Monster Girl

I am a monster.

I am cold-blooded and ugly

with bloodshot eyes,

stocky build, crooked spine.

Nobody I know has claws as disgusting as mine

stained black in the palms from

the ink blood of my work.

Too big and too meaty where I should be firm

hair in places where there “really shouldn’t be”—

I don’t look anything like the human girls I see on TV.

Therefore, I am

a monster.

I am a monster.

I am an aswang among people

human by day, horror by night

shape-shifting into the true form that gives people fright

peeling away the mask that

I put on just for you—

in hopes that you never see me

the same way that I do.

In a world of champions, I am a consolation prize.

An engkantada is on Miss Universe

while I sit on the sides.

I am a kapre behind a screen you’d avoid getting too close to—

caged in facilities rather than paraded

and shutting my own doors on myself

because I am too ashamed

of being looked at unmasked

and not in “human girl” form,

because that form does not last.

After all, in my head, I am

a monster.

I am a monster.

I am trapped within my own body, hoping

that someday I’ll come to like the scales and claws I’ve been given,

seeing myself not the way others see

but instead a physical curse

on the diwata society.

Only I have full knowledge of what I am in this world

but my monster eyes are worn—

perhaps my vision is blurred.

I get glimpses of fairy features at times in my very reflection;

perhaps the tricks of the light look past my imperfections.

But none of that matters,

because I am still, I suppose,

a monster.

I am a monster,

I think.

But now I seem to find

that maybe this creature has only been blind

to the curse the diwata in my head has been pulling on me all this time.

I am a monster, cold-blooded and grotesque—

is this what had blinded me from seeing me at my best?

I am a monster, an aswang among human beings—

the curse is lifting; I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

I am a monster, trapped within my own form—

and maybe, just maybe, I hadn’t thought of this before.

I am a monster,

the only one of my kind…

but the monster I see in me could be all in my mind.

I may be a “monster,”

but I think I’m having second thoughts.

Maxine Go is an incoming high school junior at St. Paul College (Pasig).

2 poems

The Things My Mama Never Told Me

Graveyard Musings