You Wake Up, Another Year Has Gone

Hey, you.

Life Lately

Sooooooo I've been MIA for the longest time, but it's been quite a busy time in my life (#HowDoYouAdultTBH).

How do I even begin.

This Is Home

(image credit here)

How can you
lie
so peacefully
in this bed
when I could barely
let the same sheets
touch my skin?
How
can you close your eyes
and let me sit
in the middle of the kitchen floor
at four in the morning
and watch the sun rise
over this joke of a life
I now have
Cradling a bottle of whiskey
or vodka
or tequila
or some other poison
to my chest
a hole carved out
where my heart used to be
dripping bitter blood
into my glass
half-empty
save for the excuses
I made up for you
Of where you had been
all those nights I slept alone
Probably entwined
around another woman's body
like the night you said you missed me
and I found you on someone else's bed
I can see the lie
at the nape of your neck
All the love crumbling
on that hotel room's doorstep
If I could go back
to the time it fell apart
will I understand
the person I found?
Since when did I start
to not recognize your eyes?
Since when did your scent
told of liar
instead of husband?
The person in front of me
is someone I don't know
Scarier than the monsters
beneath our bed
is the monster
who kissed me goodnight
like he never did
a wrong thing
in his life
Our life together
was not a life at all
A farce, an act
a world
where only you are satisfied
Do you have to ruin
all the lives
of the people
who had the misfortune
to be loved
by
someone--
no--
something
like you?
Before I break
your neck
before I break
my heart
again
and
again
I raise my glass
to cheer the stupidity
of the heart I thought you had killed
but still insists
to beat and live and love
I raise my glass
and let it fall
to break into a hundred jagged points
of pain and waste
an intoxicating mix of something
you had the nerve to call love
I pick a point
any point
and raise it to the light
of a moon
that thinks I'm too pathetic
to show its face
to somebody like me
whose pride
cannot be found anywhere
even at the bottom
of a bottle of alcohol
or under a fake bed
of a pretend marriage
with make-believe vows and promises
You upended my life
and all I get
is a ring on my left hand
that had lost all meaning
it may have ever had
What was supposed to be forever
was forgotten
under the skirts
of a girl
who probably melted
under his touch
like I did
when you promised me
worlds I have never seen
a love I cannot begin to imagine
As I lay my soul bare
for his hands to explore
I tucked these promises
into the pockets of my heart
to save them for later
All those promises
now thrown over his shoulder
after his pants
and all of his other clothes
The hand
with our wedding ring
caressing
somebody else's body
The same lips that kiss me
behind my ear
and under my jaw
whispered some other name
as it skated over a body
that he has broken
with promises he cannot keep
The same lips that kissed me
kissed somebody else
I should have turned
and run away
from those dirty, unfaithful hands
and leave with the remaining shreds
of self-respect
I may have left
And
yet
the
questions
stay
Why does my skin
call out for your touch
when all I can do
is cringe in disgust?
Why do I still curl up
and keep your voice
in a corner of my heart
and let it play
in the absolute silence
of the loneliest nights?
Your existence
can still make me shake
Sway the fortress
I thought I had built
against you
until I realized
that the fortress was still you
it was always you
it always will be you
Why do I choose to stay
when every instinct screams to run away?
I don't want to be
another murder story
of a woman
who lost who she was
when her husband found comfort
in somebody else's arms
I don't want to be
one more death
in a tragic love story
that was doomed from the start
I am no saint
but I could be a martyr
a martyr
to a promise
I swore to keep
I don't need a freedom
that somebody else
has decided
but my own
I will drop the jagged points
that are the shards of our marriage
into the trash
along with everything
I thought was true
Of a house that held
a pretend family
and a living corpse
of a woman once loved
I will climb back into bed
Slip in between the sheets
Let myself be caught
in the prison of his arms
Be part of the tangle
of arms and legs and hair and fingers
and so many nerve endings
Burning, igniting
meeting, departing
Open
the patched-up hole in my chest
Tear apart my rib cage
and set my heart free
Let it bleed
as I lie in this bed
and live the lie I wanted
A lie of love
I am willing to take
as I bury my heart
in the arms
of the man who killed it
and the child that kept it beating
and I smile
close my eyes
and think myself free

Let Me Stay

(image credit here and here)

