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