The Cousin Returns

Joseph Trinidad | Longreads | June 16, 2026 | 5,165 words (18 minutes) 

Kuya Gian from Wellington, New Zealand, 2023

If you’re coming from overseas, people will expect pasalubong, especially if, like me, you’ve been gone for almost 15 years. It has no direct English translation. Although some people use them, “souvenir” sounds too cheap, “gift” too shallow and transactional. In a sense, whatever you bring back is more of a remembrance than a souvenir, not a gift, as much as “I miss you” is not a greeting. It’s also a test of retention and growth: How well do you remember me and my tastes, how big is your wallet after all those years abroad? I think of it this way: Your partner waits for decades, raises your children alone, fends off suitors by weaving and unweaving their loom, then you return empty-handed, not even a box of Dunkin’ doughnuts from the airport, let alone a Louis Vuitton card holder. Don’t be like that; bring something back, something that tells the story of your journey. You don’t want to lie, but you also don’t want to undersell your hard work. Refrain from blowing up your image or larding up the contents of your bank account. Stop yourself from buying everyone an iPhone. There are complicating facts, casualties to your migration that even a lot of money cannot obstruct or forgive. Above all, a pasalubong is an apology for your absence, something for those who waited and prayed for your return.

If you’re flying in from New Zealand like I am, and since there are five of you arriving at NAIA, you have at least 150 kilograms of Qantas checked luggage. Your family is going to expect every kilo to be used and spoken for. My father has three brothers; my mother has eight siblings; I, as a result, have a lot of cousins.

Titos are easy: comfortable running shoes they’ll never run in, preferably Nike, size 7 or 8. Tito Wawen has a special request: a red-and-yellow tower of Palm corned beef, which according to him is “the best corned beef in the world.” While we’re at it, we reserve some for tito King, too.

Titas, although not impossible, are harder to shop for, but I figure out what to buy once I find a thread of memory and start pulling. Tita Sunshine likes girly, kikay things, so she’ll get vials of foundation, colorful blouses, all the things she can show off. Tita Jane doesn’t like sweets, but she loves to collect kachuchus for her apartment. There is a sparkly Sydney Opera House ornamental figurine and a set of six coasters from Fiji wrapped in newspaper rattling inside my backpack with her name on them.

The kids, my little cousins, want toys. Yuan, a preteen chinito, has been promised the new Spider-Man game and V-Bucks for new Fortnite skins. Riley, my little chinita princess, who deserves the world, because she’s so cute and funny, will get a monstrous Peppa Pig that’s half her height. She sings when I squeeze her left ear.

No one is as challenging to buy for as Mami, though. What pasalubong do you buy for someone who’s most comfortable in house slippers, keeps her most expensive designer clothes gifted by my uncles abroad in the deepest part of her closet, only to be found years later nibbled by house mice? My mother says, “You’re enough; she hasn’t seen you for years,” an annoying nonanswer. My father suggests earrings, to which I reply: “How about you buy your mother expensive jewelry, Dad?” My sister says, “Perahin mo na lang!” Cash for Mami’s bills is so impersonal and dull, like she’s an afterthought. Max suggests her favorite perfume, YSL Black Opium, which I gifted her from my first real paycheck, finally a good idea, something I know she already likes and might run out of soon.

Then, there are the staples, the conventionally expected, the New Zealand no-brainers. Manuka honey tops the list: lip balm, hand cream, shampoo, moisturizer, lozenges, sugar scrubs, marshmallows, and, of course, in its raw form, in those little UV-protected jars for their tea and lemon, honey, and ginger needs. Also, souvenir shirts and fridge magnets from the dollar store; a supermarket haul of snacks—Pringles, Oreos, Pineapple Lumps, Ferrero Rochers, and stacked and taped Whittaker’s chocolate blocks resembling gold bricks.

---

Familiarity has reduced the plane into a puny can. I’m sardined among other dead-eyed passengers. Every time I board a plane, I believe that I am mere moments away from meeting God, that a soft, sinking death awaits me at each rattle. I do not sleep on flights. An extraordinary tiredness envelops my bones, rendering my senses into mush. I feel formless when I am in the air.

The twang of the pilot’s Australian accent blows through the cabin. He summarizes Manila in numbers: 7:30 pm, 31 degrees Celsius, Terminal 3.

Another Filipino man wearing gold wire-framed glasses has been fidgeting all night in the aisle seat. He’s well built and handsome, likely a tradie. “Malapit na kaming lumanding,” he says to a phone he’s not supposed to have out yet.

