A Memory

It was a friend's birthday party, and they were just about to call it a night. The birthday girl took out mattresses and pillows and set them on the tiled living room floor. Those who were still awake found and took their spots on the floor.

She was near the television. They were to watch A Walk to Remember, at the request of one of her friends. She watched movies with such concentration and as she forgot her glasses, she needed to be near the screen. She took a long pillow and hugged it as she felt someone settling in beside her.

He lay on his side, facing her. He was the one who suggested the movie as that was his favorite. He was awfully close - she could feel his warm breath on her neck. Still, she paid him no mind as the movie started.

He didn't change his position all throughout the film. At one point, she could feel his arm settling comfortably against her back. She could even feel his fingers playfully tapping her back. Put she paid him no mind.

At one of the sweetest points of the movie, she heard him mumble. She wasn't quite sure of what he said, but she had a hunch. She thinks she heard the word love. Or maybe it was from the movie.

Nevertheless, she turned to him and gave him a confused look.

"What did you say?"

He sighed. "Nothing."

Though still confused, she shrugged and muttered a soft Okay. She turned her back on him and continued to watch. She could hear him let out a heavy sigh.

The movie eventually ended, and it was time to get some sleep. She agreed and turned, her body facing upward. Her left arm was at her side, while her right hugged a pillow that was covering her face.

She could feel him moving about next to her. She wasn't a heavy sleeper when in another house. But she didn't mind him. She too tends to be restless even in slumber.

A few minutes after, she felt a warm touch on her hand. She opened her eyes, but didn't move. Suddenly, she felt fingers entwining with hers.

He was holding her hand, holding it tight, as if letting it go would be a sin.

Thoughts suddenly rushed through her head. She thinks she's dreaming, and slightly pinched herself. She felt a little sting.

It was real.

Liquor couldn't be blamed - they didn't drink any at the party. Did he confuse her hand with someone else's?

Why was he holding her hand?

She then started to shift the position of her left arm, causing their hands to untangle. A few seconds after, she could feel his hand travelling the space between their bodies, seemingly looking for hers.

He found his way to her hand and held it again, gripping it tighter than before. She tried to pay him no mind and drifted to sleep.


She didn't know how long they stayed that way, but when she woke up, his hand was still there. She turned to him and whispered, "I think it's time to get up."

He groaned and mumbled something about still being sleepy.

"I think we have to go."

He seemed to agree as he squeezed her hand. Then he let go.



Four years after and she still doesn't know why he did what he did that night. They never spoke about and she never really asked. She's not sure she wants to know, and judging by how he is, she might never find out.

Superimposed

The girl—not a girl anymore, really—closed the door as the boy left the room (I’ll be back in a sec, babe.), and walked dazedly to the bed—wondering if it was all real, if she was really here, staring at a spaceship poster on the opposite wall, if she really sprayed that musky perfume—the scent he breathed in while he caressed the length of her arm as he took her jacket off and hung it on a peg behind his door. He had been pressing her for months. She had been doing her best to refuse—they say it was the proper thing, after all, she being a nice girl, well brought up and all that. But then she thought about that other boy and that other girl, as she often did, and she didn’t feel like being such a nice girl anymore—was sick of it, really.

That other boy, he used to be hers. They used to be always close—closer than brother and sister. He used to be always there for her, used to make her feel like she was never alone. Like that December night, when she was shivering in the cold—better be outside and cold than inside and miss the fireworks. He approached her, leaning against the railings of the veranda, with a smile on his face and a gift in his hand and her silly nicknames on his lips. He laid an arm on her shoulders.

Hey, you’re shivering.

I feel chilly.

So he wrapped his arms around her, wrapped her in his warmth, and they swayed gently in the stillness, to a melody only they heard, only they understood.

Then that other girl came into his life, came between them. At first, she lent him books. Then she lent him her Sunday afternoons and her laughter and gab and homemade goodies and warm brown eyes, and he repaid her in full, and more. He often murmured how beautiful that other girl’s eyes were, how fit for a poem or a song. He’d sit at his desk, sometimes for hours at a time, scribbling pretty lines for that girl’s pretty eyes. Soon he was far away from her, lost in a world where that other girl’s name was the melody he swayed to. Soon she found he was not hers, not anymore.

You two look perfect together, she had said with a perfectly bright smile. And then she too walked away, put some distance, tried to dull the pain that was always there, tried to let go of what could never be—and find something else to hold on to.

And this was where her steps had taken her. Another December night with another boy—not a boy anymore, really—and again she was shivering—but not from the cold. Suddenly, she felt rough hands on her waist and jumped with a start. She hadn’t noticed him enter the room—for the past few minutes, she hadn’t noticed anything at all in her midst. He had sprung on her, with a glint in his eye and his shirt in his hand and her name—and other words besides, words like I want you—on his lips. He stroked her shoulders.

Hey, you’re shivering.

I feel chilly.

So he wrapped his arms around her, wrapped her in his heat, and their bodies agitated to a wild rhythm his coaxing and touches induced. As his lips trailed down her ivory neck, she thought of that other boy again, and tears rolled down her ivory cheeks. She thought of his face, not this boy’s, and murmured a name, murmured it so softly only she heard, only she understood:

Kuya

Wedding Song

On the day of their wedding, she came, with flowers adorning her hair and ribbons circling her arms. She was arrayed in the simple white gown he had sent her, and on a delicate chain around her neck she wore the silver heart-shaped locket he had given her on the day he became her beau. He had put their pictures together inside it, murmuring words of endearment and happiness and forever, dear, dear heart. You know how these declamations of love go, when lovers are giddy and new.

He approached her before the ceremony started, smiling with no hint of nervousness, only of excitement.

“You look lovely,” he told her, beaming. “That dress suits you very well.”

“You look dashing too,” she replied, eyeing the white suit he wore and remembering the way he had played Prince Charming, onscreen and in her life. He was her fairy tale—although of course she was too smart to really believe in that. Yet as he left her to take his place in front of the altar her eyes that never strayed from him saw not his receding back but daydreams the hue of strawberry cotton candy—rosy, sweet, sometimes too sweet.

The piano started playing, and she walked the length of the carpet, her feet dragging. She kept her eyes down, on the floor or on the bouquet she was carrying, afraid that if she looked ahead she would see him smiling at her and imagine that he was waiting to reach out for her hand. A few steps before she reached the altar and him, she turned right, stepped on a podium, took the microphone, and turned it on.

She sang. On the first note she let out, the church doors opened and in walked his bride, resplendent and beautiful, and very, very happy. His eyes grew wide as he saw the woman he was about to marry, then crinkled with a smile and never left his bride’s face. Still the other woman sang, sang of love and bliss and promises of eternity, and with her singing sounded a chorus of sighs and smiles and tears of gladness. You know how these weddings go, when people believe they’ve attained happily-ever-after.

She sang of vows they had given to each other, sang of castles in the air they had built together, sang words she had wanted to say to him. She knew that aches were what one got for dreaming too much and too sweetly, but she dreamed on anyway, allowing herself to pretend for a moment that it was her hand he took, that it was she he pulled towards the altar and knelt down with. But even a moment of dreaming can prove too much, and she finished her song with a broken voice and the beginnings of tears. She stepped down from the podium and returned to her seat, hoping they would think she was too touched and too happy for the couple that her mascara threatened to run. Actually she was never one to cry at weddings.