Please shut the door and follow me home
Let me lead you back
to the space between my arms,
the place where I can always hold you safe
Don't look inside the room
no one's inside
I promise you
there is no one inside
that will break us apart
Please close your eyes
against the ugly truth
That we are standing
outside
a hotel room for two
in a city
five thousand miles away
from where I told you
I'll be
Please believe me
when I say
I was alone
Please don't stare
at all the signs
screaming at your face
Don't sniff out the lie
or the perfume
that wasn't yours
Don't reach out
to rub out
the lipstick smudge that wasn't yours
or the kiss you didn't give
on my neck
Just
please
don't
say
anything
Let's walk away
from everything I've done
Please hold my hand
and it will strive to forget
the body it held
that was not yours
There will be no girl
inside that room
if you promise to forget
tonight ever happened
I would never have lied
And you would never have caught me
So please
let us go away
You and I
Back to our world
where you love me
and I love you
Let me love the pain away
strangle the accusations out of your throat
smother your lips with mine
to mute the sobs
that only betrayal can make
drown out your tears
in a sea of endless apologies
I will never be not sorry
for as long as I live
for as long as you let me
for as long as you want me
I will l tell you how much I love you
Like how I could
Like how I should always would
I will cook your scrambled eggs with cheese
just how you like them
Dance a waltz with you
while the radio plays rock and roll
Wash the dirty laundry
Throw away the trash
Break my ribs, take out my heart
Find the lies and rip them apart
Please let me try
to make things right
Let me make you forget tonight
Let me say sorry
Let me stay
Let's walk away
and close the door
Let the girl sleep
and let the light
of the morning sun
kiss her awake
instead of me
Let the bed cling to her body
every square foot
of skin and bone
be covered with sheets
that are the untold story
of all the correct mistakes
we think we made
instead of letting my lips
travel down
the planes and courses
of a body
that wasn't mine to keep
of a body
of a person
that wasn't mine
to anything
Let my fingers tangle with yours
instead of fisting them in her hair
Let me whisper your name
into your ear
into the beautiful curves
of heryour collarbones
Let me slip your clothes off your shoulders
Let your legs end and curl up with mine
Let me be yours
you
only you
So let go of the doorknob
and take my hand
Let's walk down the hallway
and out the hotel
Back to our house
our room
our world
Our bed
our sheets
our bodies
And when we wake up
let me cook the breakfast
and feed the baby
Let me stay
Let
us
stay
you and me
Our family of three

After The Act

(image credit here)

I disentagle myself

from the stained 

and crumpled sheets

Blink at the bleak morning light

peeking through the curtains

from a sun

too ashamed

to share its light

on somebody like me

whose dignity

lay in pieces

scattered across the room

like every piece of dirty laundry

that came off

with the remaining shreds

of self-respect

I may have left

For there is no turning back

from the time I lay open

Every part of my trembling soul

for his dirty unfaithful hands

to touch

to claim

to possess

opress

and I gave it to him

Every last inch of the woman I tried to become

Somebody-to be's perfect muse

Somebody-to-be's ideal wife

as I slowly became the woman

I never wanted to be

There was no fitting the pieces back together

Because the moment he touched me

I was undone

The thread unwinding from the tapestry

of my perfectly imagined future

The moment he touched me

he crushed my soul into powder

I became the drug, the perfect escape

the scapegoat to all his mistakes

The moment

I let him touch me

ended any beginnings

I may have left

in this lifetime

There was no future

with a person

who'd replace his present with me

A present full of diapers and teething rings

Lipstick stains on collars

Phone numbers hidden in cigarette packs

A tan line on the left hand's fourth finger

And lying

and cheating

I became another notch

in another couple's bedpost

Another notch in the belt

of a cheating scumbag

Another check off

an adulterer's fuck list

I look around the room and observe

the crime scene of the death

of the me I could respect

I see the murder of a girl

who has no idea

of what a woman really is

That more than enticing flesh

model bone structure

and beauty that all the make-up

and fashion can fake

Was that the woman that died in that room

could have had so much

without having him

That she was infinitely more

than a one-night stand

or nights with a borrowed husband

That she deserved more

than being a lie or a secret

That she deserved to be loved

for the whole universe to see

But she will never know

for no one will tell her she was right

no one but the reflection

on the cracked bathroom mirror

of a girl with messy hair

a tear-streaked face

lips swollen from last night's sins

and a broken soul

who will tell her she regrets

ever saying yes

never saying no

No one will tell her

that after she leaves that room

she will meet the man

who wouldn't mind her scars

and wash away the stains

left by the man who bled her dignity dry

She will meet the man who will love her

and let the universe know

But no one will tell her

because she never left the room

The cracks on the mirror became a fissure

a breaking

point

to the blue-green lines

just under the skin

the warm, warm skin

of her face

her palms

her lips

her wrists

Long, jagged lines

of purple and blue-green

slashed to dark

dark red

No one will tell her anything

No one will tell her to fight

for she owns no one

no one to fight for her

no one to fight for

no one to fight

no one

no

more

To Newly-Twenty Me

(image credit here)

There will always be moments like this from now on. Moments when you are just scared of whatever happens next. These moments make you human, but these are the moments that would make you want to be invincible. But for invincibility, you have to throw away humanity, for those who are invincible have lost touch with their reality. They become invincible because they have nothing to fear, and the emotions that make people so helplessly weak are the same ones that make them so beautifully human. Fear of what tomorrow will bring, fear that no matter what happens today supernovas somewhere can create their own Big Bang. Your life can implode upon itself in as many stars are there in this galaxy but the universe will not care enough to stop. Rather, it would care too much and live on. All of us have the selfish wish that the world would acknowledge our existence, but there are other galaxies that function without the tiniest idea that we exist. We want the world to stop for our benefit but all it can do is move along and move on.

