iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

To celebrate my substack's new look (shout out to graphic designer, Cole Coney! Thank you so much for your art and care!), here is a new audio post for you. Please subscribe, if you're so inclined. 😚 Salamat kaayo! 🥰 open.substack.com/pub/pamaland... open.substack.com/pub/pamaland...

open.substack.com

All Multilingual Speakers Use Steinian Syntax

Di Ba?

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Reposted by Keana Aguila Labra

Sofía Aguilar @sofiaxaguilar.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

we're so pretty in pink!! 🌸 thank you Sampaguita Press & The Pop Hop for such a magical time at last night's author showcase! thank you to @keanalabra.bsky.social & my fellow performers @ellielopez.bsky.social - i love poets!! i love creatives!! i love california!! xx

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Trigger warning: suicidal ideation // I bring up to my parents that I want to die at the Mother's Day lunch. It was meant to sound like a joke, bounce in the air among the other conversations. How relieving it was to have it out. To let it live outside of me.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Before my Saturn Return is up / Saturn shows me his full punches / I take each blow to stand up and receive another / the month will come to an end and I don't know if I've learned everything I was supposed to / was it worth getting back up on my feet?

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

When I say we are siblings I mean I will raise fist against you. You don't know how many summers boiled in me before this moment. I understand Gon and his rage and the willingness to trade what was his for a moment of reclamation. I write poetry to give my voice an audience. I write poetry to hear.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

How can I mourn what I never had ]] Nay peeling oranges to the sound of the clouds ]] how heavy they hung ]] they way the wanted to fall from the sky ]] when I speak Tagalog it's almost natural ]] at home I am a wonder I am fluent ]] back home I am stark, assuming, opposing ]] a cloud, heavy ]]

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Who I once was is still there / sitting in the kitchen of our family home / alone because I took to long to hemi the fish and pick the tinik / I am still her / though I watch her sit and dangle her feet / shake her head to an unheard song / and smile at how far we've come.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

The skies are gray in the city / the color in our palms / shutter the tilt of step & hush / how parents hold their children / ingay in my blood / ingay in my bones / how do we continue to hold with moving skies?

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

I am always at a confessional / all these sentences beginning with 'once' / once I was a girl alone in a new town / teacher confusing the other Filipino girl as my cousin / though leave it to my luck and the looseness with which we tie our branches / she was probably my cousin / in our skin is home.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Someone I've never known writes about saints. At night, my mother return haloed and sing to me while she thought I slept. Brushed my hair aside so I could be kissed by god. I needed this touch so much I held the phone to my ear, memorized the names of who could get me to her. Please get me to her.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

The way skin brushes is sacred. The way it moves stays with me. When I look up, in all times, you are above me. These days, I spread the lotion across your face. Your hands. Your feet. I listen to you talk about your grandson. I wish I could say I nodded with pride, resentment always taking from me.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Small was always sacred. Ordinary too. I wear this bracelet imbued with Lola's worries. Worries forming protection. Nana, be careful; I am thinking of you. Nana, be safe. Ephemera is sacred. My partner holds paper and rubber band and thinks of me. Thinks of my journal, my wants. Holds me close.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Conversation is love woven. I know I am loved the moment I sit in my partner's car. Wrapped in leather and fingers. Laughter touches all sides of metal. It slides warm, or cool. Once, we were young and so sure of what lay ahead. Now, we are not so young but at least know we have each other.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

I'm tired. I want to rest this weary cloak. Once the stories were happening and not recollection. Even then, I was small and weary. My days are good. I am loved and I love. I see this in the eyes of my friends. My partner. I think on this when I scroll through pictures. Maybe just one day longer.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Once there was a boy in Muntinlupa. He ran with his dogs. The earth as brown as his skin. This boy watched. He made note of all the things that he saw. He looked at his father and saw only white, shoulders making shadow as they sway. The things he loves receding: the mountain, his father's back.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I saw her hurt. I always see her hurt. I see the way she becomes child at outstretched hands. What I see is not what she sees. She can hardly hold the mirror. I find new ways to be stunned. In that way, I see that I continue to be child. I hold her now in ways she can't.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Things from the past have ways of coming to surface. Or is it my Saturn Return? Is it ending or am I in the middle. Once I was a teenager hair-whipped at the wind in Santa Monica tracing housing outlines in the orange light of the morning. Watching fish flop on the sand. All of it coming back to me.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Pink is rage / pink, I know your inner thoughts / I have been you / I am you / you who are daughter-assigned arguably daughter-coded / as we speak my mother takes you from me / claims you hers solely hers / people can't believe this version of her that I see / but I know you see me / hold me too.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

