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    Home»Creative

    The Dressing Room

    A poem about exploring your roots
    By Donnalyn XuMay 8, 2019 Creative 1 Min Read
    Art by Amelia Mertha.
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    At the dinner table, we eat kamayan, to let our hands
    taste the food first. Our hands know sacrifice
    the way only women do. A fistful of rice
    means comfort. An open mouth & a belly full.
    The sharp zest of calamansi runs down my palm
    into a dish of soy sauce. In this dream, the kitchen

    is a dressing room – we peel the layers
    like a second skin & listen to the careful rustle
    of movement around us. I watch myself

    in every mirror & become a girl made of windows.
    Shy as a peach tree, blossoming like banana leaf.
    All the quiet in me. This act of undressing

    is always nameless & I refuse to wilt. My mother
    never taught me how to cook, but I know what it means
    to save the last serving for someone else.

    I walk away from the table as my father would.
    Chair untucked, plates scattered. Footsteps
    carrying the weight of someone foreign.

    family kamayan

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