{"id":7287,"date":"2026-09-30T13:46:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T05:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/?p=7287"},"modified":"2026-09-30T13:46:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T05:46:27","slug":"in-retracing-a-memory-and-bilu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/in-retracing-a-memory-and-bilu\/","title":{"rendered":"In Retracing A Memory and Bilu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Aleah Sulayman Bantas<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>In Retracing A Memory<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>there is a photograph of a girl in a white dress<br \/>\n<\/em><em>inside an album, kept only by a plastic rack<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I grew up remembering how to pick kapok,<br \/>\nseparate the seeds, each one,<br \/>\nfruit in search of an embrace<br \/>\nin the verses of Mahmoud Darwish,<br \/>\non a river dying of thirst.<\/p>\n<p>After class of halaqah, reading the Qur&#8217;an,<br \/>\na white face, eyes narrowed into a slit.<br \/>\nInto the echo of a daughter singing.<\/p>\n<p>In such happenstance,<br \/>\nI do not mind being named after a flower,<br \/>\nfor it holds a thought of tenderness,<br \/>\nthe aftertaste of nectar on the tongue.<br \/>\nNot of conquests,<br \/>\nof peace agreements<br \/>\ntypewritten in birth certificates,<br \/>\ntaking shelter under an awning of coconut fronds.<\/p>\n<p>Listen, I&#8217;m trying not to be a poet,<br \/>\nto the screech of a gunmetal,<br \/>\na poet is nothing but a prey.<\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\nBilu<\/p>\n<p><\/strong>\u00a0Cerulean in my native language<br \/>\nis only blue and no other names.<br \/>\nBilu for the sky, for dye, for the sea.<br \/>\nFor how we hold color,<br \/>\nand how it sits in my tongue\u2014<br \/>\nthe foreign names we want them to carry.<br \/>\nbut all blues are made of one loveliness.<br \/>\nBefore the rustle of ipil-ipil trees at dawn,<br \/>\nin glass washed pale by rain<br \/>\nand waves crashing.<br \/>\nIn corals under shallow light,<br \/>\nI borrow colors<br \/>\nand watch them fall back<br \/>\ninto one word. I have only <em>bilu<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aleah Sulayman Bantas In Retracing A Memory there is a photograph of a girl in a white dress inside an album, kept only by a plastic rack I grew up remembering how to pick kapok, separate the seeds, each one, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/in-retracing-a-memory-and-bilu\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7288,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287\/revisions\/7288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}