I am stuck in the middle of my self

Digital collage created by Isabela Villanoy

I am stuck in the middle of my self

The faint sound of the rooster’s loud cluck forces its way through my morning

I look out my frozen winter

My body craves for the heat of the sun

My feet tremble for the sand

---

I am made of broken pieces

Fragments

of an identity that lives

in between

I hear the sighs of deep sadness from my motherland

I sit comfortably on the TTC

With a clear destination of where I need to be

These broken pieces

Fragments

of an identity that longs

for home

but home is two places, two places are my home

in the past and present, in the present and past

and I am in the middle

---

Isabela Quito Villanoy is a University of Toronto alumni who double majored in English Literature, and Book & Media studies, and minored in Women and Gender Studies. She is also the founder of an online community Instagram page called Ihayag, a community that aims to reveal and proclaim the stories of Filipino/a/x immigrants and diasporic identities, where she shares her Filipino pride. While being both a writer for Her Campus U Toronto and an Editor at the MNERVA Literary Journal, Isabela dabbles in various creative passions related to reading, drawing, music, and photography.

Isabela's collage reflects fragments of her identity -- an identity that is made up of various elements of her past life in the Philippines and her present life in Canada. It is a patchwork of stories that interweave; much like the stories that make up her identity.

Her poem is the intersection of her past and present identities. It is her way of finding beauty in the fragments of her life story.