My lola was a teacher, a young
visionary. She taught her sons how to plant rice
fields that stretch to the Pacific Ocean.
She taught her daughter, my mama, English
until she spoke it with a fluent tongue,
ready for a life far from home.
In Toronto, mama tells us, “This is home.”
My sister cries in Tagalog, too young
to understand she must exchange her tongue
for one that prefers pasta over rice.
Soon, she’ll be fluent in English
and will no longer smell like the ocean.
I search my memories for this ocean
—for remnants of a faraway home.
I try to recall, but English
makes me forget. When I was young,
I disliked the taste of rice:
too plain, too sticky—a Canadian tongue
my titas would say. Old memories rip at my tongue.
So close now, I can taste salt from the ocean
and smell jasmine off freshly plucked rice—
“When are you coming back home?”
Lola’s voice is brittle, like flakes of young
coconut toasted in a pan. Over the phone, English
is an abandoned language. English
cannot capture the music in the native tongue.
“Soon,” mama lies, unaware her youngest
is listening. For years, I believed this ocean
of a promise. But going back home
is not as cheap as the wild rice
in the flooded fields. “First you soak the rice—”
mama instructs me in English,
“—measure it with your fingers like back home.”
Lessons and stories flow from her tongue,
distracting me from the decades that go by. The scent of the ocean
still lingers on her skin: a perfume made out of dreams and youth.
When I cook rice with mama, I exchange my
tongue for one that forgets English. I’m transported back to the ocean,
back to lola’s home where she sits unchanged, forever young.
-maia c.
Maia Corsame is an English Masters student at Carleton. Her research interests mainly lie in feminism within Early Modern and Medieval studies. When Maia isn’t slumped over her desk writing papers, she passes the time by crocheting tiny stuffed animals.