This is a poem of stillness. Still. The words are still. I am still. What a throwback. I am still, even now. Once I was child all arms and legs. I've told this story before. I move and move and move. I can't take naps. I can't sit still. I sit in time out wriggling. But still. This poem is still.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Everyday is stream of consciousness / I look at the window see the trees / see the same green in my drink / in my heart and behind my eyes / once I was a girl running beneath the green with grandfather behind me / I look back now and know he's elsewhere / too age old the wonder of where we go next.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I don't remember the story behind the photo anymore / I imagine that we held together for warmth / how I thought about the bond of loved ones and how these dogs are my family too / I thought too much of passing and anticipated it before the time came / I should have nestled deeper.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

There is always a threshold between us / my body stiffens before you enter a room / once I was all arms all hands outstretched to you / you took each limb and chose to sever / once I was all voice all echo toward you / you took these vibrations and tucked them away to silence / the threshold stays.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

There is name already for the stars of my heart / each child not born of me but in the bond of hand holding another / how I held their cheeks / was amazed at how their cries summon spring / they're grown now / these children of my heart / and still I look up at the stars that spell their names.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I contemplate now / where are you where did you go / then I hear the birds / what is the communion like? / to be together in soul?

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Myth to you but not for us / but for the sake of you let me tell it / a babaylan closes their eyes and picks a card / it is correct / a babaylan closes their eyes again / picks another card / and sees the hands that guide her right / she thanks this movement for its care / this misnomer 'luck'.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I was born with a silver tongue / I look at my mother to open my mouth and can’t help it / she sits in my room and asks me to make out the circles / how do the circles spell out our lineage / even then I can’t tell her about myself / her arms too brittle for the weight.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

To be born daughter is to be born wind torn / from arms, from the air that shaped them / to be born daughter is to be leader / is to be fraught / is to be alone but always pressed against the next body that opens its mouth to the shape of need / to be born daughter is to wonder / is to know.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Use the space as I need / so I breathe / so I call to the sky and hope that there's a god / that's the first time I admitted that out loud / I think of who I was: angry and unyielding / I am still unyielding / to the sky, I hope, even if there is no god / that there is the energy of those we love.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

I don't want to give my anxiety teeth / I ask her to hold my hands inside / pare tells me about his wings / and I wish I had some too / like, when Nay looks at my skin and deems me ugly / she doesn't need to say it / I can see the teeth in her eyes / I just want to be loved for the my supple, soft.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

My diary was pink too. It held everything. Everything with me was once, ago. Once upon a time ago. And so, it goes: once upon a time ago, I wrote in this beloved everyday. I told her everything. She was me. And then one day, Libra storms weighed against me. Wind and whirls chose this over trust.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Sag moon means fun / sag moons means judge / sag moon means, let me look at what you're doing and start doing it too because I can do it better / sag moon means oh well! / sag moon means what if we do this now instead and face the consequences later / sag moon means let's talk our way out of this!

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Diana, how did you do it? Every time you hold her, you also hold fear. All of your mother's mistakes, and yours, in her, become her. Diana, I am envy. I see the panels parallel, saw the hard in your eyes, your mother's, and wished for myself softness. I know too much this glint, this blade.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

The sun broke ground and birthed my brother stones. He carried each one, each a babe, each of his skin. We watched the ants crawl over each and burrow in the dirt. We held our arms above it., different shades, same kin. This, a picture in time, now a tumble. Where to lay this to rest? Where to hold?