Raise your head, for even if there are pennies under your feet there is a lot more of the sky and the universe that you ought to see. Raise your chin, for although it is important to be humble you ought to know that you have a place in this earth. In this lifetime, in this century, in this millisecond, you are woven into the fabric of history; you are the needle and thread of one ordinary day of legendary possibilities. Raise your head and your chin, and know enough to claim your place in this earth. Raise your hooded gaze and see what world you have created with your very eyes. Square your shoulders and carry your burdens that you have more than one shoulder to help you carry them, like how people are supposed to stay together and how humans are supposed to be. The curves of your spine are meant to be straightened out, not by violence, but by love. Straighten your back to stand up for what is just; straighten your spine because you stand by what you love. And at the times we involuntarily slump in defeat, we square our shoulders, slap our cheeks. The pain will remind you that you are alive. The pain spurs revenge--the revenge against disappointment and unhappiness by being satisfied and happier.

The positive feelings may not last long. But they never disappear. Same as fear--it will never be removed from society. Each and every individual will possess a smidgen of raw terror at the darkest corners of their hearts, folded into a box that will unlock itself at the best and worst of times.

And it's okay.

It's okay to have and feel fear. It's okay to not be brave all the time, to feel like hiding under fifteen blanket layers and a rotten mask of cool indifference. It's okay to have wobbly knees, stomach butterflies, chills that take elevator rides up and down your spine for fun. It's okay to be a coward sometimes, and to feel like you're not up for the world. It's okay to admit defeat, because if you don't then the real loser is you. You lost to yourself, never to the world and its all-important natural functions, not to the society and their pretentious classifications of what perfection should be. Not to anybody, with different unique beliefs. No. You lose only to yourself, but that's okay. Because then, you can amend. In the end, you can win against the world. Contrary to popular belief, sometimes fighting the losing battle will show more merit in your character than anyone else has to say about you.

It's okay to lose yourself along the way, because eventually you will find and get yourself back. You may come back a little bruised, a few cuts and scrapes and all sorts of injured. You may also not come out in one piece. You can have your soul shattered into a million impossible pieces. Your heart can be ripped out of your chest, a hole punched through, and put back as if nothing happened. That hole may never heal, and maybe you'll be left with a hastily patched up piece of muscle that will not stop bleeding over the lives of the people you meet. It is sometimes not our choice to get hurt, but we go ahead and do it because we're stupidly, beautifully human.

It is okay to doubt being alive, existing in this tiny miracle that we call life. But never doubt your importance, not once, not ever. It is okay to be fearful of yesterday, and tomorrow, to acknowledge the many different phobias that stretch through time and space. But never question your significance, for your memories and experiences can never be repeated or duplicated by any single particle of even the most powerful star in the universe. For the idea of you was important enough that the usually cannot-be-bothered universe has fermented all the atoms that makes you a warm living, breathing creature, and yet it is still the idea of your existence that makes you significant in the existence of the universe.

You are the completion of the map of human existence. Remember your significance, for you are important. No matter what you think the universe says, there are facts that should always keep you going: you have a purpose, and you are important.

Why Study Communication Arts?

(image credit here)

My brain-to-mouth filter is faulty at best. Sometimes, it works too well to a point that I don't speak at all, content with plugging off the rest of the world with songs from Japan to Great Britain to America and back to the Philippines, or defying time-space dimensions with books or movies or TV series. And yet, there are times that I let my words trip over each other in their excitement to get out and be expressed, telling of subjects, people, cultures that I am passionate about, wisecracking (admittedly) corny jokes, and trying to prove my inner swagger by talking like I'm one of the cool kids. I'm more noisy online, the flow of conversation easier for me without the eye-contact and actual people in front of you. Talking to people has and always will be tricky, for there are ticks and bubbles of privacy and personal space that you always consider, whether you do it through a screen or a keyboard or a phone or static space. Too scared to always cross the line, always too uncomfortable to be too close for comfort--that was, and always will be me. Yet I like warm hugs, like that cute animated snowman, and for the past four years I've been contradicting myself that made me want to have an answer. After all those years of education, who was the me created? How do you label and define the person typing these words?

I am a paradox; I came from an institution filled with numbers and equations and chemical formulas and inertia. There was constant questions about the universe and how it was formed, how we became to be as Homo sapiens. Friends have asked me: why enroll into this type of curriculum in high school? Why spend time solving and balancing equations when my head was more suited to floating around with the clouds, or buried into the books I read in class that, er, weren't related to class?

So I enrolled into this degree program. Following my heart, spending my parents' money on an expensive but privileged education, still not being allowed into malls because of the juvenile uniform, the whole nines. I've been careful not to mention my high school--not that I'm embarrassed of it in any way, just that there's a certain expectation and distancing that happens when people think you're smarter than what you really are--but when people do start to know, the same questions were asked. Why enroll into this degree when you come from such a different path? Why not try medicine or engineering with what you know? Why rather not be anywhere but here?