I have a window seat. Charcoal clouds smear my window. In between their gaps, I see the living embers of my city below, illuminated orange nerves, a fire breathing. There you are.

Max is in the middle seat, sandwiched between the Pinoys. Max briefly met Mami the summer I came out of the closet. In a display of approval, Mami invited Max to the Philippines. Max, of course, agreed. Before our flight, Mami jumped to give Max a master class in being a wise and responsible tourist in the Philippines:

“Bring a bottle of cold water everywhere. Only drink distilled water instead of mineral water; the difference is a settled stomach and diarrhea. Don’t rubberneck or jaywalk; that’s how people die. Only bring cards. If you need cash, make sure it’s in small bills. If you get mugged, don’t look the magnanakaw in the eye. Lower your head. Give them everything they ask for. Don’t be a hero. Don’t die. Bring sunscreen.”

---

Terminal 3 is NAIA’s new international wing. It’s all white walls, shiny surfaces, and frosted glass. Sweat makes continents on my back. My mind runs a ticker tape of complaints: Why is it so hot in here? Why are there so many people? Why is this line so long? This sucks. I try my best not to read into this as a symbolic resistance, a late-stage allergy to the tropics. I repeat to myself, hoping that my body listens: I am home, I am home. You’re a local, you’re a local.

We follow the surge. In every corridor, passengers converge. The tide eventually leads us to customs and its reef of tiny glass booths. Stiff, sweaty faces surround us. Some smiles and a spattering of laughter, too. Others, pained and visibly annoyed, force the issue. Airport employees ignore them and return to the steady work of keeping the line moving. There is a bottomless reservoir of new arrivals. You are not special. We all have somewhere to be. Coming home is work that cannot be rushed.

I notice a man about Mami’s age, possibly in his 80s. He is wearing a tan sun hat indoors. His gaze is fixed ahead. When our eyes meet, I give him a smile and a polite nod. Lolo Sun Hat is likely on his way to meet his grandchildren. If he can wait, I can, too.

A few paces behind us, a white father stands with his half-Filipino children, all slender like streetlights, holding the line. At the same time, the Filipina mother browses the duty-free shelves for discounted chocolate. Nearby, another family moves through the queue. This time, it’s the mother who’s white. The taller daughter has earbuds plugged into her ears, impatiently tapping her lace-up boots. Her sister, close by, is absorbed in the final pages of a paperback. A female customs officer waves at them to come forward. The father gently herds his family toward her glass booth. I will never see them again.

Next to us is a gym-toned white guy. He’s lost. He dodges my gaze. NAIA’s gone fully digital now, which includes entry visas. The form’s simple, but it’s time sensitive. If this cutie hasn’t submitted it by now, then his night just got way longer. Good thing I won’t be the one to break that news. I nudge Max. My hunch is correct. To the back of the queue cutie goes.

It’s our turn at the booth. I speak to the customs lady exclusively in Tagalog. I want her to know that I’m from here. All our forms are saved on my phone. I swipe through them one by one: my dad, my mum, my sister, Max, then me.

A large poster of Lee Min-ho hangs over the baggage carousel. I think he’s trying to sell me condominiums. We push our loaded carts and glide across the tiled floors, almost skiing through them. We keep walking until we reach a sign that reads meeting point.

A slide, a turn, and a pair of automatic sliding doors, then we open to a confluence of eager faces, of the families in wait. I’m at the receiving end of their anticipation. An electric cloud hovers above the room. I see it above their heads, I feel it. I know it’s there.

NAIA has removed the greeter’s lounge to prevent loitering: no benches, no Jollibee, no Kopi Roti. Terminal 3 is no place for pickup kids anymore. There are only banks, cellphone stations, and the impersonal glow of car-rental kiosks.

I immediately recognize Mami. She is alone. She’s standing in the corner, smartly out of the way, still with a view of the gate. Mami is smaller and older than I remember. She is another body that time and gravity pursue. She’s wearing a loose top, a Kamiseta with flowers around the logo. She’s in shorts and comfortable sliders, hugging a handbag that covers most of her. Her haircut is the same: a tight, jet-black pixie.

As I walk closer, I see no recognition in her eyes.

“Can she not see me?” I ask Max. He just shrugs.

“She doesn’t recognize me,” I say to everyone. No one replies.

I’m standing inches from her face when I finally break through. She smiles.

