To Love Something You Must Carry It On Your Back

By: Keana Aguila Labra

to love something you must carry it on your back is a reflection of growing up in the Filipino American diaspora. With, sometimes, fragmented imagery and themes of yearning, generational trauma, Superman, and airports, Aguila Labra presents their experiences, though disjointed, as unequivocally theirs. The houses and places moved through remain home with “our two sinks and two dishwashers // the nicks where we marked our heights” and even strangers met are family, are Ate. With poems eking with love, it asks if you, too, can sit quietly with them in the end.