spell tongue

WHAT I REMEMBER dress I wore for my seventh birthday and she carried a yellow plastic bag. She tiptoed to kiss me on the lips, with exactly 20 minutes left before the year ended. She smelled like drugstore cologne and fruity shampoo. I smelled like seafood cup noodles and corporate slavery. She said, wow you’re fatter than I imagined you to be. We laughed. Her eyes said where are you going, why aren’t you home. But I know she hated confrontation and afternoon naps and sayote. She asked if I still liked kissing my pillows and pretending they’re Aladdin’s shoulders and Bembol Roco. I said yes but these days I imagine they’re married history professors and sweet boys from Isabela and Lou Salvador, Jr. And I do more than just kissing. She said, aah, which translates to what the hell does that even mean and seriously, Lou Salvador, Jr.? From the yellow plastic bag, she took out a pirated DVD copy of Kama Sutra I found in Grandpa’s bookshelf 14 years ago. I saw the curiosity and confusion in her huge Bambi eyes and I wanted to tell her that a few months from now, she’ll walk in on our parents watching that DVD. They won’t even notice her but their sighs will play in her head for the next two weeks. Fourteen years later, she’ll end up pointing a gun at Dad because she’ll catch him watching that same DVD with a stranger. She’ll be kicked out on New Year’s Eve by Mom, who will continue being idiotically in love I wanted to tell her that things will change. That Bembol Roco will stop being hot in the next couple of years because his jawline will remind her of someone else’s. That she’ll start liking sayote. That the word tongue will be the least of her worries. That only her eyes will remain.