Tomato Soup for the Soul
Julia Escaño
We share sixty percent of our genes with tomatoes.
I don’t know much about anything, so this blew my mind.
I wondered
At which point did our ancestor genes say
I want more. And so I must go.
Did they know they will create beings that will one day
inherit the earth?
Did the tomato parent genes say, Nice knowing you, fam.
Til we meet again? When they stayed did they know they will one day
become fodder to one of our most polarizing inventions?
Ketchup?
These days, I don’t comment on social media posts
about home. Even though I hover. Back home
I have heard people say those who leave should
just shut up.
When our ancestor genes left the tomato parent genes
they probably didn’t have much to say. Maybe they didn’t
have the time. They had a lot of work to do.
How long did it take them to grow brave? I’m still feeling out
my place in things. Can I belong in this new ground when it seems so
unfamiliar?
Hong long did it take them to grow strong in
their new world? I long to one day be rooted. To thrive in this daylight
despite its strange shadows.
How long until they learned of sunshine and how it gives life
to all things. Until they grew fingers that knew the touch of soil,
the womb of earth. Of nurture.
These days, we are nothing like tomatoes. We come from
complete human genes, flawed and absolute. Muddling through
complexities of connections. Searching for soil and sunlight,
and the ability to cultivate
even the parts of ourselves we thought we left behind.
Julia Escaño is a Filipino immigrant residing in unceded Coast Salish territory now known as Vancouver, Canada. She has degrees in Visual Communication from the University of the Philippines and Creative Writing from the University of British of Columbia. As a new member of the diaspora, she explores themes of immigration, identity, and belonging, and how these weave into a global, postcolonial society. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Ricepaper and Grain, and is forthcoming in Prairie Fire. By day, she works as a copywriter for a Vancouver tech company and lives by the rules of her 8-month-old wiener dog, Napoleon.
Artist Statement: Immigration is not a mere act of moving from point A to point B. Immigration is a constant journey: an exploration of spaces and places, how these influence and interact with ever-evolving selves. It’s a cycle of interrogation and discovery, of finding one’s place in things despite the fragmentation caused by becoming uprooted. It’s always asking “Who am I? Who was I? Who am I here? What am I now?” and then probing deeper until one sees hints of their very first origins, until they can make sense of its basest shape and its new form in the new world it inhabits.
These poems are me digging, comprehending, digging some more, and maybe accepting—to an extent—the self that I have uncovered this time. They are expressions of my recognition of my present shape in this new world: I am a Brown woman, I am an immigrant, and I am ready to embrace it.