The aswang works third shift
at a twenty-four-hour warehouse
outside a city that cannot pronounce her name.
Back home,
grandmothers warned children about her.
She could split herself in half,
grow wings,
drink blood,
steal babies from windows.
In America
these are considered
transferable skills.
Her supervisor gives her a scanner,
a reflective vest,
and eleven minutes for lunch.
He says,
WELCOME TO THE TEAM.
She has survived Spanish priests,
American soldiers,
Japanese occupation,
three republics,
seven cousins singing karaoke simultaneously,
but nothing prepared her
for mandatory overtime.
At midnight
she sorts packages.
At one
she remembers moonlight
through banana leaves.
At two
her lower body quietly detaches
and crawls beneath the conveyor belt
to retrieve somebody's AirPods.
Management calls this
initiative.
At three
she becomes hungry.
The old stories say
aswang crave human flesh.
She looks at her supervisor.
Then the vending machine.
Then her supervisor.
She buys crackers.
Immigration paperwork
has taught her restraint.
During break
a coworker asks
where she's really from.
She points toward receiving.
“Dock seven.”
He laughs.
She doesn't.
Her grandmother's ghost
sits beside her
eating rice from a plastic container.
Anak, the ghost whispers,
we crossed an ocean for this?
The aswang shrugs.
Some questions
are too large
for a fifteen-minute break.
At four-thirty
the warehouse lights flicker.
For one beautiful second
everyone stops working.
Machines become silent.
Scanners go dark.
No quotas.
No productivity metrics.
No algorithm counting
how many seconds
a human hand requires
to lift a box.
The aswang spreads her wings.
Everyone stares.
“Union?” asks someone.
She smiles.
“Something older.”
By sunrise
management discovers
the night's productivity
has mysteriously collapsed.
Workers leave laughing.
The aswang walks home
beneath a pale American morning,
still hungry,
still undocumented
in several mythological databases,
still carrying an archipelago
beneath her tongue.
Back home
they called her monster.
Here
the corporation drinks blood
eight hours at a time
and receives
a tax deduction.
She clocks out.
Somewhere across the Pacific
a rooster announces morning.
The aswang raises one claw
toward the sun.
“See you tonight.”
Because monsters, too,
have rent.