The Names That Hold Us

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

Ilonggos name their children as if
calling a pet, a playful chant—
Bordagol, Butchoy, Burakday, Burjok,
Botitoy, Toliloy, Toto Buka.
Names round on the tongue,
loose as laughter in a room
where no one needs to ask
if you belong.

But take them outside—
where streets widen, where voices
sharpen like knives against glass—
and they turn into something else.
The joke you never meant to tell,
the punchline they make of you.
Out there, you learn to fold
your name into your pocket,
trade it for something thinner,
something smooth enough to slip
through another person's mouth.

But home is home.
And here, Bordagol is a boy
who carries sacks of rice,
his slow steps steady as a song.
Butchoy is the child who laughs
between mouthfuls of fish,
who eats with both hands
because hunger is always urgent.
Toliloy is the baby of the house,
his name the thread
that pulls the family closer.

These names do not diminish.
They are worn like old slippers,
like the smell of coffee at dawn,
like a mother’s call from the kitchen—
a sound that carries across years,
across miles, across the quiet
shame of having to be someone else.

Outside, the world trims
the edges of your name,
makes it sharper,
makes it neat.

But when you return—
when you step inside the door,
when your mother calls you
by the name you thought you left behind—
you remember.

Home is not the place.
It is the voice that calls you back.