The answers I have only get to blog post and diary entry, but they stay majorly unchanged. This was my way of trying to answer my own questions about the universe, of the importance of the existence at this place and at this time, how we became more than a person, but as a human individual with sets of values and principles and quirks and philosophies. Of questions of why we exist, outside food chains and stupid pyramid hierarchy of needs. Of how we feel outside hormones and chemical reactions, how we became permanent in the only constant facts of change and death. That maybe by this choice I have bound myself would help me articulate everything going through my brain into words and speech.

And yet, here I am. Unable to look in the eye half of the guys in my block, the same people I've been with for the past four years. I'm not the expected communicator this degree would churn out, all booming voice and overflowing confidence. I still prefer to sit tucked into the corner, the left or right of the very end of the second row, depending on the classroom and the professor's preference of alphabetical pseudo-order. I stumble over my words, use the podium or whoever is sitting in front of me as a shield whenever I brave to prove a point. Everything that requires talking in front of the class, stating opinions that may go against theirs, goes against every cell in my body screaming to stay away from conflict. Never good at handling arguments, sitting back from taking any major decisions (with the exception of meal choices, or my friends and I will have end up not eating anywhere in said four years). I rant through tweet, status reports, and creative retelling of events in this corner pocket of the interwebs. My accent is still beautifully native, unable to adopt the most-prized twang of the DJs and TV personalities and lack (or refusal?) of practice. I converse in the vernacular, yet write and think and dream in this language that felt like a second skin of my brain, ally of my ideas and witness to the written words my mouth could not express.

Descriptions of me range from quiet and aloof to overly adrenalin-rushed and exuberant, and I don't know what to believe. There are a million possibilities of conversations running through my head, possible scenarios from this world or other dimensions. Yet rarely do I speak outside the written word. And there is the power of the speech of silence that I have learned to value throughout the years; something about choosing the battles you fight and win and lose.

I never know exactly where to put myself.

I'm not exactly the stereotypical student of the art of communication, the whole base idea weird to begin with. For not all of us want to be in front of the camera, for we understand the utmost importance of the people behind the lens and the lights. We are not always noise and glittering lights, and enjoy the importance of being alone with ourselves. Nor are all of us performers, because there is an understood need for the people behind the curtain to push the right people into the spotlight. We are not all of an attention-hungry race, for we value the silence of coffee shops and libraries. We do not always act out tragedies to get out of responsibilities, for we know the responsibilities we hold with the media that we handle. Not all of us are at parties, for we all had thesis requirements to pass. Films to make. IMC campaigns to flesh out. Advertisements to make believable. Plays and events to plan. So many things to try, so many things to do. We defy the very word of stereotype, for there will never be one type, not one mold to fit us, not one label to contain us.

So I sit here and type and try to answer other questions that started this whole shenanigan, and realize I have the answer.

What am I doing here? What am I trying to do?

More than a ploy to romanticize the already dramatic "great scheme of things", there's a tentative reason why I willingly went through all the readings and papers these past four years. There's also the unstoppable need to prove yourself--to your professors for the grades you want, to your peers for the acceptance into this circle, to your parents for the assurance that their money isn't going to waste, and maybe most of all to yourself, for the assurance that you are not going to waste.

So I sit here and write, and tentatively answer. That I don't know yet. It is hard to assume your purpose in the world when you have yet to map out what that world really means to you. And maybe that for now, it's okay not to know. And eventually, the answers will arrive at my doorstep after constant wrestling with the universe, ready to meet the person that I am. All I can hope is that the universe likes what it gets and choose to stay.

I don't have labels. I don't have a clear definition. But I am a human person, and the beauty of that comes from being able to try on different identities and choosing which is the most comfortable against my skin. I am a human person, and with the constancy of change comes the assurance that nothing will permanently stick. By the time we expire we are to be identified by a few words in our tombstones, but the joy in living comes with the ability to constantly shift outside different words into others.

I am a human person. I may not have the best brain-to-mouth filter, but I try my best to get across the important stuff.

If I may choose any definition to remain, let it be that I am human, and that I have been good at it.

Platform Terminal

(image credit here)

As published in The Chronicle A.Y.2013-2014

Train stations and delays, flights and arrivals and departures. You were always the question mark in my carefully mapped out plan, the only wrinkle in my path to tomorrow.

You were that question I can never answer.

I know the basics, like how you came into my life (it was college, everything is scary, and you were the first friend in the sea of faces and strangers and sky-high expectations), but I don't know how you made yourself so important. Nothing was ever permanent, but you made me feel that you are. Through deadlines and stress and all the unhealthy habits, you were always beside me, or else in the background but still a significant presence.

You were there. You were always there. You were the only definite spot in the map, the only landmark of my failed romantic ventures. You were the last saving point in a game, always there to urge me forward and try again.

I never realized when you turned from the saving point to the goal.

You were the princess to be saved in the tower. The final stage, however, was also you.

Despite your permanence in me, you were never one to be still. You were the dictionary definition of action. Movement became you, and life happened with your step and smile and snap of your fingertips. And despite my geeky, video-game analogy, you were never the one to wait for a savior. You were the type of princess who owned the castle and made friends with the dragons and trolls that guard it.