As they recited their vows, she silently promised herself something too—to someday love after love, with a lighter heart. As they exchanged rings, she took the locket he had given her from its chain and removed the pictures within. As they kissed, she joined in the chorus of cheers and applause.

When the ceremony ended, she rose to take her leave, her fist tight around the silver heart. Again, she congratulated him, and reached out to shake his hand. Then she let go and walked away with a smile and tripping steps, carrying the locket and its weight no more.

He is a bad habit

He is a cigarette sandwiched between her lips, the lighted end burning in the dark like a lone firefly. His smoke circles in the air, gathering around her, only to be swept away by a late October breeze. She takes one last drag before chucking him. He lands on a puddle and immediately dies out.

His light is no more.

She sniffs her hand and frowns. Awful, she thinks. Goddamn awful, the smell he leaves on her fingers every fucking time. On her clothes. On her hair. And, oh, on her pretty little mouth too, of course. She shrugs off the thought. After all, one shower, one wash, and one brush are all it takes to doff his lingering stench.

But he is more than just white paper rolled into a stick, filled with nicotine and tar. Sometimes he is methamphetamine, sometimes he is cannabis. Sometimes he is ethanol going by some fancy names such as Kajmir, Midori, and Fior d'Alpi. Sometimes he is libido.

He is a vice.

And she is ready to quit.

And it should be fucking easy. Twenty one days is all it takes to break a habit, wise and not-so-wise womenandmen say, and twenty one days is not even a month. So, yes, quitting him should be painless. She will, for twenty one days and beyond, pretend he never existed until her body, too, is convinced. And then she will not need him. And then she will stop craving his feel, his taste.

And then, perhaps, she would be free.

If only the wreck he had made inside her could as well be so easily eradicated as the wisps of smoke coming from his lighted end, she would be free.

Things I Never Told You

There are things I never told you, things I never will. They aren’t lies, merely an avoidance of the truth.

You could call me a coward, but then you’d have to call yourself one too. I am not the only one with shadowed eyes. I am not the only one tired of our games, our lives, our past, our future.

And yet, it never changes. We are stuck in a limbo because it’s safe and it’s comforting even if it aches. You still call when you are in town, still show up at my tiny little apartment and make yourself at home. Sometimes we sit on the floor, backs pressed against the paint chipped walls, the only sounds our breathing and the rustle of clothes as we shift at random intervals. Words never seemed all that necessary between us.

I don’t know what I am to you. I don’t know what you are to me; a shoulder to lean on perhaps, someone who I’ve never had to spill words to, ungainly sentences to fill empty space, simply because you always understood the unspoken.

Then there are the times where sitting isn’t what you need, and stillness seems to suffocate me. I can hear those moments in your clipped words over a short phone call, see it in your eyes the moment you shut the battered door behind you. Those are the moments I rise from my chair or uncurl from the bed in the corner, book left open, tea left cooling.

You’ve been rough and you’ve been gentle. Sometimes you leave, kissing my bruises in a silent apology as you go. Other times I am the one pressing chapped lips to your bloody scratches.

Why don’t we speak? Is it because you don’t want to know about the mundane moments of my insignificant life? Would the ins and outs of the average person, working in an office cubicle, staring at a screen that shows your face more often than not, depress you? Or is it me that doesn’t want to know? Would you tell me about your life, the one that looks shiny and sparkly from the outside, and make me see how dark it really is underneath?

I see enough in the smudges beneath your eyes, the darkness that seeps into your veins after a long absence and the weariness that weakens your bones and makes you slouch in pain. Those are your secrets, the ones I try to heal without my tongue trying to twist the emotion I’d like to convey.

You see enough in the faded colors on the wall, the chipped floor and worn tablecloth that supports cheap beer. You don’t need to ask and you never will and I don’t want you to. I have my pride just as you have yours. And you still come to me and offer me your warmth.

There are things I’ll never say to you. I’ll never pull at your hand and beg you to stay, I won’t tell you I love you, I won’t ask your reasons for picking me… a simple nobody to all your somebody. I won’t give you a reason to feel guilty or hold you back because you are meant to be free.

There are things you’ll never say to me. You’ll never ask me home, you’ve only ever come to me. You’ll never introduce me to your friends or parents, or offer to give me more than just you. I don’t want it because however convoluted and twisted this is, whatever we are, you let me be me, and I let you be you.

In here you aren’t who the world sees. In here I’m not just another ordinary. In here we are together, hidden hearts in a room of flaking drywall. Promises hidden down so deep they will never find the courage to climb free.

We are cowards.

But when we lie on the floor, smoke curling from forgotten cigarettes and dancing in the light from cracked curtains, we are brave because we don’t need words to see the truth. Naked and bare our souls know each other through all the traps and defenses we’ve put around us to shut out the world. In those moments, I am strong because you are and you are strong because I am.

This is why I’ll never tell you the things my head doesn’t want to admit, and why you’ll never ask. Why complicate something so simple with words that are so meaningless to others?

I don’t want your promises.

I don’t want your lies.

I don’t want your secrets.

I just want the silent moments frozen in time, locked in memories to keep my veins warm on cold evenings. That’s all you have to give. And it aches. And it comforts.

[Source]

Breakfast

The alarm gives out a continuous, annoying ring – like that of a set of church bells come mass time. She squirms in her bed, reaches out her arm, stretches it across and over his body curled up like that of a little boy. He lets out a soft moan and straightens his body, not letting go of the pillow his arms are wrapped around in. She manages to hit the stop button on the alarm clock, almost knocking off their framed wedding photo.

Six a.m. She strokes his back. “Honey, it’s six.” He grunts and moans and goes back to sleeping soundly. She waits for a few moments, and slowly climbs out of bed.

She walks quietly to the kitchen with light footsteps. She wouldn’t want to wake him up. He doesn’t like it when he’s woken up too early – the time of which changes every day. A few steps later, she’s opening the fridge, checking what she can prepare for him today. She vaguely remembers him telling her of an early business meeting he has for the day. Still, meeting or none, she takes two eggs off the rack and a pack of sweetened ham. He needs to have his breakfast.

Frying takes a few good minutes, it shouldn’t take longer. He doesn’t like waiting for his food to be cooked. It has to be ready when he’s up. He doesn’t like waiting.

She listens to the little sizzling sounds on the pan as she sets the table. Two plates, two pairs of knives and forks and two tall glasses. He was never the coffee type, so he’d have a tall glass of orange juice instead. She shouldn’t forget. He gets upset when she does.

Just as she was transferring the newly-cooked slices of ham on a ceramic plate, heavy footsteps arrive. “Honey! Time for breakfast!” He sluggishly gets to the table, putting down his laptop. She can’t see the screen, but he’s typing away. Probably an overdue email, she thinks to herself.

“I have a breakfast meeting today. Didn’t I tell you yesterday?” She can’t quite remember when he told her – when he got home? At dinner? Just before she turned out the lights? Or how he said it – angry? A matter-of-factly?

“Oh.” That was all she could say.

Then the phone rang. She walks quickly to the phone.


