In Absentia, Or If I Lose You

In the event that I may be missing, please don’t look for me, for by then I might have rinsed myself from all grief, finding myself awash with enough courage to be swept aside by fate so completely, drifting wherever the wind blows in my weightlessness. There will be no more room left for weeping, and my eyes would have barely anything left to give because I have dried them up for all the right people from a past I have not known for quite a while, one that I wish I will no longer remember. When the day comes when it will be your turn to squeeze the last drop, I will offer you the last apology my lips can offer, because if I could I would have saved all of my sorrow just for this day, but for the last time I will have failed you because I will not be prepared for this. No one can ever be ready for their biggest heartbreak. And though I will have already emptied myself, having nothing more left to give, my emptiness will be such an embarrassment, flailing my conscience in front of you like a penance far too late, so please don’t look for me because to you and for you I have given my all.

You will not find me, probably not in the body that you will discover off coast, floating after the storm like a misplaced reminder, biding its unholy time until it is found by strangers who will never know my name, for this body, the very same one that pressed itself against yours in search of warmth on countless early mornings when the world was cold and our hearts more so, has become nothing more than a shell of the past, a breath short of the future it could have had, for life without you is no life at all, like an ocean thirsty for water: devoid of depth, exposed in its emptiness, barren. I have rented this body for years on end, and the day will come when I will have to return it in its sorry state, crushed by expectations falling short, collapsing from their own weight as swift as your departure.

As I choke in my melancholy like stones racing down my throat, you will no longer hear from me, and my silence will be forever yours to own. On that day and the ones to follow, treasure it like a secret because you will carry it with you until the end, like a child never to be born, the same way that I carry yours with me in nowhere land. Where it is, I wish I could say, because you were once every north and east and west and south that I took, navigating life with the steady assurance that you are where I will be, but the day I lose you will be the day I lose every sense of direction. I can go anywhere but it will be as if I have only left, never truly arriving, a perpetual solitary journey with no word to keep me company, no voice to tell me I’m finally home.

You will not find me in the streets where I used to seek refuge from the cruel life that once held this flesh hostage. These concrete arteries that gut the city, witness to a thousand stories including mine, seeping with the kind of inanimate forgiveness that only the streets could give, they are probably the only friends I have ever known but have abandoned me all the same at the final moment, so please don’t look for me there. No one, even nothing, stays forever. This is probably the only gospel truth I will tuck in my heart, retrieving it like a card kept in my pocket whenever things get too comfortable so that I may never again mistake complacency for assurance, for the same reason that a street cannot go by different names: we get lost when we do not know where we stand.

I will rest under the carpet of stars, my back on moist grass as I lay humbled by the eternal cosmos, my eyes folding from the weight of sadness, making them surrender and close after having acquainted themselves with happiness from years of tender innocence, this time perhaps finding comfort in perpetual night, never to wish for the sun again as though there is nothing left to see. But darkness can be beautiful. It relies on nothing but absence, finding sufficiency in whatever it lacks, making itself known by the shadows it casts far and wide. Please don’t search for me even if we continue to share the same evening sky above our heads, for it is enough that the darkness that separates us is the same one that binds us. We will both find comfort in what we cannot see, because time and again what we do not know will not make us cry.

Please don’t hope for my return, for I have scraped my heart on solid ground on summer nights too many to count, standing in the line of fire with a misguided sense of courage, wielding my heart like a pistol only to be made its first attrition. Because you will be the one to leave, the heaviest of chests will be mine to endure. I will walk away, too, but know that with each stride my heart will sink from its weight and I will have to drag them by my feet once they reach the ground. The distance between where we will make our final stand, the very last conversation we will ever have in our short lives, and where I intend to go will be the longest exit I will ever take. It might never end.

The day I lose you will be the day I will have the longest sleep, one that you have wished for me to take since the day we first talked. It will be the only consolation I will ever have, so please don’t look for me.