You never waited.

You said so yourself, until I met you. You said the last four words lightly, but I heard the weight of the words.

I was your anchor, and you were scared of that. Anchors kept ships at ports, and you only saw ports as changing points for the next adventure. But ports were also safe places, for repairs and refreshments and getting to know what it means to have stability.

I was an anchor. You were the princess in the tower.

Maybe we were waiting for each other. For the ship to set sail, for its final passenger. Maybe, just maybe, this was why we waited.

The train is slowing to a stop, the final boarding call is being sounded out. There were places we need to go. It was time we stopped meeting them alone. There were crossroads to be taken both ways, with held hands in both directions. There were paths that needed wrinkles for people to try and iron them out, questions that needed to stay unanswered until that right one comes along and the right person answers.

Coming along, then?

The Touch Language

(image credit here)

I never understood
what it meant
to be this close
to another human being
Before this,
before us,
I only read
of fairy tale beginnings
and beautiful endings
I have yet to learn
the secrets of
the language of skin to skin
Of the creases and calluses
of hesitant hellos
and fingerprint friendships

I don't know
what became
our beginning of everything
but I know it included
singing in the rain
without an umbrella
and twenty-inch pizzas
Doodles behind notebooks
and guitar chords
Swept up hair
and drunken
must-be confessions
and maybe a sliver of
confusion(?) and denial(?)
before
we became
this

This bundle of blushing
bumbling idiots
With a million undiscovered nerve endings
on every inch of skin
from the shoulders when we leant into each other
to our fingers
as we held on and wondered
how deliciously different
this feels
This
whatever it is

Silence
was our loudest answer
for we are born
in the quiet of each other
amidst the noise
of a thousand people
bustling with their own brands
of hellos and goodbyes
while here we stand
meeting each other

Hand to hand
finger splayed against finger
palms together
with signals from every known nerve ending
meeting

Hello
Hello

De-composition

(image credit here)

What drove people
to create things?
Monuments and destruction
were the endings
of all the wars
that ever were.
So what was the point
of all the music and
the movies and the
paintings, all the art and
dance and bombs and
explosions and births
and orgasms?

Why does longing
for the warmth of human flesh
struggle to find descriptions
that raises the blush in your cheeks
and memories that should be kept
in heart and not grey matter?

Do we long for perfect
first kiss stories
to hide the ugly truth
of why the world
is falling apart
in its seams?

Or weep over
the things we cannot control
to show that we
are truly grateful
of all the things
we take
for
granted?

So why does it seem
that for every wrong
there are
a multitude of rights
waiting
to make you feel guilty
of what you can have?

Why do we seek
to find
all that is
painstakingly,
obviously,
beautiful
and take a picture?

Are we that afraid
of wiping out
our own species
so we are now
all desperate
to leave our mark in the world?

Every polluted molecule
every sullied part of nature
we are there
every birth
and every death
somehow
we are there

Of the things we deem ordinary
and the things we may not understand
our existence
is woven into every droplet
of rain
and paint
and tear
and alcohol
that ever existed

We are there

Every grain of rice
of sand
of wheat
Every leaf
of tea bushes
and marijuana

We are there


In the midst of creation
there will always be
the destruction
and decomposition
of what we know
as "the self"

For what is the self
but beliefs
and memories
and feelings
coming together
to form
you
and
I
and everyone else


So why do we have
to make sure
that someone
somewhere
somehow
would remember us?

Is this struggle
made for the comfort
of those we leave behind?
To have a final say
in how we want
to be remembered?

Or do we create
for the sake of creation
to fill the urge
of emptiness
seeking for
pretend completion?

Cracks

(image credit here)

Our love is spelled out on the cracks in the pavements

and the dirt caked into your fingernails and your once fair skin

now illuminated by neon-light signboards and faint lighter glows

and the cigarette fires screened by the hazy clouds of smoke

pumped out by blackened lungs and nicotine-stained gums

and curling into spirals around your fingers laden with cheap imitation rings

to hide the patch of whiter skin on the fourth finger of your left hand

like a scar, now clutching a fistful of empty, polluted air

as everyone else goes home to their partners or families or

imaginary happy relationships or procrastinated papers

and you order another drink, a tall glass of your own

choice of poison and watch the stream of people reduce

to a trickle, looking around hopefully for another soul as lonely as yours

But like as many nights, you fail yet again

with nobody but the bartender to bother

Who every night wears invisible headphones of indifference

and slaps on a fake smile of concern

for vagrant misfits that assault him, not with broken bottles and glasses

and spilled alcohol, but with the deepest pits of human consciousness

awakened by spirits and the hidden need to be heard and understood

And you, the you I now barely recognize, were the bar's regular,

the girl with the reserved bar stool of sorrow and shame

Drowning your tears in liquid numbness, the alcohol dulling the pain

of unreturnable yesterdays, regretful todays, and lost tomorrows

As you retell the story of the day you never wanted to remember

you look up and around and realize you were alone, more than ever

The bartender was clearing your glass, wiping the tears and drool

you left on the table, and tell you, not too unkindly, that it was closing time

And you reach for your wallet, groping at crumpled bills

and finding the last love note I wrote you

before stumbling out of the bar and the bartender lets slip 

the fake understanding to give way to real sympathy

And you stumble out of the cab that takes you home,

kick off your shoes, and fall face first onto the bed

You let the sobs begin, shaking your whole body

from every tangled hair on your beautiful head, to the toes that curl up involuntarily

against the raw truth of it all, all that has happened and all you have refused to accept

