I come with a humble heart. I think. It’s definitely not broken which is a novelty.

The right wing of the aeroplane dips, the pilot manoeuvring us around the Peninsula- Zamboanga del Sur. The pilot is better at flying than landing. But, still capable. The passengers, flight crew and your brave petite heroine have not plummeted to our deaths. Sequel. The wheels bounce up and down the runway, contact is made with the tarmacked earth. The passengers do not clap (perhaps they are not impressed or grateful to our dear Captain of the sky). The internalised white colonialist within sniggers at how the natives have realised it is not a cute habit and they are now sophisticated or well-flown enough to just not. I reproach myself for being a little cunt. Tucked in the middle seat, a manageable punishment on an hour and fifteen-minute domestic flight, I peek at the coastlines and try to keep the feeling of returning home in my heart. I squeeze my eyes shut. And the beat in my chest, yearns, mourns, loves and swells. 

I can breathe. I am protected. I am safe. Here, I know I belong. I can rest. I will write. 

Returning home, to the physical house, is shocking in the way that corpses decay and things rot and fall back to the earth. Disrepair wears down estates with consistency. Left unchecked my foreign eyes cast their four-year absence over a house a dynasty cannot uphold. It’s time for the family to get the fuck back up. It’s time for me to give a shit.  

My grandmother’s home is shrinking, swallowed back into the land that has served our lineage for eight generations. She, however, remains stoic and unchanged. Her favourite pastimes include cleaning out the fridge of food that has yet to pass its use-by date, praying and taking naps. I sound jealous. 

Here, it doesn’t take long before I remember that Catholicism is infused in the humidity, I am on day three and two for two for the church services. The sermon said that not getting what you want is God protecting you (scam) and that nothing should come between what God has united, they mean husband and wife (n/a).  

If I sit and examine my heart, I am grateful for family and unconditional love, and guilty because I am not a good person. That’s the catholic humidity.

SJ xx