Listen Only to me

By: RDV



The music jars on
and it never comes near
to meaning anything.
My hope's finished;
I don't know
what prevents you from seeing things
in my brilliant, skeptic perspective.
Hangover, mental overdrive,
come talk me into wakefulness;
I haven't been peeling my eyes
On the things that
would potentially destroy me
in the eyes of you.

Her Heartbreak

By: RDV



At nearly two o’clock past midnight, in the dark atmosphere of the dormitory’s balcony, they stood face to face. Her set face was emblazoned by the blue moonlight, and in his mind’s eye he had never seen, nor imagined, anyone so beautiful. His face was a picture of ineffectual hardness, a canvas endowed only with the quality of the night. Otherwise it was merely what it was; blankness. If either had marked the enormous drop in the temperature, none of them said anything about it. Amidst the icy cold, they moved not an inch, staring at each other, with only their evening garments to wrap their freezing bodies with. It felt strange to her somewhat that on their last private meeting she would appear thus to him, when, often, she dressed herself in her best if there was the least chance that he might see her.

The moment to confess seemed to have come. She repeated what her heart had so annoyingly and constantly reminded her. She didn’t expect him to offer tea and sympathy, as he never had on any terms, but she hoped that he would say something in return to bring her to ultimate pacification.

Instead he left her unanchored. There were ministrations in his glance, for which she found no counterparts in her library of intelligence. She didn’t understand, or she didn’t want to. She spoke again, knowing that entreaty of any form would hardly penetrate him. She said she knew from the start that he had propensity of the kind, that it was only a matter of time until he chose the path which she swore never to trudge, always to oppose, to her dying day.

He submitted no reaction to this. Her pleading stare evoked grotesque images in his mind, inspired by the possible dangers he would confront himself with beginning tomorrow, the moment he left everything behind, including her company which she forced on him with infatuated earnestness. Whatever crumbs of pity he still had left in him didn’t seem to make themselves visible to her. They hid away, threatening to dissolve imperceptibly until such a time when she decided to forget.

She went on. Did he know that she was only alive when she was within his sight and regard? Did he know that without him, everything would be plundered of its meaning? He did, somehow. But he never really gave it a single, serious, long thought before. Hearing this now, from her, gave him a subject of reflection. He thought, as he became more aware of some parts of him that he wasn’t familiar with. When before her fawning and wordless request to be loved back would only move him to thoughtlessness, right now it made him painfully conscious of her, her beauty and her love. Millions of feelings brushed over him, not one of each he understood. This person before him would love him, would go on loving him, even if he were a hundred times more un-free. He didn’t quite know why. He doubted if she knew why too.

She spoke again, this time with firmness she never before applied to her voice when referring to him. Every sound she made was a note of lament, every breath a second away from him. If he were to allow himself a choice, would he choose, rather, the road she would? Her anxiety was vast in saying this, but not so much as her hopelessness. She knew, always, that he never for once, for a second, swayed his option. He was born with that choice. He wouldn’t admit it to her, even to himself. He would leave her behind. That was fated from day one. Or maybe they were never together to begin with.

See me. Be with me. Love me.

Those were her words, weren’t they? He looked back at her. His glance was in no way warm enough to hold the waters from her eyes. Her tears rolled down and he was amazed by how the attractiveness of her weeping seemed to fade. It didn’t resemble sadness; it was something much greater than that.

He shook his head then, and the indifferent glint in his eyes confirmed how dark the night really was. What a grievous spectacle to see her silent, washed over with tears. Her feelings inside convulsed and it might’ve escaped him, but the imprints they produced did not. He saw her misery for what it was, its color, texture and weight. This love, it was her only refuge against herself and the world. She wished that he would come back, someday, even if it was to be countless years from now. But here the reality was, none of what she hoped for would happen. Not anymore. The barrenness of the evening seemed to agree, and so did the solemn silence of the wind and the black movements of the clouds. She wished further and further but her insight offered no answer.

And he, her antagonist, had won. He moved toward her, held her head and kissed her on the forehead. It was the closest he got to her, the only voluntary display of affection he gave her, and the last. A fusion of commiseration and determination to walk away flamed inside him. He was balancing his way to the door when she spoke for one last time. She wanted to be remembered. She would be glad to be remembered, no matter what he was remembering her for. He nodded. He meant to keep this final promise of his. But let not her love be worth its name, for it was that which brought him to her and brought him away from her. He left. Bathed in the autumnal air, she accepted her defeat.

Juvenile Admiration

By: RDV



And my voice sank underneath the cheers. The moment was too quick to allow recollection in the near future. You defined shock in its heightened state. You permitted my obsession, never promising not to forget it later. I, I stood, most often out of my mind. I sang songs for you, wrote prose in your honor, forced myself to cry just to convince me that you'd always stay as you were. I caught a disorder I know not the name of; I offered my sickness to you in the hope that my sacrifice would find meaning amidst my puzzled state. But you left and although you said you would be back, you returned not more, but less than the person I knew you to be. In your earnest attempt to recover your identity, you brooked ridicule, insults and the likes. They scattered your blood; you let them feed on it, rapaciously, without clemency. But pity you would not receive, my love's reception done with largely diminished warmth. I couldn't tell if it was pride that tempted such coldness; I couldn't tell if it was surrender incognito. I saw you once again, weaker, less, a stranger. I looked at your body and understood its capitulation, as well as the obstinacy of your mind. And my admiration for the old you grew exponentially intense. You were my one and only...

