mama, i want to write an obituary
in a language i don't understand. we know
the dead cannot afford to dream but dreaming
we do anyway, dreaming

is what i call these letters i will never fold
atop the marble encasing your name.
mama, did you know that fog
which ate at your bones
took a bite of me too?

you thought you were alone when it sunk
its teeth into your neck, sucking for sleep
or skin, scar or sweat, tasting
only silence,

             but i was there.
tethered to the blankets
like the ring pinned tightly on your left
finger, heavy as the brochures

you wound the pills
into when you believed i wasn't
looking. heavy

as your mouth wrapping
around the vowels for fluoxetine,
quetiapine, your sigh
at this american medicine

meant to rid your mother and her mother
before her of something you'd known so sweetly

through the years
that when it came knocking
from our closet door
you didn't think
of its debts
or what it came

to give, you just stood listening
to it hum come, soon this will be over
and over and over in a voice
someday my child
will recognize
as mine.

Author's Note

Pamana directly translates to “inheritance” in my mother tongue. I could have simply named the poem its English-language equivalent, but it doesn’t capture that disconnect one feels not just when looking at inherited identity as a person of color, but also as someone dealing with a legacy of mental illness. The speaker in “Pamana” does not use Filipino once in the poem, yet even if she does not speak it, her cultural identity still permeates her life, as seen in the implications of resistance, denial, and shame when it comes to how they speak of mental illness.

As a neurodivergent Filipina, silence has punctuated the narrative of my—and my mother’s—depression. Would it have been different if we were a part of a country where psychiatrists weren’t scarce, totalling to only six hundred nationwide? Could we have eased this silence if our culture didn’t prioritize resilience in the wake of trauma? For now, I can only wonder. For now, I can only bear my pamana.