Pagbigyan

11/21/2022 | Quezon City

A Heart In Search of A Home

The world does not keel over on its own – this I have learned with kindness undeserved yet given nonetheless. For this, the gratitude that brims from my heart spills into my wakefulness the way water from a river would crawl the miles in desperate search of the calm it yearns for, finding refuge in the depths of the ocean it seeks to dive into: unseen, thriving in partial silence, in full surrender to the currents of life, but unhesitant to flow where the tide ebbs. I sink on the bed, her hands creating the gentle undertow that hoists my sanity back to where it belongs. I grip them with no intention of letting go, although at times fear would cradle my heart, my fingers trembling ever so slightly, because one day this too could be over, waking up to find nothing more than the same hands that were once so full but now having become nothing more than an empty shell. Yet if everything was to fold and fall over time and again, I would have held on, without reluctance, to the one person who moves my world, for life would have still been the same even if everything else has changed. In her, I found a glimpse of permanence despite the uncertainties that hound my steps like relentless shadows.

She says her hands can move things, but perhaps she forgets during days of little to no sleep that it is her willingness that drives one to turn the world on its head when life seems to drift farther than it should. There is a kind of warmth in her touch that nurtures things into their proper place and time, retrieving what might have been misplaced because these days no one else seems to get things right, and in a world full of sin her touch feels like it is the only one left that is divine, though truth be told she is far from perfect. But I have never desired perfection, let alone for the one I love. All I ever wanted was someone who stands tall even if the world makes her feel small. She does so with what others might mistake for as relative ease, though I know that, deep within, she, too, has to summon all the strength she could muster just to anchor herself and weather every storm. This she does with grace. She is five feet and six inches, her stature imposing itself off the ground with the kind of humility that does not gesture itself into view just to make itself known, for it has always been there, having seen many prayers, ours notwithstanding, others to reappear in redundancy, floating momentarily before dropping on the earth like a moth without wings, and what moves everything in my life at this point may just as well be the same hands that I hold.

But even if it were not for those same hands, even if they do not possess the same firmness in which they hold mine, I would have loved her all the same, because I have learned that hope is as persistent as the rain that knocks on the roof on sullen days, and this same hope I would have nurtured even when all that is left is the raging sun leaving everything dry in its wake, because life is short and sometimes all we need is a little rain to get by.

They say she is young, but her age does not compromise the ways in which she leaves no stone left unturned. Her resolve in committing to whatever she has on her plate, though not always the type where food is involved, is quite similar to what water does to fire: it seeks to put out what is getting in the way by diving straight into the heat of things. This she does with measured eagerness despite the trepidation that others may find as ample reason to pause, for she does things without misguided confidence, but rather one with the humble certainty that some things in life are at least worth the try.

There are times, too, when her body can barely shoulder the weight of her world and her knees can only hold themselves together so much, and by then she would find herself at the mercy of decisions that had to be made one way or the other. At times when her hands become full, she recedes into the comfort of her solitary space, confining herself to these little pockets of air where she could breathe and regain her composure. By then, she would carry herself without flinching when that is what the world demands from her, because she has learned that what has been given can be taken away without warning, often too early and rarely too late, so she must carry on. And if I could help her – if only I could and if she would only let me – then maybe we would have finally understood that life without complications stirs people into complacency, truncating whatever it is that they have tried to build into nothing more than a memory best forgotten. The art of surrender is painfully beautiful, but I would rather be given the ugly side of life if it meant having the kind of acceptance that is nowhere less than complete.




“You are not for the weak,” she said one day not too long ago. For someone who is primed to move a world as big and as heavy as this heart whenever I have my back against the wall, she has become the home my heart has been searching for.

Perhaps A True Story, Among Other Things

She says I am her favorite, and if this is a true story, I guess I am more like her favorite secret, free to roam as far out as this blanket will allow, but rarely traversing its edges because that is where revelations begin and where troubles rear their ugly head. I tuck myself in like a child, fearing whatever it is that will wrest away from my hands what little hope I cling to. I cannot betray the light for I live where the shadows grow cold and where people's hearts turn even colder the longer they linger away from the open space. I battle this approaching tundra everyday with the kind of fading warmth that only people like me possess. Or where I am without shackles, I tread wherever my feet plant themselves. Who I am before friends and strangers could well be a shrouded pedestrian embracing this invisibility cloak with such notoriety as though the fullness of my life finds both comfort and solace in the stealth it offers. I hide in plain sight because people can hardly smell what reeks right under their nose. This secret is a camouflage I take with me wherever I go, much as it drags me wherever it pleases.