Hello?
Hi Anne.
Who is this?
Has your husband left?
No, we’re not on the 53rd.


He has a puzzling look on his face. Credit card, she mouthed, hand on the receiver.


I miss you. I’ll come by when he’s gone.
Yes, that’s the street that you’re looking for.

She twirls the telephone cord playfully. He’s typing heavily.

I can’t wait to be with you.
Neither can I. I don’t understand why you have our number in your list.
Alright then. I love you.
Thank you for deleting it. You take care too. I hope you find what you’re looking for.


Then he hung up.

“Are they offering a new card?” He peers from the laptop screen and takes a sip. “Yes, some new company. They were calling for another person in the street next to ours.” He looks back to the laptop screen and types faster and harder.

She takes her fork and plays with the now cold slices of ham.

I Fucking Hate You

I wish you weren't so perfect.

I wish you didn't seem so right for me and that you didn't have everything on my goddamn checklist of what a wonderful guy should be like. I wish you didn't make me laugh with your silly antics. I wish I never knew what your voice sounded like, or that you liked to draw, or that you also happen to be into a lot of the shit I listen to.

I wish you weren't so fucking awesome. Because your awesomeness only makes me wish the universe made copies of you and hope I could have one of your clones to myself. Although, to be frank, I would much rather have you.

Oh boy. I fucking hate you.

You make me miserable without meaning to, without knowing you do. You make me wish I were special (as if I don't wish for it enough). You make me want to read novels and write a few myself, only to be reminded that you write even better than I do, so I scrap the idea for someone who will happen after you. Someone less bright, probably. Who won't notice the lapses in my grammar or comment on the mediocrity of my style.

You are just an episode. A really bad episode of an even worse sitcom airing on my mental TV. You are a one star record blaring in my ears, a B movie playing in my subconscious' cinema.

I fucking hate you. I fucking hate you.

I really really really wish I hated you.

April 2010

I miss calling you baby or all the other stupid pet names I came up for you. Because calling you all those things meant that you didn't mind me being sickeningly sweet  and that you were happy being called mine.

Now I call you by your first name because there's no reason why I shouldn't. I've been used to calling you by your special names (sometimes not calling out your name at all) that letting your real one slip out my lips seem so foreign. I call you like how everybody else  calls you now. I'm now just like everybody else.

Who knows, someday soon someone will be given the privilege of not calling you by your first name again...and you'll be happy.

Fourteen Minutes

The typhoon Neneng raged like a woman maddened by a lover’s infidelity. There seemed to be no end to the rain. There have been no classes in the region for four consecutive days now, but I never really had a break because of my job. I work part time, after school, as a private tutor to two siblings, both in elementary, whose daily allowances sum up to an amount bigger than the money I get from my folks weekly. I have just received my pay for the week and as always, I was excited to get home and treat my family out to dinner.

I sat on a bench at the station, waiting for the train to arrive beside a couple displaying excessive adulation towards each other without shame. The whole picture appeared to me as an interminable kilig scene from a sappy teeny bopper romance flick, with this Romeo and Juliet as the oh-so-in-love-protagonists and I as a misplaced, bitter and self-pitying-single-extra. Disgusted, and ironically, a little envious, I maintained a decent distance from the two, so as not to disturb them.

The time on the clock read 08:59. I fixed my eyes on a huge billboard of a beauty product that claimed, just like every other one like it, to whiten skin in just four weeks. It made me wonder, what’s so special about four weeks? I was trying to answer the unintelligent question in my mind when someone nonchalantly sandwiched himself in between me and Romeo and Juliet. I examined the intruder: muddy sneakers, ripped jeans, and an almost transparent wet white shirt with the word POETRY printed across the chest, in big, bold, black, and grungy lettering.

I recognized his faint scent in one sniff— muskuline is how I label it, having brothers, guy friends and an ex who all wore and might still wear exactly the same perfume. “Wired?” I mumbled, unconsciously.

He looked at me with an eyebrow slightly cocked.

“Oops.” I bit my lip in embarrassment.

He chuckled.

The raindrops kissed the roof like savages, making harsh spattering noises. Despite the weather, the temperature in the station was summery. I felt beads of sweat arise from my skin and descend like tears would, as though my whole body had little unseen eyes that wept in simultaneous grief. I decided to remove my jacket and began fanning myself with a bare hand, wiping away the perspiration from time to time with my dampened hanky.

“Going somewhere?” He asked, this stranger sitting next to me.

“Home.”

“Oh…”

“You?”

“Same.”

“The storm seems to be enjoying her stay here in the metro.” He began once more, as if trying to start a conversation.

I noticed a button pin on his backpack that read good for nothing student, exactly the same as the one I had. I snorted, but he didn’t seem to notice. “She sure does.”

He yawned. “Haaay, I hate the rain.”

“I do, too.”

He, too, seemed to be a bit uncomfortable being on the same bench with Romeo and Juliet. His eyes traveled about the station, surveying ads and passersby, occasionally gawking at female species in minis and low-rise jeans, but never drawing his sight towards the direction of the two. I tried to get a good vision of his face, carefully though, for him not to notice. His skin was the color of coffee with cream, lightly bronzed, perhaps, by the sun that violently scorches the city in midsummer, or any other time of the year when the rains don’t come. It is not too difficult to tattoo his face onto your brain. He isn’t exactly handsome, though. He’s actually just one of the hundreds or thousands of faces you’d come across with during rush hour train rides. He had, however, eyes as round as those balls of gum that paint your tongue and tinge your teeth, only prettier, with a thick layer of fine hair lining the lids and a hue that matches his skin. If eyes were bodies of water, you could drown in his.

“Some people are just shameless, don’t you think so?” He murmured into my ear, as though we’ve known each other for a long time.

I glanced at the two and noticed that Romeo had one hand in Juliet’s cardigan. I grinned, trying hard to suppress a guffaw coming all the way from my stomach. “Let’s go get a room!” I joked almost aloud, trying my best to sound as naive as possible, enough for the lovebirds to hear. We both snickered.

The station was already swarming with people. Strangers, just like me and him. He kept whistling tunes, his soiled hi-tops alternately thumping on the tiled floor, his palms on his thighs, producing what seemed to be pseudo drum beats for his tunes. He could be a musician— a member of a struggling indie band that gets to play twice a month in gigs only they and their friends know about.

The sound of the train’s arrival interrupted my thoughts of him. We stood up in a rush and began pushing ourselves into what seemed to be a war for seats or at least 10 inches of space when I realized that I have forgotten my jacket on the bench. He was the one who noticed it, actually. It must have been his gentlemanly instinct that had him hurry back and get it for me while I was being squeezed into the mob of clashing outfits. I held onto a bar by the door on the opposite side of the train, along with other hands whose bodies I cannot trace.

The door shut.

The engine sprung back to life, revived by a new assembly of commuters. I tried to look back to where I left my jacket, but my height permitted me to see only heads and more heads. I heaved a sigh and shifted my view towards the window near me. City lights passed by like stationary fireflies— dots of yellow radiance marking the black scenery of the urban jungle that was still under the assault of Neneng. I embraced myself, chilling in spite of the warmth of other bodies temporarily pasted onto my own flesh. A watch belonging to an old hand on the pole, right above mine, informed me that it was nine thirteen in the evening. I stood there, breathing in and breathing out, amidst the stench of expensive perfume mixing with sweat and body odor from all around me. There no longer was the faint whiff of Wired.

