Bunót

My tongue used to be made up of copra,

salivating oils that indicate who I am and where

I’m from. A place where coconut husks roof

people’s mouths. Instrument to ignite brittle vowels

and wavy coir tones. When my people speak,

one can hear songs that carry the warmth of the sun,

and the slightly sweet taste of freshly-made buko juice.

But just as how prone the coconut is to breaking

when it falls, my mouth started showing cracks

a few months after I moved out of the province.

The city’s asphalt sealed away the secretions of my

tongue. Mistook it as one of its many highways.

It made me hate the way I spoke that showed how I

know the routes that carabaos in my province take,

the start of the season of atis, or the sourness of katmon.

Guilt seeps in whenever I return home and I hear

my family and friends speak, and I start to imagine tall

coconut trees, the same ones that used to shade me when

I came home from school. When that happens, my mouth

begins to itch. I grab a sturdy rugged bunót, place it

in my tongue and I do my best to scrub, scrub, and scrub.

Dean Gabriel Amarillas is a sophomore student at the University of the Philippines Diliman, taking up Malikhaing Pagsulat.