I was told before that secrets assure nothing but the sureness of not knowing your rightful place in the universe: neither here nor there, neither a yes nor a no, just forever wedged between the convenience of a denial and the sweeping certainty of an affirmation. Life will be in limbo, and everything else can be shrugged off by way of a nervous laugh, the air pushing out of my lungs carrying the trepidation born on the day I first met her, which I remember all too clearly. And although the precipice is where I am forced to thread my way, I yearn for the day when the score will be settled, my knees on the ground, my life in complete surrender, because I have finally won her over, or I have lost her entirely. The stakes are high, the risks more so, and in the language of secrets there is some grain of wisdom to be had: ignorance is bliss. Not knowing your rightful place in the universe is what allows the secret to thrive, the way air is to lungs.

There are glimmers of hope, like stray objects flashing across the sky, burning themselves in the night before they find rest in the nothingness of space. "I can make time for that," she said one day. I had to pick up my jaw from the floor. For the first time in a very long time I suddenly felt important in someone's life. I have been used to being clocked in at the very end of the day's list, like the last item on the grocery shelf patiently waiting amidst the prospect of being discarded instead. It took a while for what she said to sink into my brain, wrap around my senses, before settling in my heart. You see, none of us can make time, but it was an impossibility she was willing to make possible even if she still had a long day ahead of her, because the kind of magic that she does is neither witchcraft nor sorcery, contrary to what others have said about her. It is simply called willingness, and it is probably the most beautiful damn thing in the world.

But either way, I hold her hands tight whenever I can, wherever she will let me, because some other time in the future she will have to let go, her conviction pressed with sheer finality that there is no undoing what is about to come, her resolve as firm as her predilection in life. That day I will have finally understood that some secrets can never be made permanent, that something as obscure as what we had might have even been next to never in the first place. She will let go, taking with her our secret, never to see daylight again as if it never happened precisely because no one else knew. In its wake, a closure that will never be had, because in the eyes of others it was never us.

Then one day in my life the sun will carve out the hole where I dwell and expose my body that has been in a fetal posture for so long it might as well have the shape of forgiveness long overdue, for I have given apologies far too many to count, even for the ones that have never been my fault, because I have learned that there is too much pride to go around these days that if one could only feed on it no one would ever go hungry again. So I lower myself in the hopes that others will not have to look up to me, because I have failed many times in my pursuit of the impossible, her being the latest.

But until that day, perhaps this is a true story, perhaps not. That day I will wake up in the morning, eyes trying to ward off the sunlight, or the moonlight in the dead of the night, in full acceptance that one or the other is true.

Minsang Talambuhay ng Bawat Isa

Hindi nagkikita. Hindi nag-uusap. Hindi magkakilala.

Nagkikita. Hindi nag-uusap. Hindi magkakilala.

Nagkikita. Hindi nag-uusap. Magkakilala.

Nagkikita. Nag-uusap. Magkakilala.





Nagkikita. Hindi nag-uusap. Magkakilala.

Hindi nagkikita. Nag-uusap. Magkakilala.

Hindi nagkikita. Hindi nag-uusap. Magkakilala.

Hindi nagkikita. Hindi nag-uusap. Hindi na magkakilala.

Two Things

I miss my younger days when I would bike all day, pedal my way throughout our small town and the edge of it, sometimes beyond, from sunrise until sunset, my mother the least bit worried for she knew what I was doing on a weekend, on some days returning home with bruises on my arms and blood on my shirt but a smile on my muddy face nonetheless even after an accident, a time long gone when a rock on the dirt road I am speeding through is the only one that would make me fall so hard, and a flat tire is the sole thing in the universe that would break my heart. God I miss those days.