March 5, 2007

To you who occupies a special spot in my heart,

Are you surprised? Would you expect that somewhere in this tired heart is a place with your name, and only your name, on it? Would you have guessed? Am I good in hiding?

I’ve been acting like I don't care for the past few months. I may seem as someone who just lets things slide, without having to talk/discuss about it. Have you noticed? Whenever the 'moments' happen between us, (I refer, in my world, to these events as moments) I act like it's nothing special to me.

And I’m sorry if you do notice. I'm sorry if I act like I don't care. I’m sorry if I make you feel that these moments aren't special. I’m sorry if I seem passive about things. I’m sorry if I’m not like any girl you know.

Because that's precisely my point - I don't want to be like the girls you know. The girls who read between the lines too much; the girls who expect and assume like there’s no tomorrow. The girls who rush things and make something small into such a huge of a deal.

In truth, these moments are special to me. I may not react and gush on the outside, but inside I'm leaping with joy. And you don't see it. My face could be sporting a blank expression, but beneath it is a beaming smile. There are times when these moments just play like a movie in my head. And I feel the exact same way as I did the time these happened: pure happiness and bliss. They seem to never leave my thoughts.

I have never experienced something like this before. You should be proud. You’re the only person who makes me happy and normal at the same time. You make me love you in my normal state of mind (not in the boy-crazy state, unlike the others). You’re the only person who I don't go crazy over. Isn’t it ironic? I mean you are good-looking, but I don't have that usual high school-crush on you.

I don't even know how this all started. Do you? When did it start? Did it start way back in high school? Then it stopped for a while when I was involved in a relationship, and you were in one too (pseudo-relationship)?

Did the old feeling come back after I broke up with the ex-boyfriend?

Or did it start when we started to be close to each other? I don't get to see you everyday, but I started developing feelings for you. I don't know the answers actually. Do you? I can't even begin to explain how, out of all the guys in the world, your name found a special spot in my heart. I don't even know what this feeling is. Is this just infatuation? Or is it something deeper?

They say it's something deeper. I refuse to acknowledge that. I’m sorry. I don't want to recognize this feeling yet. I just want to enjoy this feeling for you. Seriously, it is making me happy. In some weird way it is.

And I know you're not yet ready. I know romantic relationships are situated at the far end of your mind, behind all the other things you prioritize. I understand that. I’m not yet ready too. It’s been almost two years. But I can't seem to imagine myself in a relationship yet, even with you.

Why is that so, you may ask? Well, it's pretty simple. I think I’ve changed when it comes to love and relationships. I even told my friends that I pity a boy who'd become my boyfriend at this stage of my life when I am still learning to not be cynical and bitter. I am still trying to bring back, or at least a part of, the old me. I want my next boyfriend to experience what the exboyfriend experienced as me loving fully and whole-heartedly. The old me, who loves without hesitation and doubt. The old me, who takes risks and is not deathly afraid of them.

If God and fate permits us, I want you to experience that. To be the last person to experience that. If they hear my silent prayers, you could be the next. But I’m not getting my hopes up.

That’s why I’m prepping myself up. At least, if 'us' happens, you would get the kind of love you deserve from me.

And what if 'us' won't happen?

It won't be okay. But I can't do anything about it, can I? I would accept it, and move on. But I’d still be happy.

Do you know why?

Because I met someone like you. You who made me see love in another perspective. It’s you who made me think that I can love someone, without expecting any love in return. It’s you who made me believe that one could love and still retain her sanity. That I can be happy just loving a person.

I know that even if things won't work out, you'd still be here. You’d still be a friend to me. And I am more thankful if this would happen, than if we had a relationship that ended badly, and we wont go back to how we were before.

Thank you. Thank you very much. You are indeed my wonderwall.

Knowing

He came home in the morning reeking of cigarette smoke and alcohol, right as she entered the bath. He knew she’d be mad but he was too dazed to worry. Swaying slightly, he made for his room and threw himself onto the bed, landing with a gentle thud. The bed was soft and warm but it felt incomplete. There was something missing, he knew, and without it he could not sleep.

And so he waited.

He knew a lot of things, this young man. For one, he knew for certain that she was in love with him because she told him so and in turn, he believed her. He also knew that no matter how many cookbooks he bought her, she can never really do much in the kitchen other than fry sausages and reheat leftovers. She liked leftovers. Something he did not really understand nor like but since it was a part of her, it eventually grew in him, like a little seed she sneakily slipped into his mouth once upon a kiss. It wasn’t just that though. There were a few hundreds more and he knew about them too. Just as he knew that she would always be unsure of herself no matter how bright and beautiful she was. He sometimes wished she saw herself through his eyes. Probably then she’d know what she was worth.

The world.

Or the universe, maybe.

The bathroom door opened and out she came, her small frame robed with thin cotton, her dark hair dripping from her early morning shower. As he listened for her footsteps, barely audible on the carpeted floor, his lips twitched into a gratified smile. Finally, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut.

He was suddenly more sentient than he was with his eyes open. The faint smell of her soap gathered around him, luring him out of his inebriety. She sat on the edge of the bed and ran her hand across the crumpled sheets. Her small, delicate fingers landed on his hair, brushing through it as gently as the wind sometimes did.

"Go to sleep," she whispered, leaning forward to plant a chaste kiss on his cheek. "You stink."

"I know," he chuckled, shifting to his side to seize her by the waist. "You smell good."

She laughed. "I know."

He didn't say any more. He just lay his head on her thighs and let her quiet breathing lull him to sleep, along with the other distant sounds of morning.

And he felt complete.

The Wrong Girl

It never bothered him that she could not give him a sweet kiss. Her mouth always reeked of cigarette smoke and her tongue had an almost permanent taste of burnt tobacco. In all honesty, it did bother him a little in the beginning. She was, in every respect, the wrong girl for him. Nights and nights and nights he spent plucking and hitting the strings of his guitars, trying to keep her off the carousel of his mind. But she was one stubborn girl. Instead of dismounting the little white pony she was mounted on, she clung possessively onto the iron bar sticking out of the pony’s plastic body and refused to get off. She gave him a grin so impish he was convinced it was the devil itself that smiled at him. And it could have well been the devil or, probably, one of its subordinates. Like, for instance, an evil witch out of a fairy tale.

There was one thing he was certain of: she was no princess. Not even in her past life. She got off the car before him all the time, never giving him any chance to open her door. Once she came home late and half-drunk. “I’m back,” she said, kissing him lightly on the head before casually walking into the bedroom to sleep without showering. He followed her in and sat on the bed, leaning forward to smell her hair, only to frown when he realized that every strand stunk of smoke, beer, and men. She had been drinking again with her pals—something he had straightforwardly told her not to do in his absence. But she kept doing it nonetheless.