“Gian?”

I kiss her on the cheek. I feel her bones relax in my embrace.

She pulls away and jiggles my tummy.

“You got big.”

It’s Chocolate’s turn. She responds by closing her eyes and leaning into my mami’s warmth. They hug for a while. I see Mami’s hands, the same color as wet sand, rubbing her granddaughter’s back. Chocolate is melting.

My father takes his turn. “You and your son are twins,” Mami says with her head resting on my father’s shoulders. I think I see my father’s eyes well up.

We push our carts and stand in the pickup bay.

My senses sharpen without warning. The curbside swells with people. There are no real rules here, only a shared understanding of “Drive in, find your people, leave.” Six lanes of vehicles are locked in their own crawl. Traffic guards fail to direct traffic. Behind us is another wave of families reuniting. We are in the airport’s final note, the big finale: crass squeaks of overloaded carts, muffled airport announcements that bleed through the glass doors, and the horns blaring with every inch of progress. Where is the greeter’s lounge with the panoramic view? Where are the loading areas with the fluorescent signs of the first letter of my last name? I miss the order of the alphabet and the rules that everyone follows and understands.

“Isn’t this so exciting, Max?” Mami asks the foreigner, the Kiwi.

“This would be Auckland Airport at Christmas.”

“It’s not even midnight. The Americans haven’t even arrived yet. It’s just getting started.”

Mami opens her snack bag, and the smell of the Philippines comes flooding: a rush of mud, a flash of mangoes. Mami packed my favorite snacks: an assortment of street food she brought from the highway hawkers. Mami loves having a foreigner try local things. Max’s verdict: “Penoy is good; balut is not for me; pugo is fun to eat.” Max makes Mami try Aotearoa’s snacking staples: Pineapple Lumps, Jaffas, Perky Nana. Her verdict: “They’re all too sweet!” as she dramatically empties half her water bottle.

Max tugs at my shirt for a water bottle. We’re already breaking Mami’s first rule, seconds after stepping into the Manila night. We already drank our reserve at customs. Mum’s is empty. Mami overhears our conversation and gives us a crisp hundred-peso note, plasticky and purple.

“There’s a café just over there. For water, don’t pay anything more than 50. Make sure to get Wilkins Distilled Water.”

Six Wilkins water bottles and 300 pesos later, our van arrives. It’s Manong Arthur, Mami’s go-to Manila driver. I slide the van door shut. I hear the familiar roll of its wheels and its thunk. I’m going home.

Mami notices my hair. It’s a mullet: short and unruly at the top, like a bird’s nest, but shaggy and long at the back, like a rat’s nest. She dramatically pulls out a comb from her handbag.

“Magsuklay ka nga!”

Mami hates my mullet, truly detests it. She looks at it with confusion and disgust.

“Why can’t you just have the same haircut as your father?”

“Mami, that’s not a haircut. That’s a close shave.”

For the trip, I decided to go for the party in the back, business in the front, which was appropriate for a trip that is a holiday and a reunion.

I explain that the mullet is a Kiwi classic. All the boys who ride their quad bikes and horses have mullets. Mami is still confused, so Chocolate explains in terms she can understand.

“He likes BTS.”

“Is that it?” Mami asks. “You want to be Korean?”

“No!”

I concede. The more I try to look Kiwi, the less I look like myself.

In the front seat, Manong Arthur and my dad talk about the van business. Mami, my mother, and my sister shoot off more names than I can keep up with. It’s a sport how they gossip. Mami recounts the specifics: scene, story, and situation. Mama volleys with insight, often judgment, dressed as follow-up questions. Chocolate brings it home with a punch line—a wry observation to end the story with a laugh. This coverage would be eligible for a Pulitzer or a Peabody, if not for the footnote full of flourishes. Some might call it exaggerating the facts, but they call it their editorial flair.

Max and I keep up a steady stream of commentary, most of it about food and traffic—the twin obsessions of any long drive—from our respective windows, we narrate the soft blur of the Alabang roadside.

“I don’t have time to read all the billboards we’re speeding past.”

“There’s a Jollibee every five kilometers. Most of them are open 24-7.”

“Who are these beautiful strangers, and what are they selling?”

“Why is everyone so fair skinned and young?”

“Ooh . . . a Popeyes. We should go to Popeyes.”

