Semu

Written by Samantha Marley Barnett | August 2019

Fuetsan Famalao’an | photo credit Guam Museum

Pulan : Semu

Inalåhan

You wake up with a snake around your throat when you are six.
You reach up to pet it like a cat, it feels warm like a vein turned-outside-in, it nips gently at the warmth of your wrist and as you startle you sit up. It loosens itself from your neck and swims down your shoulder.

You still sleep in your mother’s bed and her hand shoots out when she sees,
the snake is thrown across the bed, you are gathered up with your bedsheet, carried out to sit on the cool tile of the living room floor.
Cradling your wrist.

At your dad’s house in Inarajan,
your grandmother holds the baby to her lap and says that an old woman comes to her window at night and knocks.

She calls the boys in from outside and makes them put on shirts that stick their small backs, the old red carpet presses ridges into their knees as they kneel to pray by her altar.

The boys run down the hallways and your grandmother sits outside and smokes a cigarette in a plastic chair against the rain while your dad makes dinner and mops the floor,
she crosses her tired knees.

At night you stand in the shower and let the water run loose,
you close your eyes and see the woman who opens her mouth without sound.
You are quiet and still, you let her move through you, she seizes your bones until they ache, her fingers wrap around your wrists and her roots swim through your spine.

You open your eyes and speak.

Kamuti in coconut milk 

• sweet potatoes

• coconut milk

• salt

  Peel and chop the sweet potatoes into large chunks. Put in a pot and sprinkle with salt and pour over the coconut milk. Cover and simmer until the kamuti is tender.