Unbound |
s/kinship |
my accent is resurrected
when the plane lands suddenly, i am speaking in tongues i buried years ago the drive through metro manila to antipolo takes hours, long enough for my mouth to reshape itself into a landmark of home at tita ruth's house, a small reunion – aunts, uncles and cousins chatter in tagalog, bisaya chavacano, even snippets of subanen transplanted from a small town in zamboanga del sur branches of history and proof that a root can take hold anywhere and bloom here, the guttural remembering of my body i watch my skin brown before my eyes a log surrendered to the fire hear my voice become something i recognise, pungent as the durian uncle ken brings for us to eat the easy giving of its flesh soft and yellow i had imagined my return a searchfor marrow the harrowed sifting through soil for a scattering of seeds and home a place in time now lost to me instead, to be made whole and found in the umbel of a bloodline unbound and mine |
i. to wear a skin
it begins with migration – the shock of winter on a tropical body will render any mouth a ghost i try to bury an accent brimming with foreign slang they name me tan, and i dream white hands and legs in a skin not my own summer brings me a new purpose – sloughing the cold into hibernation i turn my body into an altar for the sun until i am brown and radiant, my skin singing hymns to my filipino roots and this mouth, a rushing river to the only country i call home ii. to find your kin it begins in a room with a door – always, the search for something familiar brown skin, another accent or a pair of eyes that see me too often, only white strangers and i, once again made a ghost wonder about a prayer to shrink my brownness to a crumb but sometimes, a blessing – another brown girl or a quiet accent, the recognition from across a room our country is a nomad's land and we come from a history wound over and over exchanging the chasm of an ocean for a name iii. s/kinship it begins in a land not our own – to find our people, we trace bloodlines across a border, learn a language at the roots uncolonise this skin and recognise the cadence of a stranger's native tongue bring them over the threshold and call them kin this, the nature of diaspora – to turn a body into home or a mirror finding solace only in others who know this shattering and speak the language of leaving blood shed long before the sacrifice one fist closed around a memory the other held open and waiting |
Kaya Ortiz was born in Hobart, raised in the Philippines, and now lives in Canberra. As a person of mixed ethnicity, her identity has been questioned by others all her life. Kaya writes to express, explore and ultimately reclaim all facets of her identity and lived experience.