As you fall asleep again this way, your body is a lonely apostrophe

in a bed that was too big when you shared it with someone before

I long to wipe away the tears still falling from your closed eyes

from the happy dreams you are having

of the two of us together

hand-holding

laughing

breathing

alive

But I could only make the breeze blow softer on your face

Jealous that it could touch your skin, ruffle your hair the color of baby corn

in the first hours of the morning, while I sit here

Denser than air but less solid than water

Cradling your head in my arms

Holding you, but not holding you

Always in the void, the in-between

Of nothingness, and almost-somethingness

Our love is spelled out on the cracks on the pavement

Broken, unfinished roads to once familiar

now unknown destinations

Of what was once whole and known

into fragments of what we've built

Our love was spelled out on the cracks on the pavement

was my last conscious thought

as my life's essence flows away

Filling in the cracks in the concrete

but cutting unhealing wounds

into your heart

and mine

Wallflower

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You stood there

head bowed

back straight

pink-tinted cheeks

You held the gaze

of every heart

Everyone envied

the wall that was your friend

Everyone wanted

to be that one guy

that would raise your head

and make you smile

But you were busy looking

For patterns in the dust

Too scared to see constellations

In somebody else’s eyes

You were so busy

Making yourself small

But you were everything but

Unnoticed and invisible

I wish I could tell you

All the things I’ve said

But this whole conversation

Was all in my head

For I was leaning

Against the opposite wall

Nursing a drink to my chest

And wishing I wasn’t so tall

I wish I could tell you

How pretty you look

Or how the lights made your freckles

And your dress light up the room

Or how the sweep of your eyelashes

Against your cheeks

Made me want to be brave

And make small talk

Everyone wanted to hear

How the wallflower speaks

Was it a whisper to the heart

Or a shout to the universe?

But you are a wallflower

And I’m more of a weed

But the walls are our anchors

Our ports, our barriers

The room was too big

To be too close to you

The room was too small

To be right next to you

I thank time and space

For bringing us here

Awkward but not cold

Quiet but not alone

But the universe can

Only push me so much

I am too attached

To my wall and familiarity

So when I saw you

That night at that party

Both of us not knowing

Why we were there

I can only look

Stop, and then stare

Too scared to try and ruin

What I built in my head

Imaginary happiness is best

Without the emotional baggage

For you are a wallflower

Beautiful, but not fleeting

And I was once

a non-believer

But the chance I got

To see your smiles

Across the room

Made me think

That you were a flower

With you own sun

And your existence was

What blooming really is

(Not) A Special Snowflake

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You never were a special snowflake. Special, yes, but your smiles are too warm and your hugs too comforting for you to be likened to the snow. You are more like a breath of fresh air, gently caressing my face with your little laughs and our inside jokes. Never cold but for when you are not around, you are the sun that makes my morning.

Cold was when you turned away. Cold began when you stopped smiling. Frozen was when my heart ran out of its supply of your sleepy face when you just woke up and the voice that cracked when you sing songs that were too high. Frozen was when I ran out of my supply of your smirks and witty comebacks.

Frozen is what I am now.

I can't pretend to not know what happened.

There was enough evidence in the news and the papers.

I wish I could just go back to the sunshine and the warmth. But you were gone, and enjoying it without you seemed like such an insult to you, who taught me how to enjoy it.

At the very end, you snatched away the warmth you gave me in the first place.

In the end you really were a special snowflake. You were special, and you were cold at the very end. You melted away with the sun, and froze with the warmth of a thousand unhappening tomorrows.

To Take a Peek at the Unknown

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She wonders if she steps over the ledge if anyone would cry. Holding a bunch of wildflowers in her hand, she grimly thinks about how she would be bringing her own funeral crown to her casket.

Then his voice called out and she remembered. Why she had flowers in the first place, who gave them to her, and the reason she was holding them.

And then she steps back from the rusty steel railings, takes her foot from the ledge to the more solid concrete stability of the rooftop's floor, and her life, and turned around to smile at the boy with the lopsided grin and the floppy curly hair, and whispers

Thank you

For taking me here

Rusty railings can't tempt her to take her life, nor can the bluest sky, as long as she had the almost wilting flowers in her hands and that unbearable thought of never seeing that lopsided grin again.

For now, she holds the flowers to her chest, and held out her hand to him. He runs a hand through his curly hair before it joined her hand, faint lines of rust tracing the skin of her palm, like what his fingers were currently doing.