He ran his hand across her bare arm and felt a familiar feeling of warmth circling in his chest. That feeling he hated just as much as her habit of burning sausages for breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, she rarely made him breakfast. In that tiny apartment they shared, he had to learn how to make breakfast for himself. She liked doing the dishes though. That, at least, made her a little useful to have around the house. The laundry she never did herself. Their laundry basket was split in two, their clothes segregated like recyclable rubbish. He sometimes did the washing for her but doing that made her upset. “Leave my clothes alone,” she said. “I’m taking them to the cleaner this afternoon.”

She liked to sing in her early morning shower. And he had become accustomed to waking up to the sound of water spattering down the tiled floor of the bath, drowning some of the lyrics of her songs. He sat in front of the TV and watched the morning news, waiting for her to emerge from behind the bathroom door and give him her signature smile—which was more of a smirk, by the way—before getting ready for work.

Oftentimes, she made him want to tie her up and keep her in their bedroom. To keep her away from her friends. To keep her away from her job. To keep her away from everything that had been taking her from him. She was his, he decided. No matter how hard-headed a girl she was, she was his. She, who made it clear to him that there indeed was a fine line separating love and hate. For he sometimes found himself hating her as strongly as he loved her. At such times he wished she would cry and tell him she was sorry for whatever wrong she had committed, but she never did. Neither did she retort to his threats of abandoning her. What she did was leave him alone to quarrel with himself, with his conscience. So that by the time he was done mulling over the incident, he was already blaming himself for being a selfish prick, when in truth he was anything but.

She knew him well enough, this little devil of a girl.

She was, in every respect, the wrong girl to fall in love with. But love was a trap—a deep dark well he found himself plummeting into one summer day, when the air was still and moist. There was sweat on her brow and dust on the sturdy leather of her shoes. Her mouth reeked of cigarette smoke even then. He knew because he stood so close to her in the train, her chest almost touching his—something that should have bothered a normal girl.

But she was no normal girl.

She was, even at the very beginning, a very strange girl.

And she could have well been a witch. For she had him under a fucking love spell. No matter how many times he tried to walk out of her life, he kept finding himself stepping back into the flat they shared. For the life he was escaping was not just hers alone.

Even that, they shared.

Summer Rain

The sun was searing but a cool breeze blew as I flagged down a bus rumbling through the dusty, potholed road. The girl by the window sitting behind the driver wore a pink summer dress, but she gazed out the window as if contemplating rain. I sat beside her.

“Are you okay?” I asked. She turned to me as a child caught napping would to a teacher who’d asked a question she did not understand.

“Um, yes?”

“I’m Mark,” I said. A second ticked by, then two. I expected her to turn back to the window.

“Nathelle,” she said, and smiled.

I talked about the nine circles of commuting hell and my life as a super anti-hero at a hospital in Makati, feared and hated for saving lives, trusty syringe in hand, one vaccine shot at a time. She said little but laughed much, until I asked her about her studies, and she talked about Kundera and Neruda, Baudelaire and Brecht, and Rilke (breathlessly), and other names I hardly knew but came to love with every gesture of her hand. Dust motes danced in the light around her face, then fled before the highway breeze. Her hair smelled of apples.

I pretended we were falling in love.

I vaguely noted the sun setting a little after her stop came. I go down here, she’d said. I’d asked for her number. She’d refused, said somebody would mind. Lucky guy, I remember replying. And then she was gone.

I still ride buses going the same route, still wait at the same terminal every afternoon, and always I search for the girl in a pink summer dress, with cloudy eyes and hair smelling of dewy fruit. When I don’t find her, I look for a window seat instead, and gaze outside, contemplating rain.

[source]

Dinner is Served, Dear

Everyday I ask him if he’ll be home for dinner and everyday he says he will but most of the time he doesn’t yet all the time I believe him (because sometimes he does, and I tell myself, what if today he does?) and every afternoon I cook and every evening I set the table for two and every night I wake to find him already in bed with me, and the dinner I made still on the table.
The night before our anniversary, he said, let’s eat out—and so I dusted off my slingback heels and wore my red dress and perched on his arm. But he had only just sat me at our table and the spring rolls were yet to be served when his phone rang and he left and never came back that night.

Sitting at that table and staring into the candlelight, I imagined—I’m back in the kitchen. I have my apron on and I’m cooking. I’m slicing onions and mincing garlic to sauté. I set them aside and pick up a carving knife, pointed and sharp and small but heavy in my hand. I carve out my heart and place it on the cutting board. I slice it and I dice it, and all the while I feel every cut, I feel the cold steel of the knife riding forward and back and down, until the edge clack, clack, clacks against the wooden cutting board. I sauté the garlic and onion and I throw into the pan the bits of my heart. I add hoisin sauce, pepper, the salt of the years of waiting. I take it off the fire, add garnish, and serve it to him. Oh how he eats my heart with such gusto! Finally he tastes what I cook, he smells it, he sees it, sees me. He smiles, he smiles and it reaches his eyes, reaches mine. It is a warm smile; it melts the big cold lump, the throbbing cancer plugging the hole in my chest, and I smile too. And with that smile I take the carving knife from my apron pocket and run it through his heart.

曼珠沙華 [Manjushage]

曼珠沙華孤立無援は好きですか
oh amaryllis¹,
so lonely and isolate,
are you there by choice?






He traced the edge of the flat sheet lying on the table with his hand. His pen was uncapped but not a single blot of ink made it onto the piece of paper. He was frozen like a statue, his eyes fixed on his reflection on the window pane. Everything around him was as still as he was and the only sound that made it to his ears was the quiet purring of his cat, Chicken. He had been sitting there for almost an hour, waiting for words to trickle down the black pen—all in vain. The pen was speechless. As speechless as he was when he found her suitcase gone, the closet space he had allotted for her emptied. The only evidence of her ever being there was the smell of her hair, clinging onto the pillow that until then had been hers.

From that day onwards, his apartment had become nothing but a collection of vacant rooms. And like his house, his body too had turned into an empty shell. Through her he realized that while music was the water that quenched the thirst of the soul, only someone could own a heart. And only in her absence did it occur to him that she had already claimed his. Only when she had already fled back home did he feel the void in his chest where his heart was once in.

He got home that night, all worn out from a rehearsal, and found a folded piece of paper on his bedside table. Putting his glasses on, he unfolded the note. I have to go, she wrote. This is not the right place for me. I have a life back home that I need to return to. You, on the other hand, should find someone more befitting. He stopped reading at that point. He crumpled the note furiously into a ball and dumped it into a dustbin, mouthing a curse under his breath. He went back out for some whiskey, only to find himself in the same bar where they had first seen each other. He ended up going back to his apartment and drinking beer alone in the dining room. Chicken leapt to his lap and snuggled close, purring quietly as if telling him that everything was going to be okay. “You’re wrong,” he said as he smoothed Chicken’s fur. “It’s not going to be okay. She’s not coming back.” He followed his words with a swig of beer, hoping to drown the lump that had formed in his throat.

The next morning he woke up and found himself still in the dining room. He had fallen asleep while drinking. A can of beer was sitting on the table right beside his stretched hand, where his head lay. Chicken was still sleeping on his lap. He put him down on the floor and cleared the table of the empty beer cans. He then went to the bathroom to shower.