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Cento me from the start / everything new and unsaid in a single sentence / "once upon a time there was a girl" / and there was / the blur of what was and what needed to be / memory as archive / archive the word of god / god moving us forward / because god, I need to keep these things with me.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

"What's wrong with you / you don't listen / listen to the cats / cats bearing babies / babies left without supervision / supervise your brother, your sister / your sister is the squeaky wheel / wheel him closer to the glass so they can hear / hear yourself and bullshit / bullshit me again and see."

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Body still living then and now / stretching over the impossible / body in 2025 and 2020 / hands reaching for cup and towel and clothes and lotion / overlapped dry crocodilian outcry for attention / some things stay the same / I thank thee, O Max Caulfield, for your wisdom against harmful longing.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Noticing means truth / the truth being that I'm 28 days behind my own goal / goal posts always shifting / shifting, wishing I could close my eyes and rewrite timelines / timelines and wormholes blanketing me every time I wished I was someone sharp, someone good, someone perfect / a brain born anew.

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Reposted by Keana Aguila Labra

Rakesh Khanna @blaftrakesh.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Stuff I picked up at #AWP2025, pretty different than my usual diet of SFF/weird, but really enjoying them: @jasonmccall4.bsky.social's book from @autofocusbooks.bsky.social + poetry by Maria Bolaños & @keanalabra.bsky.social from Sampaguita. Brushing up my (v minimal) Tagalog with the latter one!

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Practice makes perfect so I practice these thoughts in my journal to myself or before my therapist / I think of a child, small and smiling, wanting to be enough / when my mother was a child, did she get to feel that she was enough / curses that run continuous / until it reaches to burden the youth.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Mind, I beg you to work with me / when I'm at my desk for poems or craft or in the office / but now I ask you to hold my hand, or I hold yours / as we decide to eat / we are no longer fifteen / we are not defined by the shape of our flesh / we are good / we are whole / we do not need their approval.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

The clouds dance and make the sky shift / a dance with light and shadow / to and fro atop us all / I look above from the driver seat of my car / and think of Lolo and his patience / or was it curiosity / by the time I was old enough to pay attention / it was Lola at the wheel / and then it was me.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

In moments of quiet, I find someone new to speak with / god being the entity with whom I argue the most / god, why is it traffic right now / god, why did this happen / god, what is going to happen / god, I sit here in the dark of my room and I ask for kindness / I ask for patience / I beg for peace.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

I'm in the habit of falling behind / always falling / arms outstretched of not where I'm meant to be or supposed to have or should be / millennial poster child of generational failures / of not this, not enough, and "ay, anak" / but I am never without / I smile at the romp and raucous of my kasamas.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Portrait of the library approaching spring means / there are giggling teenagers by the fireplace / people who sleep on a chair, or the couch, or at the table / security makes a round but doesn't have the heart to wake those who are sleeping / adults tap tapping on laptops / all of us, together.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

I let grief settle when it comes / the truth it never left / the moss a beautiful hue in the sun / I scroll reels and find linger awhile on things that are reminders / and tell myself it's okay / that we prescribe meaning to things that are important / so I let the tears fall when they come.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Matcha with vanilla syrup / help me with my reports / my essays / my poems and emails / I pray to you / O matcha / please keep me on time / on top / and on task / the wind sways and against all odds / I am still here / thank you, matcha, my god / for giving me reason when I feel I have none.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Let me believe in myself / one action at a time / I thank my body for what it does / I see its changed energy and I will try / not to lament its change but rather protect it with a sharper / ferocity / bless this baseline / may all your baselines be blessed / I wear my mask as prayer for you and me.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Please let us keep each other safe / please let us be warm together / I see your mask and think love / please see my mask and think care / may we one day not live in fear / may we hold our health and bodies precious / may we live long lives with the earth.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

15 year old anger still lives in 30 year old body / how it cracks like a scab / like wood consumed by the fire started by its body / when I take a deep breath, it's more for you / than me / fire born from mud is most persistent / how it licks and flails at the wet and brown / how it seeks to live.

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Keana Aguila Labra @keanalabra.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Arms slog heavy weight champion of / do it tomorrow / as pro wrestler with the gray / and the wrinkled that are focused on other things / the pins in the walls / or the birdsong / or the too many books on the floor / and the dust / settle, mind / calm / pasensya, mind / the begging as apology.

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