Falling down heights and through the endless expanse of sky was nothing compared to falling into the endless depths of his eyes, the secrets they held and will tell, and falling falling for him.

The Graveyard Paradox Theory

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Submitted as a Gawad Ustetika 2013 Fiction entry

After the Game Over

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He throws down the controller in disgust. She giggles softly, her eyes still glued to the screen.They were parked in their usual places in front of the television set, passing their regular weekend afternoon playing the new game he had bought. She was kicking his ass in it, as usual.

"Why are you better at this game? I've been playing this for three days, and you got out of that level in thirty minutes," he says exasperatedly, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting.

"Because I had more sleep? Honestly, your eyebags have eyebags," she points out, her fingers a flurry of movement as she expertly moves through the game. He watches with begrudging respect at how she seemed to advance so easily. She was good at doing a lot of things.

Like making him fall for her. She was so good at it, she didn't even know she was doing it.

"It's summer vacation. I'm allowed," he says defensively. She reaches out to pat him on the head and ruffle his hair before singlehandedly gunning a zombie down.

"This really doesn't suit the image you usually show," he muses, hugging a pillow to himself. Imagining how she would fit in the circle of his arms--

Stop it, he scolds himself. You're just friends. Playing games. That's it.

"You're so in love with the idea of being seen as normal," she says, the amusement evident in her voice.

"You know that's not what I meant..." he says.

"I know, I'm just leading you to the point where you really say what you mean," she says.

He sighs and rubs the back of his neck, a sign that he was feeling shy.

"I'm glad there's a face you have that only I get to see," he says simply.

"It's easier being un-normal with you," she says thoughtfully, pressing out combinations of moves to kill a horde of zombies that suddenly appeared on screen.

"Thanks for indirectly implying that I'm weird," he mutters jokingly. To his surprise, she paused the game and turned to him with wide eyes.

"That's not what I meant!" she insists, as if it was really important that he understands this.

"...What did you mean then?" he asks, at a loss in the way things are turning out.

"I..." she starts, but instead looks down at the controller. She was at a loss too. As the silence stretched from okay to awkward, he retrieves the controller from her hands and resumed the game. The room was once again filled with the sounds of gunshots and groaning zombies as they meet death, and that sound of silence that was pushing the both of them to say something.

"You have to go into that building to find that last hidden item, not past it..." she says quietly, extending her hand towards him for the controller. "Here, let me try..."

"Fine, you try," he says, pitching the controller at her direction. She picks it up silently and started off from where he paused the game. He watched the screen for a while before realizing he was staring at her profile, illuminated by the glowing screen.

"You aren't weird... I'm just better at fictional worlds than in real life," she suddenly says. He focuses on the way the light shifted across her features and getting his suddenly dry mouth to reply.

"...But I'm real... and I'm here," he replies.

"I know...




that's what makes this world okay. After the game over, there's still this to come back to."



She was making it really hard for him to string words together to form a coherent reply.



"So... me over killing zombies?"


He sounds stupid, he knows, but he had to check.






She smiles.



"Definitely."

Smells Like School Spirit

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Sweat. Blood. Tears. Rain. Worn-out shoes. New shoes.

Pushing yourself against so many walls. Crashing against so many barriers.

Endless bottles of energy drinks. Perspiration, smelling like undoing baths and friendship and locker room secrets. In your minds it is sweet; it all smells like the best scent in the world (your fans won't tell you otherwise anyway).

There are a lot of moments. Moments a lot of people don't get to see. All the laps you run just to get closer for just one second faster. All the rings you miss shooting to get in that buzzer beater just on time. The moments when you walk away when a bold enough schoolmate approaches you and asks to take a picture with you. The you outside the court. The you just being you.

And water. A lot of it. There was bottled water, poured over tired heads and poured into parched waiting throats before standing up and going back to the grind. There was the water from the showers, blocking out expectations and fame and everything public and leaving you with your thoughts and your own expectations the very core of who you are and why you're doing all of this in the first place.

For the school? For the game?

For you?

For everyone?

And then there were the tears.

The happy kind. The sad kind. The "we probably look stupid but oh who cares" kind. The bittersweet kind. The victorious kind.

And amidst a sea of yellow, over the chaos of beating drums and screaming people, you gathered into a circle and raised your fists to the air. Index finger extended, you moved it in a circle around your head in one move of adrenaline-pumped oneness. The crowds cheered your names, your university.

You were one.

You were one more step away.

You shout along with the crowd, to the rhythm of the drums, to the cheers you hear every game, the cheers you know by heart.

You can never get enough of them. And you'll never get tired of hearing them.

Hours later when the ringing fades away from your eardrums, the crowds have thinned, and you're sitting in your university bus on the way back you remember.

You remember the crowds, the screaming, the cheering. The sound of the ball as it goes from the ball to your hand. Back and forth. Back, and it leaves your hand again as you shoot towards another game well fought, another game well played.

You remember why you are here in the first place.

It was worth it after all.

Attempts

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There were no boundaries left when it came down to her. All the layers were just clothes and more clothes and raw skin and bare bones and then there was her.

