anik anik (n) (Tagalog): trivial items we refuse to discard for personal practical reasons
because there’s a lot to remember & hold, hoarding our lives into luggage
carrying ourselves across the sea, nothing in our pockets besides a single
dream & we dropped everything to be here. anik anik: useless trinkets that mean
everything to us: old clothes that don’t fit, worn out kitchenware, past
friends & family. the sun used to heat up our backs, sweat pouring, but that warmth is
gone. that american dream leaves frostbite on our food, our hands, our
home. we took anything we could get. hotel soap bars, brown sugar packets,
instant coffee, restaurant napkins, any kind of abundance to
justify leaving. even when we could afford better things we still collected
ketchup packets, plastic spoons, free notebooks with business logos,
leftover take-out containers, so many until they were overflowing. maybe
my want made me resourceful because options weren’t cheap & we
never said no to free food because we were always hungry for something & never
offered much. when it floods we store our lives our clothes our jewelry in
plastic trash bags to keep dry, because that’s how things are back home. we just
quietly accept how things are & make do with what we have. anik anik: always
reaching out, hands hoping, arms expecting. i think about if we never moved in
some other timeline. if i grew up in mango trees, jeepneys, sari-sari stores &
tagalog fluent on my tongue. but i keep scraps of my own american dream, dreaming of
undoing generations of survival mindsets so that one day my parents can
visit me & take home whatever plenty i hold. their american daughter, people ask me
were you born here? never saying if that’s good or bad. are you genuinely curious? are you
xenophobic? really, i know what they’re asking; if i can see our stories, our lives. so
yes, i was born here, in a country that doesn’t see us. here, look, i have my own
ziplock bag stuffed with my own american dreams to keep them from floating away