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prayers to the self 

Jo Alvarado

an attempt to answer: who are you? where are you? how are you?

hello. here is me, unfiltered, in this moment arbitrarily defined as 5:25 am on march 31st, 2021. 

i am wide awake, mind buzzing in the way that makes your ears vibrate.

the world is holding its breath. 

but i let the air pass through the slits between teeth, sensations to prove that i’m alive. 

and i suppose that answers the first question.

 who are you? someone who is just trying to churn out more life. 

when quarantine began, my friend asked me, what are you going to do with all this time? 

maybe the question should have been 

who are you when normalcy has dissipated? or 

what do you find solace in? or 

who are you when no one’s looking? 

and i will answer with a half-hearted  i don’t know because definitions never seem to stick, 

and more likely i don’t want them to. 

but i will tell you that i am trying. i am remembering. i am breathing. 

but most importantly, i am loving. in a time when we need it most. more life. more life. 

so i guess, the answer to the question is that i am a friend*

*to the universe.

and thus goes the next question. where are you? 

berkeley is the literal answer.

more specifically, i am sitting on my bed, blankets wrapped around so as to keep the cold air out, listening to my roommate’s steady breathing. 

i am at home away from home away from home, 

which is to say that i am twice displaced, 

roots torn out from quezon city, then once again modesto, 

then attempting to water myself to wholeness in berkeley. 

though, i feel more isolated in my mind than in any physical materiality, 

and so now i am opening locked doors and saying hello to my former selves. 

(or at least, trying to dispel any lingering regret).

and i have to admit that my locality is more liminal than ever, ghostlike on the spectrum of abstraction, 

and so i ground myself by wrapping fingers around wrists, 

to feel the soft heartbeat encased in thin skin. 

but if i’m being honest 

(and unashamed in cringy romanticisms) 

i am more heart than mind right now. 

in times like these, i go to love, and i rest there. 

i sleep soundly.

and lastly, the dreaded how are you?

maybe i should answer with the typical i’m okay which never seemed to satisfy anyone, 

least of all myself. 

it usually succeeds in reverting attention away, but this time it won’t fall for any cheap tricks. 

the question demands space. 

but how do you furnish the emptiness inside?

of course my answer is i don’t know because answers escape me at the moment, 

but for once, i’m not the only one lost. 

my okayness is fleeting, dips to lows and flies to highs. 

numbness lingers when i attempt once again to fit into a new person, 

because this old self is not suited for these times. 

worry creeps in as i reflect on how my parents have made home of hospital emergency rooms, 

healing others by harming themselves. 

but there is hope here–

underneath eyelids and tucked behind ears. paper hearts sewn onto palms. 

and so i must reject the question how are you 

and instead focus on the infinitive of “are” 

and realize that the only important thing now is “to be.”

there is nothing but being here. 

Writer’s Statement

“prayers to the self” was written after i grew tired of my inability to answer the most mundane questions, always spiraling into bouts of self-reckoning as who are you where are you how are you spin in my mind. the pandemic demanded us to reconcile with quiet, to learn how to occupy time. for a while, i felt as though i carved a grave into my bedroom, a painful stillness reverberating through walls. and so, i needed to transform the space back into a home. but not only that, i needed to make a home within myself– i needed to prove i was alive. i was grasping at hope, praying it wouldn’t slip through my fingers. and then, one morning, i woke up early enough to watch the sunrise, to witness the beginnings that come after the seeming end, to search for the light i knew still existed. i sat in my bed, listening to my roommate’s slumber. i tuned into the rhythm of her breathing. inhale. exhale. inhale. exhale. together, we breathed more life into the air.

about the writer