Illustration by Anderson X. Lee
There’s a mumu in the corner and Ate points in the direction with her freshly glazed lips
in a pucker.
“Don’t go there, there’s a mumu,” she warned -even the peach fuzz on my lips stood-
to scare me. To keep me out of trouble.
There’s always a mumu in the corner. I always feel like something is watching me.
The guilt, the shame, the hiya.
Manifests itself like a shadow in the corner of my eye.
The lukewarm of someone hovering over my shoulder.
Mga titas would look at me and scowl “walang hiya”, no shame.
From the innocence of hand holding and laughing.
There’s a mumu in the corner and she points with lying lips.
To shepherd me like a lamb of God.
Guide me with a crook to the greener pastures,
but all the grass tastes the same when I am your sheep.
I do not frolic on hooves but claws
and sheath my lycanthropy in lambswool.
There’s a mumu in the corner, I fib to no one but myself.
My shoulders inch closer to my ears. Fist coiled around around like a boa. Constricting.
There’s not a mumu in the corner.
But a mirror.
And when I look in the mirror there is a mumu staring back at me.
Because I won’t be what I want to be. And who I am now is a mumu.
Mary Poirier [she/they] is a writer from Hamilton, Ontario. Their writing is inspired by her interactions as a hard-of-hearing, lesbian, and Filipino artist. She has an advanced diploma in Fashion Arts from Seneca College. She is currently working on her debut novel and poetry chapbook. Her poem, My Year as a Dyke has been featured in an issue of Queer Toronto Literary Magazine. She loves her dog, Mavis. She is an aesthetician by day and a writer by night.