Always And Never: A Study of You

On weekday afternoons, you are the first to breach my wakefulness, because in my dreams you have always eluded me; you never stayed. You are gone the moment I turn elsewhere, for which I would fault myself without fail. Eyes shut or open, the difference is the same — you are nowhere. And as a gesture to compensate for losing you too fast and too soon, I would close my eyes in the hopes of finding you, feigning sleep if I must, the bed becoming my raft to coast the turbulent waters where you might be, my sudden desolation blowing frail wind to push my sail forward by the inch. Adrift in this dreamland, I chase you with my heart in my hand, not knowing exactly what to do with it, though the weight it carries is enough to anchor me for the rest of my days should I cast it to the open waters. And yet I continue to have my eyes fixed on this temporary blindness for here in this dream there is nothing and no one to see.

But all this would be in vain, for then I would be dreaming another dream where faceless people crowd in silence, where I would call out your name but yours would struggle to crawl out of my lips pressed tight, three letters seeking both freedom and refuge in the open space, always, but never to succeed. For the rest of my dream they would just hang there, like a promise unfulfilled still waiting at the edge of a precipice.



"They're just dreams. You have me in reality."







The world is a special place but only because she is there. Take her out of the picture and you could just as well be living in another planet. Being where she is may look like a difficult place to be in, but that is what makes it worth the while, warts and all.

How does it feel then?

Like this: it feels like having to carve a path through a dense forest using only a spoon, or having to pluck massive trees off the earth with nothing but tweezers on hand. It feels like having to elbow your way through a horde with your hands tied, and God knows how the rope digs deep into your skin, but you press on, because that is where men are born.

That is also where they die.

It, too, feels like being stuck in the middle of a dessert with only a drop of water in the bucket to quench the thirst of everyone else, but you stand your ground despite the sand shifting quickly beneath your feet, scorching as it is for being exposed to the sun for far too long. You hold the line because the quicksand will be there to give you that sinking feeling, for better if not for worse, and before you know it you are burried halfway through — head underneath or otherwise, it does not matter — but you stay because there is nothing else you can do. This is the choice you made, and so you must endure the consequences.

That is how impossibly beautiful she is, and how you are way behind the line. There is a popular term for it.

Queueing.







One day you think she has always been there. The next day you find out she probably never was. This is, perhaps, the reality where you have her, which is, really, just another dream.

The Heart-Shaped City and the Girl Who Never Falls in Love

One tells of how the place was abundant with a kind of tree called luyong, now more commonly known as anahaw (Saribus rotundifolius) from which canes and furniture were made. - Wikipedia


To have that singular shot of winning her over, you will have to cross her territory and play her game, one where she commands full dominion, and where the rules bend to her will. One false move is fatal. Either be cautious or be reckless. You cannot draw both cards because neither does she, for she can strictly be as calculating and as precise in the ways in which she conducts herself, or she can only be as heedless and as playful in the manner in which she will make you move. Some lines she does not cross, completely cutting herself off the very moment the ogre rears its ugly head, figuratively if not literally. Other ones she simply bulldozes her way through as if there is nothing and no one standing in her way if only to kill time, because in a land where she is both king and queen, the only sovereign in the heart-shaped city who wields all the power that will ever be, falling in love is hardly her option.

And no one can demand for her time just as well. It is something that others will need to earn, because in the abundance of what she has to offer, no one can ever come close to claiming all of her. You only get what she is willing to give: all of her body but never her heart and soul, or all of her heart and soul but only a fraction of her body. And then there are the men she has dated at a previous juncture in her life, men who can only mull over in their recollection being surrounded by her presence both body and soul, but not having any of it at the end of the day, like being marooned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean: all this water but none to drink. They remain restless long after the tide has washed their senses over, the undertow dragging their feet so constantly back to the depths of her, and they succumb just as easily, even willingly, because she is a current too strong to swim against, and you will have to drown first long before she will start to fall in love, or even before she begins considering the idea.

