Come Home to Barotac Nuevo

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

You, son of the sea,
who now walks the tiled spine of towers in Dubai,
whose hands once smelled of lake brine and tilapia skin—
come home. The water still remembers you.
Your father’s boat, its wood warped by years of dusk,
still floats in the estuary like a prayer
half-said. Your name is still
a fishhook caught in his throat.

You, daughter of the soil,
who now watches sunflowers fold their arms
against the snow in Bavaria—come home.
Your mother’s palms, thick with mud and faith,
still break open the ground every morning.
She plants kamote with the same hands
that once unbraided your hair by candlelight,
when the rain played drums on the tin roof
and you mistook thunder for war.

Barotac Nuevo is not the place you left.
It is the place that stayed,
like a scar on the inside of the thigh—
a place no one sees,
but aches when you bend too far
into the lives you borrowed.

The streets are older now.
The sari-sari store’s rusted signage
still flickers under the weight of rain.
The church bells ring at dawn
like the breath of your grandmother
escaping her chest
one Ave Maria at a time.

Your cousins are all grown.
One drives a tricycle.
One sells lumpia at the plaza.
They still speak of you
like a saint exiled by progress.

Come home.
Not to live, perhaps.
Not to stay.
But to remember how silence here
tastes like ampalaya and river mist,
how mourning is folded
into every prayer before meals,
how even the chickens
look up when a plane passes—
wondering if it’s you.

Come home,
even if just to sit by the water
and let your body confess:
that despite the glitter,
despite the snow,
despite the foreign languages
you’ve trained your tongue to carry—
this,
this was always your first name.