Manila’s frayed nerves reach the receding vestiges of the Laguna I know. These commercial buildings are built too close together, ignoring any sensible fire codes. Street lamps compete for territory with trees. Concrete roads poured over the grassy hides of once-mighty creatures. Mami tells me that there should be no juice or sticks served from the street in my future. My tummy wouldn’t be able to handle it. It only takes one meal for the Philippines to cleanse everything different about me.

There is an image bank I can’t cash in. I think of the one-story bungalows, the curly iron bars of their windows, porches littered by varnished furniture, and a pack of street dogs in every corner, wild spirits haunting the roads. I think of the sari-sari stores I used to frequent with my sister. Tito King used to take me to the isawan around the corner to get a medley of meat on a stick: betamax, adidas, BBQ, and helmets. My head short-circuits; it is not getting what it wants and what has been promised. My nostalgia, my homey little vice, dissolves into a wake-up call. In front of me is the only version there is.

I watch the traffic lights. Most of them turned off, some blinking erratically and in need of a reset. The intersections aren’t chaotic, though. If anything, they are rhythmic, graceful. Drivers play nice and behave, saving each other from rage, being late, or the misery of a crash. It’s beautiful to see, actually. The language of the road is honking and beeping, but it isn’t rude. The motor orchestra is on its way to wherever. Vehicles come together as a many-voiced mind moving toward home, toward elsewhere. Each trip is made possible by the drivers who let them pass. Anyone who returns is, and will always be, very lucky to be going home at all.

---

We make a turn at the Cabuyao exit on SLEX. Since we’ll only be in the Philippines for two weeks, we need to make as many visits as possible, even immediately after arriving at the airport. We’re going to visit the House of Single Ladies.

It is already 11:00 p.m. A ball of black wires hangs tangled above their house—electrical, telephone, and internet lines wrapped and caught on each other; energy, people, and places waiting to be deciphered.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were coming,” tita Othie says, running her fingers through her hair to fix it. “I’m looking very old.”

Tita Othie, the most beautiful woman in Cabuyao, has freckles in her cheeks, constellations I remember from childhood. She looks the same as she did the last time I saw her, more than a decade ago. She looks truly stellar for 84: on her feet, with all her teeth pearly and intact, and a head full of hair. She has the same haircut as her sisters, an army cut for women: short on the sides, almost cut to the skin, and a frizzy, curly top. All smiles, her high cheekbones gave away a youth that would have been busy with suitors. My focus as she talks is on her mole on the left cheek as it bobs up and down.

She lives with her sisters: tita Eda, tita Tessa, tita Mila, and tita Sonia. They are my maternal grandfather’s sisters, my mother’s aunts. I have no memory of them ever being young; they’ve always been Mami’s age. Dad calls them dual citizens: Filipino and senior citizens. The five sisters have lived together deep in the labyrinthine streets of Cabuyao for the last six decades.

My mum spent her postgrad days boarding with them due to their proximity to her university in Manila. She’d say that they would never sweep or mop, grime from the streets would track into their living room, as they refused to take off their outside shoes. I secretly admire their disdain for house chores.

My mother says that other than the house getting two new dogs (Siberian huskies, the sisters were big Game of Thrones fans), not much has changed. It’s my dad who calls their home the House of the Single Ladies because no sister ever became anyone’s wife. To my dad, they’re the spinster girl-group version of the Jackson 5.

“NBSB,” I say. “No boyfriends since birth.”

“Not to be confused with no suitors since birth,” tita Othie adds. “We’re a catch.” I appreciate the present tense of her answer, as if no man has yet to offer a good enough lure.

From the hanging pictures on their living room walls from when they were younger, they looked like beauty queens. Tita Othie and tita Eda especially so, with their poised statures and winning smiles. All the sisters were college educated at a time when it was rare for women to go to university. They all became public school teachers.

We visit tita Othie because she’s tita Eda’s caretaker. She’s a little sister taking care of her big sister.

“Everything about Ate Eda is fine. Her kidneys, her lungs, her hips,” tita Othie tells us. “But her dementia has accelerated in the last year.”

Tita Othie leads us to tita Eda. I see no recognition in tita Eda’s eyes. Her mouth quivers as we approach closer and closer, like her tongue is untangling, trying to let loose words, our names. When that fails, she still acts cordially. I take her left hand and press it to my forehead.

“Mano po, tita Eda,” I said. “Si Gian po ‘to.”

Her hands are well moisturized. She smells good, like fresh laundry, clean. Her skin is like tracing paper: translucent and crinkly to the touch.

