Category: Poetry

1. Begin with the rice.
   Day-old, cold, waiting in the bowl.
   Grains cling to each other as I press them with my fingers.
   They never loosen the way yours did.
   Set it aside.
   We learned to wait for the small, stubborn hope
   that someone might still return
   after the burial.
2. Rinse it gently.
   Run your fingers through water.
   The water clouds.
   It smells faintly of the kitchen you left behind.
   Swirl. Lift. Swirl again.
   The motion should be ordinary, but my arms ache.
   There is no instruction for how long this takes.
   The grains never remember your hands.
   The water never clears. 
3. Crack the eggs.
   Beat them slowly, coax them together.
   Add garlic, sliced thin.
   Add ginger.
   Scrape the memory from the edge of the knife.
   Spring onions. Soy sauce.
   There is no measure, no recipe, no certainty.
   Your hands knew.
   Mine only tremble.
   I whisper your name over and over
   and still nothing answers. 
4. Heat the wok.
   Oil shimmers and waits.
   I pour it too fast.
   The flame jumps.
   The metal looks at me with patience I do not deserve.
   I want to be steady, useful,
   to hold something without breaking.
   Ahma, I want to move like you moved,
   to meet heat without fear, to meet life without trembling.
5. Pour the eggs.
   Fold them gently against the pan.
   Lift. Push. Stir.
   They break anyway.
   Add the rice.
   Fold it in, separate the grains.
   Add everything else.
   Push and fold and lift.
   The spoon clangs against the pan.
   It is loud enough to remind me
   I am learning in the dark.
   Ahma, I want your hand over mine,
   even for a second,
   to guide me on what I do not know how to do.
6. Taste.
   It is warm. Only warm.
   It fills the stomach but not the room.
   The color you coaxed from white things
   does not come.
   It stays muted, shy, unfinished.
   I swallow anyway.
7. Fold, stir, fold again.
   My arms ache. My hands fail.
   Everything responds to heat except the one who taught me.
   This kitchen knows.
   The wok knows.
   The rice knows.
   I still refuse to know.
8. Ahma, if you can hear me,
   Come back long enough to teach me
   what Mama refused to learn.
   Come back so my hands can finally be good
   for something that matters.
   Come back so this recipe
   does not end here,
   so I do not have to learn alone.
   Come back so this rice finally knows
   what it was meant to become.

Alyssa Ilaguison is a media producer and, at times, a writer, from Davao. Her works have appeared in MindaNews, Sunstar Davao, and Dagmay.