Psychosexual Gratification

By: RDV


The sex wasn't good. The pain was ecstatic. Its repercussions were heavenly. In his ritualistic rapes he never found ultimate satisfaction from orgasm, never, but rather from the pleading screams of the women whom he intended to deflesh afterwards. He might've liked it better if they cursed his mortal soul as he defiled their bodies; but often, entreaty was their invariable resort and thus, his passion increased by and by. He bit their chins. He would sink his teeth on the bone till it bled as he looked straight at their eyes, executing masochism in its most demoralizing way. He could almost die of laughter if tears started to cram on their pools. From down under, his hands and intstrument of torture mutilated their genitals. The smell of blood rising and slithering up to his nostrils was more than enough to keep him from hunger all throughout the night. But nothing sufficed, not when it was the monster leaping inside him. And in doing what is universally perverse, he received an obsession, boundless in its cruelty, insatiable to the last degree. As the night deepened, he would thrust away the lifeless, mangled body of the woman and with his hands clean, without one look back, drive further north in search of another prey.

Jealousy

By: RDV

The scratch, unconsciously done or otherwise,
Lingers and the feeling
With which I receive thee
Doesn’t bear resemblance to my nature,
For wasn’t I the hearty soldier
That ever denounced publicly
Thy entrance to my front?
And my Ice Kingdom,
My constant guide,
Lies in defense of me.
Until thou charge in haste,
Steadfastly original to thy intent
Of diminishing me to injured pride;
Thence I falter for no other cause
Than the confrontation,
So bold, so firm,
Thou assault me so mercilessly with.
My mind and heart’s united efforts
Fail before my sighting,
Overpowered, overcome
More than I had prior conception of.
I let thee indulge me
With thy reprimanding silence,
In black tolerance.
I wait to tell thee that
The moment I get rid of you is ecstasy.

Maternal Anxiety

By: RDV


That her daughter was someone she could no longer trust was a knowledge so painful to her. Often her thoughts were divided between affection and reproof, but when a salubrious chance for confrontation approached she found herself invariably tight-lipped. She brooded night and day, hoping that such as it was, there was benefit that could be ripped off from such wild behavior coming from someone she loved so much. She waited, while enduring such cruel execution of anxiety in her heart, for the daughter’s late night return. She resented suspicions by all means, but when time ticked on and the beloved wouldn’t return, she would be full of it, her thoughts dispersed with accusatory atoms, numbering infinitely. Then she would receive her with churlish alarm, her temper towering, her mind in a violent somersault; oftentimes, she would express disappointment if that would only attain the protocol of admonishing her ritually. The child, for all her good and bad, was sincerely apologetic; though whether or not she remembered feeling so, she went on hiding the nature of her external world from her mother. The mother still believed that her frequent absence from home was largely necessitated by her schooling, if not by her need to attend to her impressionable friends from time to time. She would forgive her for her neglect because forgiveness was where she felt herself in the right place; she would hope that her misgivings were not but hideous injustice to her daughter’s virtues, because hope was the only thing she knew. She needed to adjust to what she saw, she needed, above all, to keep believing.

The Pagan God of Music

A/N: It’s supposed to be for Kurt Cobain but really, it’s too obsessive and personal. It makes me sound like a psycho. At any rate, I did love him.

By: RDV


You never sang; instead you sent electricity from the ground, not from the skies, branching its line at your command as they caught up with me, wrapped me around their coils until breath was plundered out of me.

You never opened your mouth; instead you blew a spell my way, bewitching my eyes, hurling me down to my knees in the very act of worship, so much so that at the time you were the only god that inspired fear and awe in me.

You never bared your teeth; instead you pushed them back behind your lips only to reveal a more marvelous spectacle. I saw instead the beauty of your face in repose; I saw instead the reflection of myself, fading, losing its identity to you with the sincerest willingness.

You never let your voice out of your throat; instead I heard the music, rattling, monopolizing my ears, molding them against the imprints that you carved so tirelessly out of love and endeavor. Its echoes journeyed forth, still, long after you departed. I can still name the notes and pick them up from the havoc of a chaotic medley, somehow, and see your body issue out of the thickness of their melody, your picture ever so vivid, ever so distinct from everything it was set against.

You never really made yourself felt; instead I chose to seek you, starting from nowhere, getting lost in the middle of this labyrinth whose end was never near and never really was the end. It goes on, stretching away from the beginning, miles after miles, to live forever. You plunged me in to the depth of your existence so now I became you, the twin of your soul, the inseparable ghost that lingers anon, searching not for salvation which I know won’t bring you back.

You never were gone to me; instead you were never there. I grasped on a specter that didn’t know it was alive, that didn’t know it was but a fraudulent vision of a dream resulting from cumulated pining. The trigger was pulled even before you rose to hold the microphone, even before the world had beheld you and even before you plucked the first strings on your instrument of victorious snare. You were never meant to last. After all, you were nothing but a fleeting perfection; and I, the child beguiled, premature, unwittingly misled. I am only one of the many bearers of the scars you left behind.

For Me?

