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00:20:26
00:24:58
00:20:26
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Transcription: [00:20:26]
{SPEAKER name="Regie Cabico"}
Thank you.

[00:20:28]
[Crowd applause]

[00:20:30]
{SPEAKER name="Regie Cabico"}
Jerrica Escoto everyone!

[00:20:30]
[[Crowd applause]]

[00:20:37]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
It's really funny 'cause I felt like that was also my mother speaking to me.

[00:20:40]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Especially with the rosary. [[Laughing]] So I'm gonna do one more poem and then we're gonna start a dialogue about just what it is to be queer and Filipino.

[00:20:49]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I think Reggie, though, kinda nailed it in that last poem.

[00:20:54]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Um, I did this poem, uh...

[00:20:56]
[Pauses]

[00:20:58]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
No, I'm gonna do a different poem. So, what I realized coming into my adulthood, and it actually took me moving away to D.C. from San Diego,

[00:21:07]
to realize that when we have immigrant parents, the dialogue of, "we sacrifice so much for you, we did so much to you,"

[00:21:13]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
we end up internalizing that and then we end up living a life, um, that we're not sure we want to be our own.

[00:21:20]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Right? 'Cause if you're Filipino and you're a nurse then you've like "made it" and, uh, I'm definitely not a nurse.

[00:21:26]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
And so with that, you kinda carry that into your personal relationships.

[00:21:30]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Um, relationships with partners, relationships with friends, and you end up kind of realizing that you don't really know how to, kind of, be inside of yourself

[00:21:40]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
and love the way that you want to because you've taken on all these expectations and you don't wanna fail your parents.

[00:21:45]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Um, so this is a breakup poem, and um... yeah. It's about to get REALLY sad here at the National Mall.

[00:21:55]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Umm, okay.

[00:21:58]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
[[ Reciting Poem]] I've kept this poem in my voice box for years now. And I clear my throat the loudest when I'm on first dates, or making love.

[00:22:07]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I make excuses. I say this world is already too ugly and I couldn't let another poem like this trickle, drip.

[00:22:14]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Like when blood stains aren't speaking loud enough for what's going on inside me.

[00:22:18]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I've made promises I wasn't ready to make. Said things that felt like salt on your taste buds because I wasn't ready to say them yet,

[00:22:25]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
but when you give someone the ability to rip your soul to pieces, the most that you can do is tell yourself you're okay.

[00:22:32]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
And hope that one day you actually mean it.

[00:22:36]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I've rebuilt myself-- out of material that easily get caught in the wind,

[00:22:40]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
and I learned that this is why I never let anyone with hands full of good intentions touch me in the parts that are used to caving in.

[00:22:48]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I realized, the reason why I write so many breakup poems, is because I'm not done writing the one about you.

[00:22:55]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Sometimes love is violent. And you took your loaded insecurities and threatened me at gunpoint the whole time I loved you diligently.

[00:23:03]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
You taught me that sometimes love isn't even really called love, it is just called perseverance. I stopped believing in gods when you became the one I prayed to, but you never listened.

[00:23:14]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I came to you with bloody knees and wrinkled palms from the times I pressed my hands together for you, but you never listened.

[00:23:21]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
You only recognized your worth in funhouse mirrors and the times I unzipped my own spine and turned it into a bridge you could walk on.

[00:23:28]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Most days, you never really knew where you were headed and I reshaped the road maps of my life to crack enough pavement for you to follow because sometimes love isn't even really called love,

[00:23:39]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
it is just called sacrificing your own bones and hoping that one day, you'll actually get a goddamn "thank you"-- When you left...

[00:23:47]
[[Pauses]]

[00:23:47]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
When you left, you left the door slightly open.

[00:23:51]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
And I have been waiting here, letting you leak out of me through my behavior, waiting for justification from you as to why you

[00:23:58]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
felt that you had the audacity to make me fall in love with you the way that I did, but never love yourself long enough to let me.

[00:24:06]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I've spent too many nights throwing dictionaries against the wall for never finding the right words to get you to stop hurting me.

[00:24:13]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I should've borrowed yours. You always knew the right things to say to get me to disintegrate slowly.

[00:24:18]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I waited years for our beginning. And I know now, that sometimes love is the umbilical cord that wraps around the necks of unborn children-- sometimes things that are supposed to have a beginning die before they ever even have a chance to start,

[00:24:33]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
and you.

[00:24:35]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
You never let me talk long enough to realize that this isn't what love is supposed to feel like, you weren't what love was supposed to speak like--

[00:24:43]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Love isn't about learning how to make love with the lights off.

[00:24:46]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
It isn't about holding on for the times when you could finally love me back--

[00:24:50]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I know now that sometimes love isn't even really called love, it is just called...letting go.