As he peeled his clothes off, memories of her flashed before his eyes. It was like watching a ghost of her travel from his bedroom to the bath, slipping off her nightgown, undoing the ribbon that tied her hair. He watched as the silken clothing fell gracelessly to the floor. She had her back to him, his eyes glued to the bright red blossoms of the manjushage tattoo on her spine, crawling on her skin like crimson spiders. He followed her inside and switched the light on. The images disappeared in an instant and he was alone again. As he dipped himself into the tub, he recalled the feel of her skin against his in the warm water. When she was on top of him, she tousled his hair and contorted his face with her hands, amusing herself and laughing at how funny he looked. But when he was above her she gave him a coy smile and held him as they kissed. The piercing on his lower lip grazed her skin, and so did hers on his. And as much as she hated him smoking, she never complained about the lingering taste of cigarettes on his tongue.

Once he came home late, drained and a little dizzy from a show, and found her in his bed. She was laying on her side with her bare back to the door, the lower half of her lithe figure wrapped in eternally white sheets. Through the centimeter of space in between the curtains peered the faint glow of moonlight. Outside, stars had started to emerge from the stretch of darkness.

As he stepped closer, the hushed sound of her breathing grew more audible, and soon it was all he could hear. He knelt by the bed and pressed his lips gently against her skin. She felt warm. The tattoo on her back was barely visible in the shadows but he knew just where it was. With a finger he traced its intricacy, earning a sigh from her. “Chicken,” she mumbled, “that tickles.”

A low chuckle fled from his lips. He made a purring sound against her ear, following it with a whisper of tadaima.

“Okaeri²,” she answered with eyes still closed, her mouth barely moved by the utterance.

He laughed, amused. “It’s me,” he said, brushing off strands of hair from her nape.

“Go away,” she hissed.

“But this is my bed.”

“Mine. Sleep somewhere else,” she grumbled, pulling the blanket over her head.

“Fine. Yours then,” he said, a self-gratified smile playing on his lips. He sat on the edge of the bed and fixed his eyes on her sleeping form. He found himself filtering out her muted breaths from the other sounds of the night—cars passing, a clock ticking, Chicken purring, music playing. Before she came along, he only had Chicken to come home to. But now he had a girl, a beautiful one at that, sleeping serenely on his bed like it was her own, her lips pursed into a kitten smile.

*

He looked at the time on his mobile phone. It was almost eight thirty. He had not eaten dinner and was in no mood to. He was hungry, yes, but his hunger was not something physical. No amount of food will ever be enough to satisfy it. He finally gave up. He capped the pen and left his seat. He sat on the edge of his bed and ran his hand along the covers.

“I like this bed sheet,” she once said while looking over the layers of folded sheets in the closet. She pulled it out and unfurled it over the mattress. It seemed to him that she had assumed the title of being his housekeeper. She behaved as though the apartment was hers, and in turn its every wall and corner gave off an ambience that confirmed her ownership of it.

Even the picture she drew for him was gone. It was a sketch of a tiger that she had taped onto the wall by his desk. “That’s how you look like when you’re furious,” she said. It turned out she was drawing it while watching him perfect a riff for a new song he was writing. Now that spot on his wall was blank again and he had no idea where the picture was. He hoped she still had it with her.

*

It was when he found her missing one morning did he realize that he had grown to like her more than he was supposed to. He had gotten used to seeing her in the kitchen upon waking up, making him breakfast like a good wife. He used to always skip breakfast. Or when he felt like it, he went out and had breakfast alone somewhere. In the few months they spent together, he had gotten too accustomed to her presence that whenever she was not around, he looked for things that were related to her in one way or another. That morning it happened to be a strand of her hair he found on her pillow. He picked it up and twirled it around a finger as he stepped out of the bedroom, amusing himself with its threadlike thickness.

“Where have you been!?”

She almost jumped in shock when she heard his voice roar across the living room. He was sitting on a sofa, looking rather vexed. He stood up and walked towards her while she stood frozen by the doorstep. “I-I went to the store,” she stammered. “I n-needed some e-eggs.”

He started shaking with laughter at the mention of eggs. “If you needed eggs you could have just crept into my bed,” he said, grinning mischievously.

Her cheeks reddened. She looked down and hurried past him into the flat. “If you let me fry your eggs, sure!” she quipped as she rushed into the kitchen.

It was then that he decided that he wanted to be with her for good and told her so as she busied herself with making an omelet for breakfast. “Stay with me,” he said.

She giggled. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“For good.”

She looked at him, stunned.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No,” she said back. “I’m sorry.”

*

He remembered her first night at the house. He was a fool to take a stranger in, a foreign one even, who could not properly speak his language and whose hobbies included tripping on nonexistent wires and pretending she could walk into walls, only to end up hurting herself. But he had always had a weakness for girls who spoke good English and hers was beyond good, teaching it being the primary reason she was in Japan.

He first met her at a bar in Shinjuku. She was alone, sipping a glass of vodka, her suitcase sitting on the floor by her feet. They were one seat away from each other and he could not help glancing in her direction. Her pale skin clashed with her black hair, the eye makeup she had on as dark as her irises.

“Had enough yet?” she suddenly asked, in English.

Embarrassed, he looked the other way and ordered a shot of Jägerbomb.

She moved to the seat beside him. “You owe me a drink,” she said, this time in Japanese.

He turned to her, only to be swept away by the sight of her grinning at him. Having forgotten what she just said, he found it hard to answer. So instead he asked, “What?”

“I charge people for staring,” she said.

“I wasn’t staring.”

“Fine, glancing then.”

Guilty as charged, he had no answer to that. “Fine. What do you want?”

“What are you having?”

“Jägerbomb.”

“I’ll have that too then,” she said, sealing her lips with a smile.

He found out through their conversation over alcohol that she had just left the house she had been staying in because the woman had gotten in her nerves. “I was staying with a middle aged couple. They had two kids, my students, both in grade school. They were really nice at the beginning, but lately the wife has been acting like a total bitch around me. She kept making snide comments when her husband wasn’t around. The husband was really nice, you know.”

Her story had him laughing. He probably had too much alcohol at the time because he ended up saying things he could not have said if he were sober. “Any woman would feel jealous if her husband got friendly with you,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It means you’re not supposed to stay with a married couple. You’ll end up ruining their relationship.”

“What!?”

“I mean, you’re too pretty for any man to ignore.”

She blinked thrice, her mouth slightly gaping in an attempt to say something but no words came out.

“You owe me a drink this time,” he chuckled.

In his eagerness to improve his command of the language, he hired her that same night as his English tutor. With nowhere to come home to and with a more economical thought of her saving money by not staying in a hotel, she accepted his invitation to sleep in his apartment.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty three. And you?”

“Twenty eight.”

“Wow. You look younger than that.” She took her boots off and slipped her feet into a pair of indoor slippers he took out for her.

“No need to flatter me. I won’t pay you extra for that,” he said.

She pouted. “Excuse me, but that was not my intention.”

“I know,” he snorted. He took her suitcase from her hands and laid it on the sofa. “Sorry but you’d have to sleep here tonight. I don’t have another room.”

“That’s fine,” she said. She looked around her, impressed with how neat his apartment was. When Chicken saw her, he hid underneath one of the sofas. “You have a cat! How cute!” She ran towards the sofa and bent over, trying to take a good look at the cowardly cat. “What’s his name?”

“Chicken.”

She got back on her feet and straightened out her shirt. “Are you serious?” she laughed.

“Yes. I’m sure you can see why I named him so.”

“Seriously. That’s really cute though. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Are you seeing anyone right now?”

“Eh?”

“I mean, you know, dating anyone?”

“No. I’m too busy for that.”

“Then—” she was fiddling with the silver band on her left ring finger, trying to decide whether or not she really wanted to ask him the question she had in mind.

“What?”

“—can I stay here for the time being? I’ll teach you English without you having to pay me. I just badly need a place to stay.”

To her surprise, he smiled at her and said, “Sure. As long as you don’t mind sleeping on the couch, that’s fine.”

She smiled back and bowed. “Thank you!” she said, unable to hide the gratitude in her voice.

*

He knew an email would only take a few seconds to reach her. And he had already turned his computer on when he realized that he did not have her email address. He wanted to call but he did not have her number either. Frustrated, he tore another piece of paper and went back to his seat. As before, he stared at his blurry image on the glass pane. Nothing had changed. He still wore the same morose expression he had on hours ago. He had been trying to write something for days—to no avail. With so much to say, he did not know how and where to begin. It was almost his birthday, he realized, and almost time for the manjushage to bloom. He had planned on taking her to the Imperial Palace in Chiyoda on the day of the autumnal equinox to see the flowers that grew along the banks of the moats. But she left.

With these images in mind, he started moving his hand. And instead of writing, he sketched. Each drop of ink on the page was a remnant of the heart that he had lost to her; whether he lost it or he gave it to her, he still could not decide. Either way, he knew he could not put the blame on her. She had always belonged to somebody else; he was merely borrowing her. The ring on her finger was tangible proof. Soon it became clear to him that what he had been drawing was her tattoo, but without the blood red color of the manjushage blossoms. A few words came to mind after that, and he wrote them down hastily, fearing he would lose them. He taped the picture onto the bare spot on his wall. He would send it to her.

If he only knew her address.

Sometimes I touch the things you used to touch, looking for echoes of your fingers³. Then I realize that your fingerprints had been burned onto my skin like indiscernible scars, screaming at me all this time.

Notes:

1- In Japanese language of flowers or hanakotoba, the manjushage, or red spider lily in English, symbolizes abandonment, a lost memory, or the possibility of never meeting again.
2 - "Welcome back" or "welcome home" in Japanese
3 - A line from an entry on one of the best blogs ever: http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me

A Note for Farewell

[source]

In the Darkness, the Trees are Full of Starlight

She woke up to the sound of her phone ringing, the J-rock ringtone muffled, but the tremors against her wooden desk insistent, disturbing. Still half-asleep, she rummaged around the mess of papers and books and worksheets on the table for her mobile, knocking over a half-empty mug of coffee to the floor. As she scrambled for a rag, she cursed loudly and answered the phone.

"I thought the conventional thing to say was ‘hello.’" it was him. The sound of his voice, deep and gently mocking, jerked her awake.

"Oh. Sorry. I was kinda groggy and knocked my coffee over," she said while wiping the spill on the floor. "Good thing the mug wasn’t broken or the dorm head’s gonna kill me. I just borrowed this from the kitchen."

"Did I wake you up?"

"Well, yes. Do you know what time it is?" she glanced at the digital clock on the wall. It was half -past three.

"I’m sorry, I assumed you were awake since your bedroom light’s still on."

"Don’t be, it’s a good thing you woke me up since I have this paper to– wait, what did you say? How do you know my light’s still on? Are you–" and she rushed to the window and saw him sitting on the hood of his car across her dorm. "What are you doing here?"

"Wanna get some ice cream? I’m craving a vanilla cone."

She bit her lip. Her term paper due the next day remained unwritten, and she had only scribbled notes on scratch papers and half-brained comments on margins to attest that work on it was being done. On a typical school night she would have said no, but there was something she had to tell him.

"Let me just get my jacket."

*

They ambled around the mostly deserted streets of Mitaka-shi, content with their hoods up against the drizzle, licking their ice cream. He chose vanilla, and she chocolate, like they always did on these late-night little jaunts. Silence hung between them, familiar and comfortable; this silence she dispelled by humming a tune, soft and slow.

"What are you singing, my haru-dori?" he asked with his usual playful smile.

"’on my own’ from Les Miserables," she replied, as she weaved words into the tune. "On my own, pretending he’s beside me / all alone, I walk with him ’til morning…" she sang and he listened until her voice trailed off with the last note

"It’s a sad song."

"Pooh. You didn’t understand half of it, did you?" she said lightly, smiling.

"Nope," he said, gazing straight at her. "But I saw loneliness in your eyes and heard it in your voice."

"Getting poetic a-aren’t we?" she said, pushing a grin.

He chuckled. "It’s the music and the night. And–you."

She gazed at the asphalt sparkling under the street lamps with the rain. "Look," she said, pointing to the road. "We’re walking on stars."

"It’s beautiful."

"Like a dream."

"This isn’t a dream."

"That song–it’s about dreaming. It’s about a girl pretending that her love is beside her, walking with her, talking with her, maybe holding her hand. But in truth she’s all alone–they’re worlds apart and she can never hold him." he clutched her hand and she looked at him. "It was my song for you," she said.

"Don’t sing it anymore," he murmured. "It’s a sad song. You’re here, I’m here, we’re together and this isn’t a dream. You don’t need to sing it anymore."

"Oh, I think I’ll have to," she said, looking away.

"What do you mean?"

"Term ends in September. I’m leaving next month."

"D-don’t you have another sem?"

"I’m afraid not. I’ve completed my 30 units. My scholarship’s over, and I have to go back," she said, trying to look at him without crying. "I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. I thought–I thought I would be able to extend my stay. Shun–"

His ice cream cone fell to the pavement and he stared hard at it, trying to get back his smile for her, to assure her that he’d be okay, that they’d be okay, even while he contemplated the late-night little jaunts ahead, full of empty space, street noise, and single orders of vanilla ice cream.

[source]

Rainy Day

Whenever people asked her if she liked the rain, she would always reply with “It depends.” If she were at home, snuggled into her bed, then sure, she liked the rain. She loved the cool, cleansing feeling that usually came with it, the sound of it spattering against roofs and windows and trees, the way it drowned out the noises and worries that beset her mind, the way it lulled her to sleep. When under the covers, the rain outside made her feel alone and safe, like a would-be butterfly nestled in its cocoon, caressed by mist and dewdrops.

But today she hated the rain. As she stood under a rusty waiting shed, trying to avoid the water leaking through the holes in the roof, the unflattering glare of the lamppost overhead highlighted her scowl. Over and over she cursed the rain under her breath, cursed it for ruining her hair and drenching her clothes and muddying her new Chucks. She cursed it for the traffic and the lack of cabs to hail, for stranding her in the middle of that leaking nowhere. She cursed it for making her make him wait.

“Where are you?” he had asked over the phone, more worried than impatient. “It’s raining hard outside.”

“I don’t really know. I’m stuck in a waiting shed some blocks from the Komaba-Tōdaimae Station. I don’t think I can get to Chiyoda on time. I’m sorry. Don’t bother waiting. Just… just forget our date. Some other time, maybe.” And she hung up before the disappointment and self-pity crept into her voice.

It wasn’t everyday that they found the time to meet up with each other. He was always busy with his shoots, his tapings, his interviews, his radio show. She was always busy with her readings, her workbooks, her papers, her note cards. But somehow, they managed to make things work. They contented themselves with long, typed letters, hurried text messages, and disembodied voices over the phone. She never told him that once, when he laughed over voice chat, she felt like crying because it sounded so different from when he was really there.

This day was supposed to be different. It was her birthday. He had managed to beg some hours off work so he could tour her around Chiyoda. They were going to stroll around Kitanomaru Park, visit the MOMAT, and maybe catch a performance atNippon Budokan before they had dinner and she went back to Mitaka and he to NBS to host ANN. Both of them knew that the time they could spend together was limited, so they cherished those hours. And here she was, wasting them.

She should’ve brought an umbrella. She should’ve left Todai earlier. She should’ve familiarized herself with commuting to Chiyoda instead of taking a cab that would only break down and leave her stranded in the stupid rain. There were so many things she should have done, but did not do. She had been in Japan for almost four months, and she was still such an idiot! She stamped her foot in frustration, hitting a puddle and drenching her socks with muddy water.

“You should stop doing that, you know. You could splash innocent passersby with mud.”

She turned and saw him walking towards her, an umbrella in his hand and an impish grin on his face. She felt like running to his arms and seeking comfort there, but instead stood her ground and kept her frown.

“How did you get here?” she asked.

“I walked, of course.”

“Right. You walked all the way from Chiyoda.”

“Is this ill humor I sense? It’s your birthday!”

“You’d be in a foul mood too, if you were freezing and stranded and drenched on your birthday, and had been standing in this hellhole for two hours, being ignored by all the cab drivers!” She felt close to sobbing, but his teasing smile kept the tears in check.

He walked closer to her and pulled her under his umbrella. “I’d been looking for you since you hung up on the phone,” he said softly. “How could you ask me to just forget about the date? Happy birthday.”

And he took her cold hand in his warm one and, throwing the umbrella away, they walked together under the rain.

[source]

Pero wala.

Ilang araw na lang, kaarawan mo na. Marami akong binalak na gawin sa araw na yun. Nakaplano na ang lahat - ang pagkukunwaring 'di ako makakapunta sa pinaplano mong salo-salo, para isurpresa ka. Ang bumuo ng gift box, laman ang mga mumunting regalo ko para sa'yo, mga regalong alam kong magugustuhan mo. Mag-aayos ako sa araw na yun, magsusuot ng magandang damit (kaya ko naisipang bumili ng dress), maglagay ng palamuti sa mukha, ayusin ang buhok.

Nais kong makita ang magiging reaksyon mo nun - ang kislap sa mata, ang ngiti sa mukha. Nais kong marinig na ako ang dahilan kung bakit masaya ang kaarawan mo. Nais kong maramdaman na ginagawa ko na ang kung ano mang gusto mong ginagawa ng minamahal. Nais kong maramdaman ang higpit ng yakap at hawak ng kamay mo, habang kasama natin ang iba mong kaibigan sa araw na iyon.

Nais kong maramdaman na malipas ang gulong nangyari satin, na mahal na mahal mo ako.

Pero hindi. Hindi na mangyayari.

Wala na.

Wala.

Wishful Thinking

He sits in front of the TV playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the Xbox 360. An hour and a half later, he saves his game, turns the console off, and gets his ass off the floor. Outside, rain falls in tiny drops, making a tip-tip-tip sound on the roof. He takes his ipod out of his backpack and plants it on its dock. With a press of a button, music blares from the speakers. Music so familiar you begin to hum along as you watch him plod off to the kitchen. You roll out of bed to follow him out of the room, Jack Johnson expertly plucking the strings of his guitar in the background. It's Banana Pancakes—your so-called perfect rainy day song.

He is in the kitchen making breakfast. Your eyes search for the dusty clock hanging on the off-white walls. It's 3:50 in the afternoon. Yawning, you open the fridge and take out a carton of low-fat milk and a previously opened bag of Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds. There is bread in the toaster, bacon in the fryer, coffee in the maker. It's a perfect morning, except it isn't really.

He takes a seat right across you and glances at your bowl of cereal. You scowl at him and he grins. You try not to smile, so you end up snorting. He laughs.

Post-breakfast you wash your bowl and let him do the rest. You march back to the room and lie on the bed. Jack Johnson's been replaced by The Kooks. Sway is playing. You sing along. Five minutes later, he comes into the room, grabs the iPod to turn the volume down, and switches the TV on—Animal Planet. He plants himself beside you and the two of you watch a bunch of mating baboons as if a game of basketball were on. His eyes are fixed on the screen, yours on him. Your mind flashes forward to tonight.

Tonight you are going on a quest together to hunt wyverns for rares. The thought excites you. So does suddenly remembering that it's his turn to cook. Dinner's gonna be good for sure.

You rest your head on his shoulder and take his hand in yours. The rain's still going tip-tip-tip and your ears catch Ben Folds' The Luckiest . You close your eyes and slowly fall back into a shallow river of sleep. It's supposed to be cold but you feel snug. There is warmth all around.

Warmth all around.

Warmth all around.

Would you be my number two?

For the love of everything good and right, I am not talking about being a mistress. There, just so you know.

I am not the prettiest, sexiest, smartest, sweetest, nicest, most understanding, and all the other positive superlatives (oh gahd, that sounded so wrong. By positive I mean good qualities, y’know) you can think of when you talk about a girlfriend. I am pretty much aware of that. Someone’s bound to be better than me, in all aspects. I am also pretty much aware that I am no expert on relationships, or pretty much anything for that matter. However, the little knowledge I have about love and relationships tells me that I deserve to be your number one, your only one. I refuse to be your second option, your last resort, just because you couldn’t get the better ones. I don’t deserve to be someone else’s goddamn shadow.

I love you the way you are. I don’t think I would be asking too much if I hoped you did the same with me.

For your reference, future boyfriend.

Gravitation

His hair was a perpetual mess like Wolverine’s. He sometimes hid it under a baseball cap. When it was long enough he held it in a pony tail, which was almost always still in a state of disarray. I met him first in my second year in college, when we both applied for membership in an organization. We were introduced to each other and were told we were going to be co-apps. I smiled. He smiled back. That was it.

I was not immediately drawn to him. The attraction came a few days after that initial encounter, when I realized he had a wacky sense of humor, a wicked taste in music, and a wonderful singing voice to go with his skills in playing the guitar. The more I got to know him, the stronger the gravitational pull grew. It was almost as if he were the Sun and I were a mere ball of gas helplessly magnetized towards his direction, ready to dive into his raging ocean of fire and burn.

We listened to the same kind of music so it’s easy to be reminded of him and the days I spent orbiting him, maintaining a safe proximity, ensuring I was far enough not to get reduced to ashes, yet near enough not to be just another nameless planet. I had been attracted to a few others before him but the pulls were never as intense as his. The ones before him were nothing but potential planetary collisions.

Albert Einstein once said, “Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

Was it love? It probably was. Is. I am still in my orbit, after all, and he is still burning bright. His hair is no longer a mess these days though.