We were all once
born of the earth—
keeper of her breath,
kin to root and river,
to feather and fur,
to the anito, the diwata,
and the taw’t talun,
spirits who dwell around us.
But that was
before conquest,
before the forgetting.
The invaders came
with the sword and the cross,
with maps and muskets,
naming what was never nameless,
claiming what could never be owned.
They crowned themselves masters
of the land and seas and people like us,
declaring us savages—
barbaric,
primitive,
inferior.
To become “civilized”
was to sever soul from soil,
to unlearn the songs
of our grandmothers’ bones,
to mimic the voice
that once silenced ours.
And so,
we wandered—
estranged from the stars
that once told our stories
and guided our way.
Imagine,
if we had never forgotten.
If we had not lost
the language of the land,
the wind, and the waves.
Then maybe,
we would not have
destroyed it all.
How do we return—
not backwards,
but deeper,
to become again
what we have always been?