Tita Eda smiles, taking a long look at my face as she tries to place where she saw it before.

“Anak po ni Grace,” I say, a little louder into her good ear. “I’m Grace’s son.”

There are glimmers in her eyes, pleasant memories quietly unfurling. She takes my hand and tells me something I don’t catch. Not Tagalog, not English. It sounds garbled, made-up.

Tita Othie takes my hand and shouts, as softly as one can shout, into tita Eda’s ear. “Si Gian to saka si Grace,” tita Othie says, her voice echoing in the air-conditioned room. “They are here to visit you!”

“Get the ladle!” tita Eda shouts back. “Serve some rice. We have visitors!”

“Oh sige sige,” tita Othie says. “How many sacks of rice do you want us to serve?”

“Don’t worry about us,” my mother says to tita Eda. “You’ve already done enough.”

Tita Eda puts her head on my mother’s hands and smiles.

Out of all her aunties, Dad thinks Mama looks the most like tita Eda. They have the same almond face, the same curved lips, the same overbite, and now, the same haircut. My mother has never liked the comparison, but my father thinks my mother only hates it because it’s true. I don’t want to tell my dad that who tita Eda reminds me of is Mami.

Mami stands next to tita Eda’s wheelchair. She is pushing her hair back, so it doesn’t get in her face. They’re not related in blood. Mami is my father’s mother, tita Eda is my mother’s auntie, but their ages, the way their skin sits around their eyes, their ears, their mouth, all the senses that make them present, all of it seems to be the fruits from the same tree.

“Did you come here so we can watch something?” tita Eda asks me.

“Yes, tita,” I say. “What are we going to watch?”

“Go get my bag so we can get you to the movies on time,” she replied.

“We should probably go,” my mother says. “She sounds like she needs a rest.”

“She just woke up from a nap,” tita Othie tells my mother. “She’s fine. We just need to meet her wherever she is.”

We stay with tita Eda for a while. We tell her about the past 14 years, what has changed since the last time we saw her. I talk about my teenage years in Aotearoa. She asks if I like it, and I say of course, because there’s so much more to do, more money to spend. I tell her about my degree when she asks if I ever became the doctor I always wanted to be. I tell her maybe one day, because it’s a simpler answer. I don’t want her to worry. I want her to feel at ease with her memories.

I hold her hand while she speaks about her childhood. She gives us fragments of her early days. It’s about a girl, and from what I can tell, she’s the girl, but from the way she tells it, it could also easily be one of her sisters. They’re playing tag in the empty streets of Cabuyao, once surrounded by vacant lots and paddy fields, when she was scouted for a national commercial. As tita Eda tells her stories, tita Othie steers her gently when she is on the verge of getting lost. She ensures that what she’s saying reaches its intended conclusion. Tita Othie is copyediting tita Eda’s stories, making sure the facts, the names, and the places are correct. She’s kind and entertained by tita Eda’s flourishes. A parking lot becomes a playground, and an empty street becomes a highway. They don’t have the mansion from tita Eda’s stories, tita Othie corrects. They have a one-story bungalow with five sisters and two brothers.

“She might be mixing her dollhouse with our real house,” tita Othie clarifies.

I feel guilty for missing her lucid years. I mourn the minute details that even tita Othie can’t quite place. I’m sitting on her wooden footstool; I’m the same height as when I was a child, sleeping over at their house for Christmas. Tita Othie moves the fan closer to me when sweat starts to map on my back. I thank tita Othie. The breeze cools me immediately, also making the little tuft of hair on tita Eda’s head sway—a moment I make sure to remember.

We say goodbye. I kiss her on the cheek. My mother kisses her on the forehead. She says, “We will see each other soon, tita Eda.”

Tita Eda smiles, as if deciding whether she should turn our visit into a memory or a dream. Her smile lines become apparent. There is a deep, thoughtful look in her eyes. It isn’t absent. The tita Eda I knew as a child might have trouble coming into the present’s spotlight, but she is still in there, watching. While her mind might be nomadic, her eyes remain stubbornly with us, pausing and absorbing, perceptive. I want to apologize for living far away, but I think wherever tita Eda is, I might still be a boy in the Philippines, asking her for pamasko and movie tickets. I want to be whenever she is.

Tita Othie walks us to the door and tells us the easiest way back to SLEX.

Tita Othie says goodbye to me and says, “Next time you’re here, we’ll do a beer tower.”

