The Cost of Belief
Eighteen thousand dollars a year,
a Jesuit tuition fee.
How much Mom believed
I wasted now that I was an “atheist.”
I tried finding God
everywhere I was told to look.
His house, in prayer, in the stained glass of saints sad,
even under the pews. The Others must have laughed. I’d never find them
in a place this stifling.
Grand Pas
Half past last call,
I cue one more song,
set my headphones atop
the turntables and dive
into the sound I have shaped
within this hollow space.
Friends once flooded here.
I conjure their memory.
Around me, a ballet dancer pirouettes beneath the laser glow.
Il saute à travers
a beer stained dance floor.
He twists and twirls
I try to jive.
Balancing the memory
of a mosh pit
on his extended knee,
our sweat salts this ocean.
Carry on
The wisest thing I ever said at 16
was that we all have baggage,
but we can split the load.
You liked that enough to try
carrying mine so long as I
could carry yours but we learned
that shouldn’t be the only job of a partner.
So after, you kept my thumb-holed hoodie, half
my friends. When you tossed the rest back,
The shape had changed. I couldn’t get a grip. My knees buckled.
I begged, but you seemed happy
to have your hands again.
Since then, I’ve stuffed it all down
best I could. Whenever
someone offers to take the weight
of even a carry on, I take off.
Scared that when I do
spill everywhere,
they won’t.
Half-American Lunch
Mom and Dad tried to pack me sandwiches
for lunch. American cheese, ham, lettuce, and tomato
on untoasted white bread. Doused in ketchup and mayo.
Wrapped in a napkin and tin foil. A good sandwich
served fresh. But by lunch time, ketchup and mayo coagulate together,
twisting into an off pink goop. Soaking through the bread. For a while,
I stopped eating lunch. Until they noticed how much
I would eat at dinner. Mom and Dad switched tactics.
Leftover dinner for lunch. Just whatever Filipino food
from the night before heated in a thermos,
to be served over a bed of rice in a tupperware.
Once, a white boy named Sammy offered to trade a bite of his soggy
sandwich for a bite of mine. Dad loved whole peppercorns.
Always too much. It was an art, picking them out. I offered him a whole spoonful,
telling him it was the best part.
Nico Penaranda is a Filipino-American writer from Washington D.C. He graduated from James Madison University with a BA in English and Creative Writing in 2020 and from American University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program in May 2022. He writes on themes related to adolescence, punk rock, and mythology. His poetry can be found in Brigid Gate Publishing, Mistake House Publishing, Gardy Loo, The Keezel Review, and Z Publishing.
Image: Someone Not Awful, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
