By Zaira Bardos
It hits me in the car that I don’t understand half of the Tagalog words in this song.
Acrobatics within my mouth, mananatiling, kalimutan, tandaan,
My tongue contorts in ways it finds unfamiliar
Thrown onto a pottery wheel hoping that my jaw will understand that it needs
To split in half, to carry the weight of one word. Isang salita. Delayed
In the mirror, a ghost follows my movement half a second after mine. A sunspot
Of an afterthought, even now English precedes Tagalog in my storytelling.
Hindi ko alam kung paano magsalita sa puso ko.
I think I understand how my parents felt when they first learned English.
Gargling alphabet soup of Tagalog, every word spoken a translation
More than a conversation. I wonder how my parents felt arguing in English.
I don’t ask, but I sit in the car mimicking sounds of sing song slowly
Translating to words that make sense to me.
Zaira Bardos is a twenty-one-year-old Filipina American writer & filmmaker
who is pursuing her English MA at Western Washington University. She enjoys writing about
angry female protagonists on their journey to self-discovery. She is also the Editor-In-Chief at
Beneath the Garden Magazine, Editorial Assistant at Pulley Press Publishing, and a staff writer at
Her Campus Media. When she’s not writing, she dedicates her time to researching how
contemporary transpacific fiction reimagines different futures of the Asian diaspora by reflecting
on its social dynamics. Her past work as a director and writer includes “I Remember Everything”
(2022), “Calum” (2018), and “All The Things We Can’t Say” (2018).
Hot Pot Magazine 