I hold on to the two poems you gave me. The ramshackle paper that channeled them stays folded, jaundiced and carefully tucked between the pleats of my wallet. They are creased by often handling, by obvious repetitive rereading. Yes, I open them from time to time in the hope of conjuring a rare smile from my face. I will go over them as I have done so many times before, mainly to convince myself that you scribbled them with difficulty under dim lamplight, on your gloomy study table that had no purpose but for you to fall asleep on, you said. Somehow I wish my picture still stands on it.

As the last words of your lyrics tumble onto my mouth, I will close the paper again, fold it in quarters and hide it once more. Each time I do so I can’t help but to wonder why you never bother regarding uniformity. Your words are formless, even as the ones I remember coming out of your lips. Your sense of rhythm falters when it should instead flatter. You have been careless with your hands, but not as much with your sentiments. Up to now I fight so hard trying to understand what you wanted to say to me through those extravagant words. I long to find meaning behind your obscurity.

Ugly

By: RDV
I can imagine you
So florid with excitement
As I draw near you,
But I can only imagine.
Out of daydream
I can see you
So intransigent
To my will
That you shut your eyes
Just so you can’t see me
Clearly.
I can walk away
Suffering from no impunity,
You can go on
With your life
Savoring my defeat,
And my tears
The final proof
Of your indifference.
I will close my eyes,
Afraid of what they may miss
But when I open them
Again I will just see you,
And you’ll see me
Waiting for your acknowledgement,
Waiting for that little
Injection of happiness
You’ll give for free
When you finally
Say you forgive me.
But you may be gone
Soon as you form.
You may be just
A phantom of my misery,
Lingering on the
Tips of my awareness,
Never promising departure.
Only the small space
Stands between
Me and total heartbreak;
Only you can
Break the spell.
But first let me
Hear you say
That satisfaction from
Sadism isn’t such
A delicious emotion.

For Arthur

Can I come to you
when you won't?
Would you touch me
if I were
a fire, red, dynamite,
Or a fish that bites?
You walk in,
forgetting what the mirror
just told you this morning,
that today eyes are on you,
like ever was each time
you sliced through the crowd
and parted it at your
clueless control.
What am I supposed to be
seeing?
My ruin,
your glory,
or our palpable life
together?
Are those the things I rely on?
That now you can flick
your fingers, make a snap,
pull me to the ground.
And I am the same
as before,
letting my shoulders
fall,
at the mere
thunder of your soles.
Let me then listen
to the beat of your steps,
because I know
that's the only sound
I can trust to preserve
my failing sanity.

Vengeance

By: RDV


The men of stick had begun rising from the muddy quagmire of sleep, each of them hardly remembering what sunshine felt like. For three millennia they had been buried underneath the sinking wet sands. Today, the moon, glorious in its quarter form, would experience eclipse. Today, the tall men of stick would cover the dome of the heaven, and the air would whisper their awakening and their names spelled on the walls of your homes. They would be in no humor to tell their story to the world, because the story of their shackling was an ancient code of suffering, which, in its gruesomeness and morbidity, the world had no right, nor enough dignity, to hear. They would proclaim their presence to the living once more. And the coldness that was only made conspicuous by its absence would return, even as it had dominated the earth’s spheres many, many ages ago. The men of stick would tower over the highest edifices, but not loftier than their long memories. They remembered. They remembered the day of their torment, when Apocalypse, prophesied to happen centuries later, descended on them before its time. Today, the crimes, unpaid, should see compensation. They would walk onwards on a pilgrimage, bearing on their backs the malice of their intentions. Stealthily, they would slither through and unload the yoke. It would begin.

