Little by little, Ma, I am learning how to die perfectly. I think every cell in my body has long since programmed their apoptosis. It all began in the first crack, when you called me your daughter. That word, ever since, bears in it a violent ring. It echoes in the sound of my footsteps, how they forge the path to my own guillotine. 

The second crack, when you’ve decided you could never live without me. I’m your savior, the Great Divinity. In times of crisis, you turn to worship me, until blisters and calluses entrench your knees. What kind of daughter looks away at the sight of her mother’s cries? What god neglects his own vows?

You forgot that you birthed me, Ma. I am not divine. I am my father’s trophy, and his tears rusted my body. The hand that once wiped me golden has been clenched. I’m the prize to his hard work, until I corroded his image of me. If you peel away my layers, you’ll find my insides flaking. My liver ached yellow, my stomach blue, hollowed by the tightness of his grip.

The middle ground in which I find myself oriented is to name this a disease. One that traces my veins slowly, incrementally. Occasionally, it hides itself in a beat. In a breath taken slowly. In my hands seconds before shaking. Though it always knows where to exhibit the filth, it has located a favorite place to metastasize: between the grooves inside my head or in the deepest flesh of my gut. 

But your blood is my only inheritance, Ma, Pa. No dose of medicine could forestall its circulation in my system. 

I hate you. I love you. And my absolution is in accepting that they are no longer different. 

After all, even after the vultures claim my body as their territory, I would have lived as your daughter.

I will die your daughter. 

- Jan Clarisse Lingon 

(Illustration by Chynna Mae Santos/FEU Advocate)