Fragile, so small, and yet so strong and so her. She was quiet, and he thought that as long as her image stayed in his heart he could keep her safe, but he was wrong.

No matter how delicate she was, she was beautiful. More beautiful than he thought he realized. It was a type of beauty he couldn't keep to himself, a type of beauty everyone noticed but her.

And he never realized he could feel fear until then. Never did he realize before that he would be afraid that he'd lose her. Never did he realize before that he couldn't keep her to himself.

So he attempted to stay away. He attempted to remove himself from her presence. He attempted to pretend he didn't exist. He attempted to pretend he didn't care.

But there is only so much you can pretend you don't feel.

There is only so much he can attempt to do. If what he feels is different from what he is trying to say; from what he is trying to show. There is only so much he can attempt to hide.

It took him several attempts to tell her the truth--his truth; his version, if that even mattered. Three words, probably the most cliche group of words in the history of forever. All his attempts to pull away, to remove himself from her life. All his reasons--the one reason, really--why he attempted to not feel the feelings he was showing her, telling her now.

She attempted to talk over him but he wouldn't let her talk until he felt he was over. Then he sat there, spent from pouring out everything in his heart to this one girl. 

The one girl that he felt would care. The one girl that really mattered.

Then there was silence. The uncomfortable kind (for him anyway). He was about to fill the silence by talking about the weather or something else neutral. Then she leaned forward.

She had attempted to kiss him on the lips but she got his nose. There were three seconds of embarrassed warm laughter.

Some attempts, when failed, are meant to be tried again.

That Time You Made Me Rhyme (and it was bad)

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You are a dust cloud blowing across my empty mind. The reason why I try to make my poems rhyme. The way I try to look nice, or cook fancy stuff even though I don't know a thing about thyme. And oh by the way, this poem kinda sucks, like the fact that at the park we can't feed the ducks.

But it was you. You, with your warm sunshine smiles and scalding hot chocolate mugs, feverish eyes bright when our lips meet and we introduce ourselves to each other repeatedly, through corny songs (but not as corny as this poem-rant) and that way you smile with the corner of your lips, or shouting at each other as we beat the high scores we set at Halo. The way your hair fans out when you lie down on a blanket in that park where we can't feed the ducks, using my stomach or my thigh as your pillow while you lose yourself in those books you love so much.

You are a firecracker, a burst of light against an expanse of black, black sky. I don't know why, but when I'm with you I just can't help but sigh.

Sigh, because I'm happy. Sigh, because I'm sad. Sigh, because I'm scared.

Sigh, because I don't know how long this will last.

The spine of your book pokes me out of my thoughts. You were sitting up, a patch of sunlight on your book and your exposed thigh (those shorts were a really good idea) as you grinned at me, and I felt warm inside out.

"Still with me?" you ask with a grin. I nod.

"Yeah."

I will be as long as you let me, I add in my head, as I lay back down and opened my own book. The bright sky was the perfect backdrop to the next words that I read.

You have something... no, someone important. You're a lucky oaf.

Frameworks of Decay

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A cloud of ravens swarmed around the roof, surrounding the abandoned house with a faint halo of dark feathers and the stench of death, of time slowly eating it up from its foundations. It was beauty left to rot. Slowly, desperately, it looks at you from across the field, silently pleading with broken window-frame eyes and gaping door-off-hinges mouths.

Am I not good enough, it seems to ask, gazing at us sadly.

We once lived there, in that house.

Those were happy times.

Now, the floors where we learned to take our first steps are giving under our feet. The places where we used to run around in, the space were we threw our first party and the spot where we first threw up from drinking too much in said party... they were barely recognizable. The stairs are missing whole steps, now not taking us anywhere but the past. Rooms that were the beginnings of our worlds, and the attic where we kept our old stuff... now, the whole house has become the attic, left behind under a dust cloth and never opened once again.

Until now.

We had stopped exploring the old house, stood in front of it and allowing its shadow to loom over us. You ran your hands over the prickly bushes and sorry stumps of what was once a beautifully tended flower garden, now reduced to weeds and creeping vines of more weeds. The ravens were coming back in small flocks, and they squawked over the two us irritably. It was annoying how they made us feel as if we were trespassing over a place that was rightfully ours.

But now, what was once our home was less than a mere skeleton of a house. The warmth, the memories, everything seemed to have fled the place. Like the owners, the occupants. Us.

You had unconsciously dug a little hole in the ground with the toe of your sneaker. I stared at it, and with a finality I dropped the little piece of metal I had held in my hand. 

We both stared at the key for a moment before you kicked the dirt back into the hole, stamping your foot firmly to flatten the gap you had made in the ground. 

Bye house, we whispered in our heads, and turned our backs for the final time. The ravens called out their goodbyes. One swooped down and began pecking at the ground where the key was buried.

The sun was setting, and the shadow of the house stretched, following our steps until it faded into the surrounding darkness. The sun was gone, and so was the warmth. 

We wrap our arms around each other's shoulders as the house looked on sadly.