As to why she does not fall in love, the reasons may be few and far between, but all the same they could be just as plenty. All the Einsteins in the world can only stitch their guesses together and still find themselves in a mental hemorrhage. Perhaps she does not want to miss the part where you tell her you are home after you have spent a few hours together, or the part where you tell her good morning after waking up, or good night just before sleeping, because time is at her beck and call and you are not the one to control it for her. She can make your sun set or rise as she pleases, in its stead the moon on a clear evening, or a slew of clouds rolling in on a random hour. And so she does not fall in love. Not in summer. Not in any given hour.

Perhaps she has already married herself to the idea with no chance of divorce that she can never be as good as the partner that the men she has went out with has imagined her to be, and in her mind is the outright refusal to live according to the standards they want to shove down her throat. After all, such is not the way of kings and queens, the ones who issue the laws that the serfs will have to abide by, not the other way around. She probably thinks, too, that she is not girlfriend material, although one can only wonder what exactly they are supposed to be made of and to what extent, certainly not some fancy cosmic stardust raining from the sky, or some flower blossoming from the earth with utter haste so that it can relish in the light. Some people say that those who do not fall in love are made of stern stuff, and it is maybe for the same reason why she could never figure herself as being romantically involved with anyone, though time and again she might drop a line or two saying things to the contrary: that she cries easily, a softie through and through.

Maybe she thinks that even when the days get cold and the nights turn lonely, she needs no help. She is fine and she can get by with life. She is her own company, her own fire. And there is truth to it. She has been at peace with her solitude, and her skin is the only blanket she has needed to keep her warm in a world where people can be cold even while their lives burn away. Or maybe she says her flag is redder than the crimson she wears on her lips you can spot it from afar, the danger it invites being far too tempting to ignore when all your scopes are zeroed in on where she is, and who she is about to become, her banner bright as the blood that will boil in your veins before you completely lose them by the drop. She believes no one, owes nobody any explanation, because truth is whatever it is that she decides to qualify as one, and she shapes everything so that they may fit the course of her life in a city that, although shaped like a heart, is not the one to make her fall in love.

How I Write What I Write

"I want to see you write," she said.

"It's a solitary affair; I will bore you just by watching me," I replied.

"It doesn't matter."





I usually begin with a random word, sometimes a calculated phrase, oftentimes just a silly thought teetering between sanity and insanity, until it blossoms into a sentence — a life sentence mostly — because my faulty hands were given both a gift and a curse called prose, which I have to endure daily like a pile of shit trying to force its way out of my ass when the toilet is so damn near. It is a gift, because where I start to push pen on paper, or hack away at a keypad, is also where the magic begins, the kind that gets you baked without having to snort anything illegal — through your nose or elsewhere is completely your call — taking you to heights unimaginable it's almost like you're going places without having to catapult yourself from a trebuchet. The sky's the langit, as they say. Strangely enough, one can also say that writing is its own forbidden substance that has previously sent writers to nowhere other than jail only to be shot from behind if history is to remind us anything, but that's another story best told by Jose Rizal from his grave.

Alas, by the same token, this gift is also its own curse, because where the magic ends is where the nightmares creep in long before I could finish what I write. If it's about something sad — and for the love of crackers I rarely write about happy ones – the temptation to either downgrade everything into prosaic drivel, or leave it to gather dust as a draft left untouched over the course of a year or two, can be overwhelming. It is my escape from my escape, as temporary and unstable as the shifting seasons, for it will reel me back in sooner than later because in my freedom I am never truly free from anything. Or anyone. I have been writing for so many years and yet I still have to get myself fully desensitized from the emotional doom and gloom that I deftly hide, try as I might, under the cloak of fiction, because the longer I stretch the boundaries the more it consumes me, and the more I become one with what I write the more I reveal myself.

Which, of course, defeats the whole purpose of writing fiction.





"Are you really sure you want to see me write?"

"Yes."

"Alright then."





Someone from long ago said that I have a distinct way with my words, probably beyond playful, dressing everything with such pageantry despite the ambiguousness, to the point that clarity is not something you will want to demand from me. I thought Baby when I write, vagueness is my cup of tea, and I drink it everyday like a thirsty sonofabitch. And if I can make you wet by virtue of this ambivalence I possess, then allow me to speak in tongues forever. But that was just my imagination. Truth be told, the day I become clear may just as well be the day I stop writing altogether. I confided that, quite on the contrary, words are the ones that have their way with me. And so, how I write what I write depends on whether the words conceived in my mind will make me ballistic, or ecstatic, perhaps depressed, sometimes thoroughly unaffected, some other times fully possessed. If you see me sitting by the corner, staring at the wall while splitting hairs, mumbling gibberish, then you have me at my perfect form, about to give birth to a novel.