“With Red Horse extra strong?”

Tita Othie is impressed that I still know the local brands. “Yes, of course! With Red Horse extra strong and San Miguel gin.”

We give her honey, sweets, and magnets from Aotearoa. We kiss her on the cheek and promise that we’ll see her on our way to the airport. We tell her we love her, give her flying kisses from the van, as she waves us out of their street.

We try to rejoin the highway. I take a deep breath and passively take in the sights. I don’t recognize the streets. The roads are crowded with angry tuk-tuks, more faces, noises, and people than when we drove in. My brain puts familiar pictures onto strange streets. My way home, my mind’s passport: once an essential travel companion, now an unreliable witness. Everything familiar becomes distant, tangled in time and memory. We follow tita Othie’s instructions, and eventually we find our way out.

Dementia is not isolation, or at least, tita Eda’s isn’t. I’m lucky to have a family that has goodwill for the lost.

The last time I was in Cabuyao, there weren’t townhouses, private swimming pools, or major shopping malls in the area. It was long stretches of grassland. There wasn’t the fluorescent glow of fast-food chains every three minutes. There weren’t as many potholes. In the name of progress, much of the town, like everywhere in its vicinity, is dragged through time.

A blip, a turn, and suddenly, I’m in a present I no longer recognize. Exhausted, my mind retreats toward sleep.

I can never truly return.

---

I open my eyes just as we enter Pila, the town before my childhood home.

We drive past shuttered windows, gates guarded by dogs, a 7-Eleven bleaching the streets with fluorescence. Though it’s the start of November, a Christmas tree is erected in the plaza, made of fencing wire and parols, illuminated. Anticipation is part of the celebration, as if saying, “You are closer to what you want than you think.”

On our way out of the township, the roads are lined with trees: balete, young coconut palms brushing car roofs, and fruit trees I still know by name: manggang kalabaw, duhat, rambutan, lanzones. Rice paddies stretch endlessly, acres etched into the land that even the brightest headlights cannot reach.

Besides that mall under construction, just by the barangay tanod, is a turnoff that, if you follow, will lead to my old Montessori. Teacher Ayie still lives there, I think. Once I fell from a seesaw, that afternoon, I rode a tricycle home with a wet and sore bum. A little further up is my wealthy cousin’s compound. The government’s road-widening project has cut their house in half. Mami says, if you enter from their front door, to your right will be their bathroom. What is a home, if not something to be messed with? A few streets before Mami’s gate is a billboard that says, “starbucks opening soon.”

Mami opens the gate. The headlights reveal Papa’s balcony: his man cove, where I used to spit stone fruits off the ledge, struggle to peel tough rinds off Mami’s pomelos. My uniforms were stained with juices. Our van traces the driveway like a fingertip along a scar. The house casts its eyes on me for the first time since I was 13. We enter slowly, cautiously honking, afraid to run over sleeping dogs, so we wake them. The dogs bark; they don’t know us; they think we’re intruders. Manong Arthur honks to scatter them; it doesn’t work. I hold Max close. My sister clings to Mami. My sister, once chased and bitten by a stray, asks: “Will we be all right?”

“Don’t run. They’ll bite if you run.” Mami walks slowly. We follow the path she clears.

The house greets me with the steady hum of the fridge and not much else. I turn on the lights; my fingertips still remember the wall switch above the shoe rack. The lights flicker themselves into a fixed shine. Everything looks smaller. Memory inflates things, gives them a largeness they never had. I don’t wait for a welcome. I reintroduce myself warmly to everything: the peeling walls, the dusty books on the shelves, Mami’s workdesk, her 55-inch TV, and her tumba-tumba. There is chicken on the dining table and a pot of rice, both miraculously still steaming on top of the lazy Susan. For kids like me, home is the warmth that outlasts the travel. It’s what stops the world from being just an address. I am estranged, yes, but I am willing to know and be known again. This is my house; it has not been replaced.

In the memory of Zenaida Alcazar
(1940–2025)

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Joseph Trinidad is a Filipino writer who lives in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington. Lucky Creatures, his debut essay collection, was selected by Alexander Chee as winner of the inaugural 2024 Sarabande Prize in the Essay. His work has been featured in Landfall, North & South, Te Papa, The Spinoff, Turbine | Kapohau, and Migrant Zine Collective. He is the winner of the 2023 Adam Foundation Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters and the 2023 Asian Ink from Playmarket.

Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands