: sacks of rice, crying babies, bad news folded into letters. carried mornings that started too early and nights that ended too late. carried grief like it was part of the body. carried joy like it was borrowed, something to be returned.

just survival dressed up as routine.

now she moves slower. but the weight didn't disappear. it only shifted, into the bend of her back, the quiet in her eyes, the way she grips the edge of the table before standing.

not everything she carried was meant for me. but i feel it anyway. in the way i ration my joy. in the way i hold things too long. in the way i move through the world like i owe something.

05

mama says it's wrong to show emotions. says to keep them hidden, locked tight where no one can find them. don't let them show, don't let them slip. if they see too much they'll tear you apart. people don't need to know what's inside. people don't need to see the mess.

mama says you smile through it. doesn't matter if it hurts, doesn't matter if it burns. you smile anyway. she says if you let it show, they'll use it against you. they'll poke at it, pull it apart. better to keep it quiet. better to keep it buried.

mama says crying is for babies. mama says anger is ugly. mama says there's no room for weakness. she says to keep your voice steady, your hands still, your face blank. because the world doesn't care how you feel.

mama says to keep it in, and i do. i fold it down, press it flat, shove it into the smallest corners of myself. but sometimes it slips out anyway, sharp, ugly, untamed. sometimes it doesn't listen. sometimes i don't either. but sometimes, late at night, i wonder what it would be like to feel out loud. to let it spill, raw and ugly. mama wouldn't like that. but sometimes, i think, maybe she's wrong.

06

mamay

mamay is a man of work. the kind of work that never lets up, that demands all of him, every day. he was born into a life that asked for everything and gave little back. in the rivers, where the current is strong and the crossing never easy, he learned early that survival doesn't allow for hesitation. he grew up learning to move with the land before the day could fully unfold, to clear fields with a machete and tend to animals as if they were an extension of himself.

he never complains. never needs to. mamay's world is built in silence, his hands doing the talking. the earth, the animals, the sweat on his brow. these are his words, the essence of his days. he's not one for speeches. his actions, steady and sure, say all that needs to be said.

now, the fields are behind him, but the land never quite leaves. he bends to care for his roosters, the same care he once gave the soil. his vision may blur, but his resolve remains unshaken.

mamay's strength is never in the obvious. it's in knowing when to work, when to wait, and how to give of himself without expecting anything in return.

he never speaks of it, but there are moments i find myself in his shoes, doing the work without asking for anything, simply because it needs to be done. it's a reminder that sometimes, it's not about what you get, but what you give without question.

A black and white photograph of a man with a rooster

07

half a year, 2025.

08

there is a jar of bagoong in my cupboard that i have not opened. i have been meaning to for months. every time i reach past it for something else, i tell myself soon.

i hated it as a kid. ilocano bagoong, grey and thin, the anchovies still whole, a smell that climbed two flights of stairs before anyone called me down to eat. papa would open the jar and i would already be breathing through my mouth. i opened windows. i asked why we couldn't eat what other people ate, something that didn't smell like the sea had died in it.

An ink drawing of a clay pot of vegetables over a wood fire

papa laughed and kept spooning it into the pinakbet. ampalaya, eggplant, okra, sweet potato. tomatoes crushed by hand, chicharon thrown on top, hardly any water. just the bagoong at the bottom of the pot, and the pot lifted and shaken so nothing broke.

i picked around the ampalaya. the salt sat at the back of my throat and i drank water after every mouthful to get it off my tongue. papa said one day i would ask for this. i swore i never would.

i have been away long enough now that the kitchen here only smells of whatever was cooked last. still, some nights, i smell it before i have even thought of it. the salt first, then the bitter, then the fat of the chicharon gone soft in it, and i have to stop whatever i am doing until it passes.

An ink drawing of a fish, captioned grief is a weird thing

papa has been away long enough now too. fourteen years. grief is a weird thing. for a long time it was nothing, and now it is this. i don't know what to call it when the thing i miss about him is a pot of vegetables and the way he shook it.

so i bought the jar. i messaged an uncle and asked how he makes his. i messaged a friend from home and asked what goes in first. a little of this. don't stir, shake. you'll know when. i saved the messages. the jar went into the cupboard.

it's the last instruction that stops me. you'll know when. i'm afraid it will taste like nothing. i'm more afraid it will taste exactly right. that even if i get the eggplant wrong, even if the ampalaya isn't bitter enough, none of it will matter once the salt hits the back of my throat, and i will eat all of it, and the glass of water beside the plate will stay full.