Translate to Hiligaynon:

1.         I’m not exceptional. I keep saying that because it sounds defensive, which is fitting, I 
            guess. If I were exceptional, I wouldn’t have to announce it. I’d just be unbearable 
            in quieter ways.

2.         We ate. Regularly. We were educated just enough to learn when to shut up about wanting
            more. So when hunger showed up after Typhoon Yolanda, it learned to behave itself. It  
            learned manners. Didn’t make a scene. Now that kind of hunger doesn’t get monuments.

3.         People expect me to start with the sea. Everyone does. As if geography explains 
            character. The sea is here. It shows up every day like a government employee who knows 
            he can’t be fired. People call that industry. It’s not. It’s repetition.

4.         Roxas taught me how to wait without demanding reasons. How to say at least like it was 
            a philosophy. At least there’s fish. At least there’s rice. At least there’s work, 
            occasionally. At least the mall exists so we can walk in cold air and pretend we’re headed  
            somewhere. At least the port still works. At least nothing is actively on fire.

5.         My childhood wasn’t miserable. This is inconvenient because we had enough to delay 
            anger indefinitely. Enough to make gratitude automatic. Enough that complaints felt 
            theoretical, like exercises in a textbook no one expected us to answer honestly.

6.         I loved the place the way you love a relative who never quite figured things out. You 
            defend them on reflex. Then you start lowering your voice. You say things like “could 
            have been great.” You don’t say what happened to it.

7.         They told us we were becoming a city. I believed them, which says more about me 
            than I’d like. There were signs: glass, concrete, slogans, festivals named after progress. 
            Malls—small ones. Careful ones. Malls that didn’t want to scare the surrounding poverty. 
            Skyscrapers that stood up halfway and thought better of it. Windows that reflected 
            workers arriving tired and leaving tired, just at different hours.

8.         Inside those buildings, everyone stood a little straighter. Outside, tricycles kept fighting 
            potholes and losing. Wages arrived late. And sometimes they didn’t arrive at all. I 
            remember thinking that if I stayed under those fluorescent lights long enough, something 
            in me might improve. Like refrigeration. Even though refrigeration improves nothing, 
            yes, I know. It defers rot. I never said it was a smart thought. It’s just the kind you have 
            when options are limited.

9.         We walked in the mall because it was cool. Because it was modern. Because walking 
            anywhere else looked suspicious. Roxas isn’t detached. That’s too kind. It’s distracted 
            from itself. Always looking sideways. Iloilo with its confidence. Pristine Antique and 
            Binirayan. Boracay with its loud, ugly success. People say aspiration instead of envy 
            because it sounds cleaner. Aspiration implies choice. This didn’t feel chosen. It felt
            assigned.

10.       See, nothing essential changed. Fishermen aged. Farmers bent their backs. The young 
            learned how to leave politely. The rest perfected staying without complaint.

11.       And I left too. Let’s not pretend it was brave. Staying was starting to feel like a skill I was 
            getting good at, and that terrified me. Endurance was circling, looking for somewhere 
            permanent to land so I panicked.

12.       Of course I carried Roxas with me. It’s like bad posture. You don’t notice it until 
            someone else does. I heard it when I spoke. Saw it when people smiled too fast. “Oh, 
            that’s nice,” which means small. They always means small. I learned how to compensate. 
            I curated my hometown. The sea. The food. Safe details only. Never the mornings when 
            the port was quiet because nothing came in. Never fishermen apologizing for bad seasons 
            like they’d mismanaged the weather. Never the waiting. God, never the waiting.

13.        I don’t trust my voice when I talk about home. It’s been trained. Polished. I can hear 
            myself translating while I speak, explaining poverty like climate—unfortunate, 
            unavoidable, nobody’s fault. Somewhere along the way I learned that plain anger sounds 
            unsophisticated, and sounding unsophisticated is apparently worse than being wrong. 
            This feels important. I don’t like that it does.