Ménage à Trois of Tongues (A Trilingual Homecoming)

Abstract

I stopped writing poetry in favour of prose. I stopped writing in Bikol and Filipino in favour of ‘just English’. I left more than a decade ago. Now I come home stuttering to my old loves that still give this heart an acheful turn. Laid out beside each other, these old and new loves (Bikol, Filipino and English) are contesting-romancing one other. And like in any romance, they surrender pieces of the self. Words, images and metaphors are sacrificed. Time and context are shaken; all must forego precious affinities.