Which reminds me. Years back, when I was in the midst of attempting to complete the drudgery of writing a novel – which to this very day remains stillborn, my room back in the province its womb – I remember someone telling me that she feels like she is talking to the dead national hero whenever I reply to her. I thought Very well then, Josephine Bracken, my dear judge jury and executioner, touch me not, this filibuster, but should I turn my back now and wait for the bullets to rip through my heart just so that we can call it a day? I wasn't particularly amused with the comparison, because I knew I was far from the caliber of the guy who used to hide under the names Laong Laan and Dimasalang, he who already published two major novels at my age, while I struggled like a slug crawling uphill to even finish just one draft. That was the last time I talked to her. But I figured maybe she had a point without her being fully aware of it. Maybe I needed to be as seditious, treacherous, and rebellious as I could be so that I can finally understand how to write what I write, even if it meant I had to lay my neck on the line, if not the entire corpus of my existence.





"Splice, on cue: I'm a fan, not a muse."

"You are both."

What A Love Song Is Not

Filed under fiction, in the hopes that all this will never happen, if it hasn't just yet.

A love song is not something you will want to remember as you revisit this page five years or maybe decades into the future, which will be an excursion into a territory once so familiar you could stare it in the face without flinching, because here is a place where only your brave and daring self is willing to venture, confusing fact for fiction, and so is the other way around. But you tell yourself, "That was then," to which you respond, "Perhaps," because you will barely recognize that there was a time in your life when you were someone a little different, still borderline timid, heart precarious at times, but far more deliberate with your intentions, although this you will have to debate with yourself time and again, for which a resolution you shall barely reach. You can't even tell what a love song is not, but you will still belabor the point. And for good measure.

Maybe a love song is something that you will want to forget, to squeeze out of the pulp of your sanity, leaving you stale as a proper consequence, a price that must be paid at the cost of your memory of the girl floating away with such finality that the point of no return is all that will ever be. Beyond that, you will never go back, and so will she. All the rules of goodbye will have to be obeyed, because at least for once you were happy, and that is more than what life will allow.

Time is of minor consequence, because a love song is not what you hear on the radio first thing in the morning before you sleep, or late in the evening after you wakeup. It's the one that plays at the back of your mind whenever you remember her, without warning, and at any given hour, like the time many years from now when you will recall seeing her waiting for you for the very first time, seated calmly, her dress black as the night, your knees melting like butter with each step you take towards her, fingers fidgety, knowing fully well that someone so beautiful inside and out you do not deserve, not in this lifetime or the next, because her heart is not one to be trifled with, not even to be looked after, for she has learned not to give it away without mounting the strongest resistance, whether by force or by old age, for which she might lose her teeth first before she will ever lose her heart, herself being way ahead of her age precisely because time is on her side.

And so that night you approach her, and as you do there is a tune playing at the back of your mind, although you know that it is what a love song should not be. Many years from now you will try to reach into this past juncture in your life, your hands barely holding themselves together, the song you can barely remember as you struggle to give it its rightful place in your recollection, but that same night, the one in your reverie, will hold a space so special in your memory you can hardly replace it. You are forgetful, but that evening you will never forget, her embrace most of all, which came all too sudden, brief as it was, before both of you parted ways and you went home. You walked the short distance, and it felt as though you had to anchor your feet on the ground lest you become airborne, your heart ballooning with what Milan Kundera properly called as the unbearable lightness of being.

