To this day, the waters still divide us, for you are a thousand kilometers away. 

 

Do you remember the day you first met me? Mama said that you were both ecstatic to have a baby sister, someone to put make up on and dress up with. I still have photographs of you first holding me when I was only a few hours old.

 

I wish I could go back in time, relive my first few breaths, how light they must have been. 

 

Do you remember the time I spilled Legos all over our room? You carried me out and banned me from ever coming back. You said it was karma, and I shouted, "I HATE YOU," so loudly that the entire neighborhood heard me. But you let me back into the room just five minutes later.

 

I’m still standing outside that bedroom door, hoping you’ll let me back in.  

 

Do you remember the month you went back to Manila and left me, alone in a country where I could barely speak the language. I was only 13. Do you remember? Because I still remember the first night I slept alone. I'd never slept in a room so shamelessly drowned in silence.

 

I didn’t sleep a wink that night, and I still don’t forgive you for that. 

 

It’s been four years since that night. Do you still remember who I am? Because I don’t. Every dinner conversation we had since then, you say you envy me because I have the chance at an edukasyong Amerikano — the American dream you both never got. But at what cost? I scrambled through my mind, trying to find the words in Tagalog to respond, but they kept flying out of reach. I needed my wings to catch them, but they were butchered the day you left me. I thought it would always be the three of us against the world. I guess that plan has changed. I never told you how I felt. 

 

I had lost the words to the language of home I was once fluent in. Maybe that's why I keep asking if you remember. I'm afraid that if you forget, I'll lose the only version of home I have left.