Then again, a love song is not the one that played over the car's stereo that same night when you were on your way home, thinking how in the world you ever found someone like her, which should have been next to impossible, because she likes to play hide and seek if only to test you of how conscious you are of her world, of what she allows others to see, and those that she decides to leave out, stored somewhere only she knows until someone else finds out, kept almost like a closely guarded secret but not quite, which is why she says she has nothing to hide, especially from you, an observer, almost an intruder, that she must likewise observe, because she blips in and out. One moment she is there, the next moment she is not, and for this she had you on your toes, and still has, to which you must perpetually take caution because you have everything on the line. But you have been reckless since day one, and you soldier on with all the bullets you can fire. In the end, you have always known that there can only be one casualty, and between the two of you it will not be her.

You will be as dead as an exploded ventricle, death by heart shot, by which time you are still yet to figure out what a love song is not.

The Boy and the Weather Called La Niña: An Episode of Body Language

It rained today just like the days before, and the clouds washed him over, his shirt clinging to his body, the fortress of the language he has only truly ever known, never the words that he writes that can only reach not quite as far no matter how hard he stretches his imagination, contrary to what people would make him believe. He is not a poet, never has been. He is just drenched in rain, his body tired and weary. That is all there is to him. Or perhaps just a little more, but not as much.

True to form, his body language will betray his words, revealing in them what he truly means the way light would shed off the shadows that embrace him like an armor for a skin:

the I hope you're telling the truth for every I don't believe you whenever he looks away discreetly, shying away from the prospect of revelation, except that the depth of the gratitude in his heart will swell all the way up to his eyes, so much so that he cannot help but just sigh as he looks at you, which is his inward acceptance of the things that can hardly be, though he is thankful all the same. There is no relief to be had in kindness being few and far between these days, yet in this mess that is called life he easily discovers light wherever there is darkness, to the point that there are things that might as well be the start of something grand, something where kindness could push all the way above ground with more than enough conviction than one is willing to offer, germinate like a seed nascent with life, and finally meet the sun, and yet this you will hardly notice in him;

the glances he would steal despite the certainty of contempt, his eyes unmoving except for the momentary blink, everyone else busy with what they think keeps them alive these days, not realizing that what sustains them is the same thing that will kill them, and their judgment will fall on him swiftly, calling him out for the furtive nature of what he does, but glance he would anyway, because fuck it, living has never been a crime, and such a thief that only takes away what his eyes will allow him to hold captive can never be found guilty in medias res, because the crime is extinguished by the time the deed is done as if it never happened;

the fingers that would brush against his own will mark him like an imprint for the rest of his life, or maybe what little is left of it. Those gentlest and slightest of all touches, whether by accident or on purpose, they will clobber his senses, turning the screw in his head a little loose one bit more, his brain cast under a spell he finds challenging to name because prudence and recklessness never mix like oil is to water, prompting him to drink more water than he should, because his throat is dry and damn will she ever wet her lips with mine he mumbles to himself, and while some things he will forget and most things he will remember, he will not find what you said he is trying to look for. Here or elsewhere, it matters not. Hands are meant for holding, they say, but no one can ever hold the rain.

And so, La Niña made it rain today just like the days before. It is the weekend and the boy could just walk all the way home and weather the storm, the language of and in his body waiting for the clearance that the rain could bring so that he could talk a little less, write a little less, and do a little bit more. By the time he gets home, he would have nothing to write about, talk about, and all that is left will be body language.

But this, it seems, is just the beginning. Or maybe not, clarity to dwindle down to the point of confusion.

Tender Feet

To the child, the love of my life, who will never be born from the womb of the love I will never forget: I would have been your dad, but please forgive me just the same. These tired hands have earned a living for most of my life, and they would have easily carried you to sleep on so many nights, but all that is left of the strength they now have is one that can even barely cling on to hope, a burden so heavy to bear for those who have nothing more to lose. These tired hands, rest they know not, but today until God knows when, they will be just as restless. I did what I could, and I have loved you even when you were still in my dreams, a place where you will now forever be, of which my weary eyes can only breach whenever I close them. There you will blossom on the days that will never dawn and the nights that will never follow, I never to witness you become who you would have wanted to be, you never to walk this earth with tender feet.

I tried to save myself from myself, from the monster it has been growing into, a cynic who could only see the wretched hours and days revealed as months and years of peril. I gave it my all to undo what I have slowly become, but it was too late. My heart was anchored on all the wrong places, and they took root deep where I will never be able to reach them, far beyond my grasp with what little I know. I never knew how it was to be a father, nor exactly why I desired to be one, but the thought gripped my heart as though my life depended on it, held hostage where escape never stood a chance. And in the sorry state where I dwell, made to confess by the circumstance where I find myself now, I say these things not as an excuse, but as a belated attempt to make me remember, or so that I may never forget, that once there was a man who could only love so much.

But if alibis and dreams were to count for the many times when I imagined you, I would have drifted too far and lost count, like a boat that could only depend on the stars for navigation. The happy days I have created in my mind linger like an aftertaste that was never there to begin with, and I search for them with much yearning that the more I look for them the lonelier I get, which is the same thing I would have told her, and which she probably already knows by now. These days when I walk I bow my head as if there is nothing more to look forward to, my shoulders carrying a cross nobody sees, recognized only by those who have suffered a similar fate. How many of us are left, I cannot say. But we crowd the streets where you would have walked beside me, your tiny hand holding on to mine, never having to worry about time and how cruel it can get, because where there are no memories there is nothing to remember. And so I continue to dream, until I find you there.

A Lesson From Her Father, The Etymologist

“Go on, tell me, papa,” Emily says.

The Etymologist confides that Difficult and Hard are words that are similar but not the same. “On the one hand,” he says, “the word Difficult takes its origin from the Latin difficultas, which is an expression for the reversal (dis-) of ability (-facultas). Thus, what is difficult requires some level of skill; mere willingness is not enough. Practice is indispensable. Mastery is the goal. Ultimately, something is difficult because it demands skill.”

“On the other hand,“ the Etymologist continues, “the word Hard comes from the Old English heard, which means something is carried on with great exertion. Ergo, what is hard demands effort and commitment; no amount of skill can guarantee success with the struggle. Perseverance is vital”.

“This, Emily, is why it is often said that it is difficult to say Hello, and hard to say Goodbye.” The Etymologist looks at Emily, weariness growing in his eyes.

“So remember, young one,” he continues between suppressed coughs, “saying Hello takes skill, but saying Goodbye begs commitment.”

Emily smiles at the thought. She stares at the window, the setting sun pouring its light through the curtains, parting the shadows before spilling on the wooden floor. “Now tell me something about Hello and Goodbye, papa.”

The Etymologist leafs through his handwritten notes, drags a finger across the lines of text, stops, and resumes his reading. “The word Hello is a 19th century variant of the earlier hollo, which is related to holla, which, in turn, is from the French holà — an order to stop or cease.” He pauses to fix his reading glasses.

“An order,” Emily says.

The Etymologist nods. “So it is my love -- an order, and orders can only come from those who are in a position of power, whatever form it may be. And so, saying Hello is actually a blatant affirmation of imbalanced relations. To say Hello is to claim the upper hand, to assume the throne of authority.” He returns to the notes. “Meanwhile, Goodbye is a contraction of Good be with ye. Basically, it is a salutation in parting.”

“Is a goodbye final?”

“It is. Or at least it should be. Telling someone that the good be with them implies a sense of finality. The parting is the end, and you never know what is ahead for the person you are wishing goodness for, which is why you desire that good things come their way. From the point of goodbye, everything becomes unknown simply because there is nothing more between two people.”

“Can I say goodbye each day papa?”

“You can, of course, Emily, but it defeats the point of saying goodbye. The salutation loses its sense of permanence because there is no parting.”

“What happens, then, between Hello and Goodbye?”

The Etymologist glances at Emily. Faced with a question that has besieged him for years, one that has brought him to the lonely circumstance of raising a child who has never felt the warmth of a mother, the absence lingering before him like a shadow that stretches far into the night, reaching into his dreams until it crowds the sunrise as if to block the sun, he finally says, “Ah, that is where the magic is, my love. There are only so many words to say. All my life I have learned them, but what I have written can take you no farther than where you began. Everything else you will have to find out for yourself, for better or for worse.”

Isang Dipa

"Isang Dipa"
June 21, 2020