Hot Cement

By: RDV


In house number 44 lived a girl whose name was Irene. She wished too many people to die she would’ve been a worse dictator than Hitler, a more murderous bastard than Mao Zedong. One of her many ambitions in life was to scheme the perfect assassination plot of Hollywood director Howard Shore, which she would carry out in the year 2008, the fifteenth of March, on the very birthday of her childhood friend and second cousin Monty. While she was busy daydreaming on a beige leather couch, a baby rat could be seen sniffing the leftover food which was her breakfast, which she still hadn’t placed on the sink where dirty dishes were bubbled, rinsed and orderly kept in the dish closet. The animal sneakily kidnapped the fat of the crispy bacon in the now cold sandwich. Successful in its mission, it swiftly ran off to go back to its hole, which was just beside the electricity outlet. Outside the house was a sunny day. Marla, Anton’s ray of sunshine, was too engrossed in the clothes she was scrubbing to notice the disturbingly violent scuffle that had been rapidly progressing among the boys, age ranging from seven to ten, who were playing basketball. The basketball no longer bounced; it was now forlorn, ignored by the boys who were apparently more interested in bloodying each other’s nose than trying to get the ball through the net. Rosario, Marla’s sister-in-law was picking up a petty chatter with the policeman’s wife, Coreen, two houses away from where Marla was scrupulously laboring. They were squealing about who won last night’s card game and who went home neck-deep in debt. The person who went home neck-deep in debt was called Benny. Benny lost his job as a car dealer and since then his only means of income was gambling, and owing. Yesterday was obviously a bad day for him, and so were countless others. His son, Abner, was taking their mongrel dog for a walk. Lately it had started to show signs of being insane; but the family had refused to take it to a vet because the estimated fee was absurd. Now Abner was tolerating the slobbering, half-sound dog which was now struggling to get free from its collar and tether. His grip tightened and tightened and tightened. Nelly jumped up when Abner and the dog strafed by. She was peacefully receiving the sunlight with her back on their family car, a Toyota Revo, when the dog snapped at her. It missed her by an inch. She swore. She could still vividly recall when last week the dog, upon its temporary release, did the same thing to her. She gave Abner a menacing look and stomped back to their house where her father was repairing his jogging shoes. He was squatting in the garage, with maddening concentration as he applied rugby on the portion of the shoes where a sole piece had been. Their next door neighbor, Gregorio, was in his sister’s bedroom vandalizing her Biology book. The previous day, she mischievously removed the scientific calculator from his school bag, which he was supposed to use for his convenience in his Physics test which was to be held on the same day. Gregorio was sure he failed the test. Now he was venting his anger and exercising revenge. His girlfriend Ashril was still snoozing. It was six minutes past twelve in the afternoon. She slept miserably late last night on account of an exacerbated flu. She didn’t take any medicine. She forgot; she was too busy brooding on the chaos surrounding her existence. Her grandfather, stationed in the room one floor above her, was also pondering; about the imminent end of his life. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer, in its mortal stage courtesy of Dr. Chua, and had been in and out of the hospital these past few months. Each time he was discharged he felt worse than when he had been admitted. Recently he had begun taking on a colorless behavior which made him agree to everything anyone said as though it was his job, being moribund, to be nice to everyone. One of the people he was especially kind to was Samuel. Samuel was his poker friend. As Ashril’s grandfather suffered, he was currently watching a championship boxing match between a Filipino and a Puerto Rican some little houses away. The Filipino was losing by a landslide, his punches hardly connecting and his defense visibly falling apart. Samuel had let loose set after set of profanities at which his five-year-old grandson, Kenneth, wondered. Kenneth swerved through the kitchen where his mom was preparing corned beef for lunch. Instead of asking her where babies come from, he asked what shit meant. Dismantled from what she was doing, she ignored him. A little earlier she had borrowed a cooking pan from the neighbor across the street whose daughter, Sheila, had recently started abhorring her mother as though she was a piece of trash. Sheila didn’t want her to be around her and would often complain of oxygen shortage when her mother came to her within two meter radius. Her mother would frown, marching off. Her other daughter, Kaye just broke up with her boyfriend of seven months, Carl. Kaye was hurt, but victorious. Her mother was hurt too, but not as triumphant; she liked Carl, loved the times when he and her exchanged a quip or two about her daughter, and out of loyalty she wanted to preserve the pain. She sighed at the youth of that age to which she bore witness, the youth who knew nothing aside from screwing, raping others, getting wasted and being the typical youth of that generation. She sighed. All of them sighed. The sun would reach tiptop, sink again, gradually, until it turned to something large and orange and less bully and vanished below the horizon. It would be night again and rain would probably fall, threatening the occasion on which regular dipsos would make a traffic nuisance of themselves by setting a table and several plastic chairs on the streets. There they’d carouse the night away. In the morning the cock would crow, resulting in a medley of curses from the whole neighborhood, and the clockwork, prearranged, would commence once again, uninterrupted, vibrant in its repetition.

Enter the World of Incarceration

It was a blank, that thing inside of him. It was lovelessness, by definition, something one cannot find in official dictionaries. He thought the tears he shed would fill it up, but the tears fell down to his feet, down the ground to sink beneath the earth; or else dry up in the air. It didn’t help.


He would wake up in the steamy morning, going straight to the kitchen not to really find today’s newspaper at his backdoor, nor to heat coffee, nor to wash his face, but to go out in the sunshine, letting it caress his face which he would later find despicable. Intimacy with nature was not what he wanted in life, because those who value it would more often than not catch themselves alone in their old age, too late. He didn’t study Philosophy to die alone, to sleep alone, eat alone after he cooked a wonderful dinner. At night, he had always recalled that as a young boy, he had pictured in detail what he wanted for a wife, a house, the number of children, and the breed of their dog. He would grapple in the dark, hoping to find a hand that would in response clutch his as he found it. But there was only the void, occupied by nothing but air, that he could grab on to. As he pitched himself to sleep, there was only the phantasm of dreams to embrace, the nature to love, and they would never leave him, unlike his childhood fantasies, unlike his desires.


In his sleep, he always sank below the sands, the water, and the depth of the forest. He never struggled. He never hankered for carnage, flesh and passion. He only desired communication with the elements, in his dreams. And in the elements, in their union, there was harmony, the kind he’d never find outside of him. Thus when he woke up, always, hunger resurged, and his body was hardly at ease.

END

Last Sorrow

By: RDV


There was a time when she thought he'd call her, when she'd sit up till night, fighting away slumber just so she could hear her phone beep and read his senseless, almost empty message. The night would come, deepen and leave and she would still be wide awake with expectation. There were times when he had failed to live up to their protocol of five SMS’s to each other every day. She would plunder her head for answers, seeking excuses she'd never hear from him. She never took chances at ringing him first, because that was her personal rule. Even if she could break it, she wouldn’t out of pride. She would sit up on her bed, the cold sheets underneath her, waiting for her to make use of them. But their waiting was, as always, half-futile. She would wonder what it was that kept him from greeting her a good night; was his network stalled? Had he run out of phone credits? Was he sick, in an accident or worse? She would never know the answer, for there was no answer to his misses, at least none that she would understand. She would brace herself for a long night, trying to process again and again his neglect of her. When five in the morning struck, she would realize that he had long since turned off his phone and gone to sleep. Forgetting her.

Powerless

By: RDV


Morgan was unusually ponderous that day, everyone would’ve said so. What they didn’t know, however, was that he was looking for something to think about. It was much, much harder than anyone thought; it was certainly easier said than done especially if what you were currently preoccupied with was something you know you were better off forgetting.


Morgan was exactly in the same situation. For one thing, he just discovered that he hadn’t yet become the heartless person he practiced to be. For another, prom night was coming.


It would really be splendid if he came with the person he liked. For months counting, he had pictured himself arm in arm with that person. But the fact is, that person was someone who should/could never be seen around Morgan. Flighty, geeky, solipsistic, often-disparaged-for-his-clothing Morgan. For those who had use for facts, surely, they’d be on time to throw disdainful looks his way once they knew.


Once they knew that it was really Alejo Morgan wanted to be with. For this secret to be secure, Morgan needed to impose a severe rule of silence on himself. He kept it untold; he didn’t even share it to his dog-friend, to whom he was closest. Alejo was the Basketball Team’s captain. He was the sort of over-achiever that owned almost all desirable qualities. He was a straight A student, a good athlete, sexy and nice. Everyone knew that homecoming queen candidate Moira was so into him, and him to her. Unfortunately for Morgan, chances were ridiculously slim.


Morgan had started liking Alejo way back in junior high. But he liked him more intensely when they were partnered for their science lab experiments. Alejo had been warm to him despite Morgan’s first guesses. As a result, they got top marks for their projects and activities. As another result, Morgan was rewarded with great inspiration.


Ever since then, Alejo had made a business of greeting Morgan each time they passed each other in the corridors, incidents that were accidental to Alejo but were actually schemed by Morgan who would apparently not live through the day without so much as a “hi” from Alejo. Ever since then Morgan never stopped pining for Alejo, without ever knowing what it was he really wanted from him. It was Alejo who brought havoc to the impressive order of his life. Which was gone now. Miserably gone.


Two days before the special night, word leaked out that Alejo was indeed going with Moira. It was more hurtful to Morgan than it was to other girls who also liked Alejo. However, Morgan didn’t think of Moira as an opposition to overcome, anyway he hadn’t any chance to begin with. It just simply hurt. Plus he wasn’t about to stage a ludicrous scene in which he’d actually ask Alejo to go to the prom with him. While there was a sort of understanding between them, there wasn’t any hint that Alejo accepted Morgan’s sexual preference.


So it was really farfetched.


It was then when Morgan asked himself the question everyone asked himself; should I or should I not? In his case, it was the debate of going to the prom or not. His mom decided that he should and he agreed in fear that he might regret such rash decision later on in his life. Prom was what high school dumb girls lived for. Whatever it’s worth, he had to experience it.


He went stag. He wore an expensive black suit by Armani which he only used once, during a cousin’s wedding at Holiday Inn. He looked considerably more gorgeous, in a way no one had noticed before, and myriads of spying eyes were glued on him, most probably tied up in the question of why he went stag. They didn’t know he was what they called a fag. An hour and a half later the King and Queen of the Night were awarded. It was Alejo and Moira, predictably. Claps went through the roof as the dance floor was opened up by the principal. He didn’t know how many girls hinted at wanting to dance with him; he didn’t know how many songs Alejo and Moira waltzed on. When midnight struck and everyone’s feet were swelling Morgan came outside the hall. He was tired. He was feeling for his car keys. He wanted to go home. At the parking lot, he saw Alejo, alone, smoking.


He let out a low “Hi.”


Morgan said “Hi” back. He was making the same face he made each time Alejo was near him, half-smiling, half-shy.


Was Morgan going home? It was too early.


Yes.


Was Alejo on the way home too?


Probably. Moira wanted to check in in some motel and Alejo didn’t plan to. She ditched him for football captain Andrew. They were probably naked on the sheets now. Alejo smiled bitterly.


Oh.


Shyness, nervousness, awkwardness and so on mobbed Morgan. It was obviously not the proper time and place to ask Alejo to hang around a bit more with him. It was not their Physics class. Besides, no one would like to hover around with a person who was nothing but someone who suffered all the time. Like Morgan, who had to wrestle with his hormones at midnight thereafter.


Then Alejo surprised Morgan by putting these words on his mouth: “Would you care for a few drinks at Ted’s?” Ted’s was the name of the nearby bar. People went there to go crazy or to chip in coins in the jukebox or to order Martini on the rocks and beer and Johnny Walker and other intoxicating liquids.


Morgan looked back at Alejo. His fortitude and energy died within a minute of each other so that he couldn’t say anything so he just merely nodded. They used Alejo’s car. It was Honda City’s newest model released just two years ago. It rode smoothly. At Ted’s Morgan ordered Bailey’s, while Alejo went for mug after mug of beer. They talked about things normal people at their high school would find too boring to talk about. Later, as early morning crawled on, they became more intimate. Morgan learned that Alejo once dated a guy called Kyle in first year. Alejo learned that Morgan hadn’t dated anyone but would like to if…


Alejo held Morgan’s hand. He assured Morgan that he was sober and he truly looked it. Would it be okay if they went out? From now on? They wouldn’t make a secret out of it anymore. The date they had with each other had been long overdue. It was high time it happened. Morgan was speechless.


Alejo put another hand on Morgan’s, so now Morgan could do nothing but be shocked, more.


Happiness found him. And he hoped that he might find it now amidst his surprise.


He smiled after a few moments sank in. He said yes, of course. He would love to. Alejo leaned closer to kiss him on the forehead. He said he wanted to do that a long time ago. Morgan said “Me, too.” And they laughed like madmen.


But they were not really mad, just in love.


That day, miracles were at work, somehow.

Cheese

A/N: I wrote this 3 years ago. It’s so fucking corny. Nothing personal. I just imagined, out of nothing, what a heartbroken man would say, or feel. It’s really corny. And I wonder why I ever thought of writing it.

By: RDV

When I look at you all I can see is a picture that moves not an inch. You are like a wood piece behind a vitreous barrier; so near and yet so intractable, so untouchable.

It has been four long months since I led you up to my rooftop, the only place where I’m sure sickness wouldn’t reach me. I asked you to watch the sun go down with me. You concurred. The time was 5:43. I had to bookmark it for certain purposes, hoping that it would give meaning to that time, someday, somehow. I was uncharacteristically silent; but yours spoiled the potential air of good timing. You didn’t like this. The very expression on your face told much of how our times together were numbered and running out before my eyesight. In a few minutes, I was sure, the verdict would be delivered.

You said you were sorry that you loved somebody else. Almost in unison, the sun started sinking beneath the thin horizon, rather rapidly as though it dreaded to remain within my vision line. I could hear the fearsome collision of its spicules, or else I was out of my mind. You loved somebody else. Four words confirmed the malice of my thoughts. What was there left to say? Finally I knew what a jilted man felt.

I told you then what I liked about the sun, that when it goes down it will still appear the next morning, without fail. Ah, allusion. I wonder if you were familiar with that. What we had wasn’t like it. If we let go there and then nothing would bring us back together again. Not even if the sun stopped rising.
You said then that you still felt for me. But however you felt for me, it was sure less than what you felt for the other. And it was goodbye all of a sudden. You also lost the game.

For the last time, I asked you to watch the sun go down with me. That afternoon no one mourned, besides you and me.

Rope Bind

By: RDV


The night after Ira killed herself, her best friend, Naomi, although clearly still under the bar, came into their living room to find Ira’s mother supine on the sofa bed. Tears that just a few hours ago drenched her face left traces, root-like wrinkles on her pale skin. She looked serene, like the devastation after a war. The morning was calm, lambent, sympathetic to her loss. Naomi sat herself down beside the mother, whose eyes were held upwards, fixed on nothing in particular. Incoherent mumbles could be read through the movements of her lips, most probably questions on why Ira hanged herself, without warning. Last night seemed normal; there wasn’t a danger signal to look out for. No one foresaw what her silence would mean, what it would amount to.


Naomi could see photo frames of her best friend. Her chronological life exhibited on top of the stereo set where dust was gathering. She wanted to tell Ira’s mom that it wasn’t her who had most to do with it. As she sat with her in complete silence, she found it simply impossible to face her head-on, and talk about her daughter who took her life just half a day ago. The once-sane mother, who just days before, looked perfectly sunny was now unmanageable, hardly sound. She needed to tell her, somehow, that she knew about what had troubled Ira, that she could find the roots of Ira’s pain in her love life, which predeceased her.


Yes it was Michelle. It was about Michelle all along. Ira had loved her, never for once gave her up. In return, Michelle found a guy and dumped Ira without thinking twice. She didn’t do it for pleasure, she simply chose. Ira suffered and contemplated suicide since. What love can do, either was apparently clueless. There was no harder combat than the fight to recover from a broken relationship; when Ira got Michelle’s final words, she didn’t expect anything more from her life but disaster. It was, the break-up, exactly the thing she had nightmares about; it was why, exactly, at the stroke of midnight last night, she tightened the rope around her neck.


Naomi thought about all this. It would be better not to tell Ira’s family about the cause of her suicide. She stood up, said goodbye to Ira’s mother and closed the door behind her. On the day of the funeral, with these thoughts thereafter stored in her memory, she vowed to make Michelle pay.

Glass Splinters

By: RDV


A/N: This story is NOT originally mine; it’s based on the news story I saw one morning.


Alvin was one of those people who got no more respect than does a cockroach. He lived in the ghetto, among other things, and lived off through looted phones which he then sold to pawnshop owners who would pay him at a very low rate. He would stick a blade at the neck of any hostage of his choice and tell everyone who happened to be around to hand out his cell phone to him unless they wanted the knife Alvin was holding to deepen unto the hostage’s neck. Sometimes he just got enough to last him a day of slight hunger; other times, he was grotesquely hungry. In many ways unimaginable, he had procured goods to stuff his stomach with; those were the days when he was absolutely broke, when his hold-up procedures failed and when his days were made utterly destitute for want of vice. In other words, those were the days when he’d steal goods from his neighbors when they had their backs turned or when they so much as blinked their eyes.


On one of his greatest heists, however, he would treat his gang to bottles of beer, a whole case even, as they swam in alcohol, indulging on an afternoon of no hold-up and pure idleness. He lived in such a demoralized manner even his mother had stopped counting on his decency to arrive. It never did; she was right to presume so. The only thing she should be proud of was the fact that Alvin would go to any lengths just to earn money, most often in a bad way. Like all kids in that environment, he inherited the incapability to find better means of livelihood. Instead, he loved drinking, and it was for that purpose, solely, why he did what he did.


It so happened then, one time, when his gang had to return the favor. They just raked thousands after conducting a robbery on one of the passenger jeepneys journeying from Quezon Avenue to Buendia. They entrusted to Alvin a five hundred peso bill with which he would purchase several cases of San Miguel Pale Pilsen for them to drown themselves in as the night turned to morning. It was nearly ten in the evening. Alvin obediently folded the bill in his pocket, his gang looking delightfully at him, fantasizing his quick return as he carried on his back those cases of ecstasy. Alvin nodded at them and left. They would time him, they warned him jocosely. The store was fairly far from their venue and it would certainly take him no less than fifteen minutes to carry on. He ambled in the dark at the succeeding moments, adrift among nocturnal crickets that buzzed continuously. The thought, that dirty thought, had since then been flirting with his mind. It wasn’t until now that it’d been revealed to him to the full extent. That five hundred pesos, he could just pocket it and run off. Yes, his friends would hunt him down and eventually find him. But yes, there was always an excuse booked for them. They could feed on it all they wanted afterwards. He clutched the bill more tightly in his hand; looking ahead one last time, his fortune told, he turned the opposite way.


He made himself extra scarce the following days. The worst his friends could do to him was to try or fail to try to kill him with swear words, to which he had been used since time immemorial. He hid everywhere, every time, in every conceivable way. When he came home, it was only to change clothing. He no longer made a nuisance out of himself around the house; he now rarely witnessed his mother acting so abominably, which he suspected she only did when he was within her sight.


On the second week of his low-lying, he was spotted by one of his gang mates as he moved stealthily out of the house. He didn’t expect to escape their ballooning anger forever; rather, he believed, sincerely, that it would die down inevitably, that they would carouse again together someday as though bygones were bygones. Two weeks was still too early for the grudge to heal so it was still advisable to minimize his appearances. He didn’t look at his former friend when the latter called to him. Alvin could mark the unevenness of the other’s voice which very much pointed out to a threat. His friend told him to stop then, which only made him walk faster. Finally, he had been caught up with. He smiled to his friend as he wheeled around, not knowing what to hope for. Then, swifter than he could notice, a punch flew on his face. On it, where a smile had been, was one stain of redness as large as three knuckled fingers clumped together. Alvin’s nervousness skyrocketed further when, out of the corner of his eyes, were the betrayed others. They closed in on him immediately, their anger still very fresh on their expressive eyes. In the wreckage that ensued, he was ripped from limb to limb until he was left lifeless on the ground, bloodied like an unclaimed carcass.


He was right; their anger wouldn’t last long. It ended along with him.


On the day of the funeral, his mother couldn’t be seen shedding tears. She sat quiet, solemn and younger somewhat, the memory of his son’s face the only souvenir of his brief existence.

Disclosure

By: RDV




She had splattered her width across the bed. The pillows were soaked by her fountain of tears, the room filled with the roars of her cries which she found impossible to quell. If seen outside the real context, one might guess that she was among the bereaved involving a middle-east bombing tragedy. But no, she was just a bereaved in the name of love, jealousy and insecurity. Just this morning, she saw a picture of her freshly pronounced ex-boyfriend with his arm around his brand new baby. Not a car, but a cute girl his age. Having witnessed the horror, she tumbled back to her room in the same languor she had when she woke up untimely due to the boisterous patter of rain on her bedroom’s roof.


Wasn’t it bad to be labeled that way? A jealous ex-girlfriend? She never thought she’d ever be this way when, just weeks ago, she declared that she was tired of him, that he’d be from then on the last thing on her mind and the renewal of their relationship the last thing she’d consider so would he just back off? She added that she would never keep even their happiest moments together in mind, not in either heaven or earth. She didn’t give herself enough latitude to stop and brood over things, didn’t entertain this possibility. Now the words she unleashed upon him, which she believed almost pushed him to tears, tangled inside her head like sticky coils. She shouldn’t have said that. If she knew it would pain her thus, she wouldn’t let go of him at all.


She gave her gay pal a call, Paul, who was a connoisseur of personality and humour. His frankness wasn’t exactly what she needed now but if she wanted entertainment, he’d be just right for the employment. That should be an established cause. But as she picked up the phone to dial his digits, she knew that a heart to heart was what she wanted. She knew that it would take more than a lie and coated laughter to convince her that she was going to be fine.


There were three rings and a curt “hold on a sec,” from her friend’s mother before he was stalled in the line.


“What?” he had said then. Hearing his voice, its very bluntness, made her unsure of how much help was available.


“…” She didn’t say anything but sobbed.


“What is it, honey?”


“Jeff’s got a new girl.”


“Oh I know that already. It’s been ages!”


“What? Why didn’t you tell me? He was hugging her in that picture. Fuck!”


“Didn’t you say you don’t give a shit about whatever he is or does now? And please, don’t act like it’s an act of indiscretion to hug your GF in a photo shoot.”


“I know but...”


“Now it’s my turn to question; why are you crying?”


“It hurts. I don’t know why.” She hiccupped.


“Of course it does. What are you, a stone-head?”


“But Paul, I didn’t prepare myself for this. It’s—“


“People don’t prepare themselves for this kind of shit. They don’t enter a relationship to think up ways to end it and how to end it with minimal pain. Girl, you are one ignorant bag.”


“…” She tried to humour her pain by looking at it through Paul’s lens. But she couldn’t, that’s it. In her attempt to express appreciation, she laughed, weakly, which made her sound like laughing at her own private joke.


“Therese, get out of yourself. He’s not worth getting a breakdown. He hasn’t enough education to pass him for a petty thief. He’s all face and dick.”


“Yeah, thanks for reminding me.”


“There’s no reason for that new girl to be proud of him if you haven’t noticed it yet.” Paul had this way of stating what was already puttering out of the surface. Somehow, it hardly consoled Therese. Now she was beginning to think that what she asked for and what this friend of hers could give her did not exist.


“Paul I feel so small, you know.”


“That’s expected. You’re one damn insecure biatch and as far as I’m concerned it’s not something out of normalcy.”


“Okay, I know. I’ve read that in books a hundred times but why does it have to be so heavy, like this?”


“What? Your suffering? Nothing’s easy to suffer. Live with it. Time mends everything. Gosh, Therese, he’s useless. I can make a list of his vices and it may take me forever to finish it. Tell me, which among his pleasures makes you want him back like this?”


“Paul, please…”


“He’s useless.”


“You’ve just said that a while ago.”


“Would I repeat it if you’ve been listening?”


“Am I not?”


“You’re ornery. You don’t take it to heart, I know.”


“It refuses to.” She said. It did. Her heart would refuse one moral, then the next, then the one after that until something snapped out altogether, like her life.


“Then force it.”


“How?”


“Go out with some other guy.” He said. It was, however, a possibility out of her mark; she never was a socialite. He was her first and she was afraid, her last.


“Argghh.”


“Then die.”


Therese knew that those words served as a cue for the end of their prattle. Paul wasn’t licensed to feel empathy for her, no one was. This kind of pain was something one bears alone, in grief, in profoundest sadness.


“Paul, I have to go.” She said.


“Okay, fine. Just get a grip, okay? You may find it by looking at what’s happening outside. There’s a war in Iraq, you know. The death toll there may be more worth your tears than your ex is. Bye.”


He hung up. She was exhausted. In silence, she resumed her waterworks. She’d never get over him, her first love. She loved him still and she would spend her whole life trying to prove herself wrong on that subject.

Tonight

By: RDV



What compels a person to go on living?


Life is untenable, full of it; people are invulnerable, invincible, until they die. Eighteen year old Lailani may have thought along those lines, yes, lest those who know her, but scarcely, have been misinformed, or have misconstrued her.


That she is an anorexic is just a tiny part of it. She’s small, petite, too little to contain so large a sadness; but that’s not the point. That her mother never, from the start, favoured her aspirations to go to college was only the half of it. That she has been raised in a strenuous, blatantly discouraging household may be the other half. Her troubles skyrocketed, no one keeps navigation of her but herself. Nobody cares. Nobody is within reach. She is past the notion that the road will straighten out somewhere. There isn’t much chance of a change of heart. She is past rehabilitation, past any reinforcement that will make her love her life.


In her room she has spent one sleepless night after another, absorbed one fuck-up after the next, until her mind was too fatigued to cooperate. In here as well, where, in an embarrassing number of times she has contemplated slitting her throat, wrist, and any other part of the body where the pulse kicks, the door rarely swings open and closes to announce a presence other than hers. If she’s been asked how long it has been since she’s had a visitor, she’d probably have to go twelve years back when play dates were still a trend. The sofa bed in the corner stands often forlorn, even in night time, when she will curl up on the chair in front of the mirror. Perhaps, pitying herself for wanting to die alone.


Tonight the darkness is eerie. It feels like some hand will just snatch her away and do the suicide job so easily. Under dim light she can make out thin, haphazardly done scratches on her arms. No doubt the partner culprit is the saw-toothed bread knife her mother uses for chopping vegetables. Clop, clop, clop, she can hear the mechanical sound of the steel brushing across the pitiful cabbage, then striking forcefully against the chopping board underneath as her mother wipes her forehead at every heave out of gross instinct. She wonders if she can do the same to her arms, if tonight she can muster the strength. As she thinks of this, her face shows an unreasonable calmness that one will think what passes in her mind is no more tragic than a math problem.


She raises the bottle of insect killer on level with her eyes. ‘Could be fatal if drunk’ is nowhere on the caption. How inconsequential. But aside from that, is there adequate proof that it’s not deadly? She wishes that some flicker of knowledge would make her know what to add to its content to make it fatal. She doesn’t want the same mistake; her first attempt apparently wasn’t a success. She had made cuts on both her wrists but somehow, somebody found her in the bathroom before life marched out of her. Or maybe the cuts weren’t deep enough. At any rate, the she has already forgotten the pain they inflicted, but the motivation never left her. Other than that, she vowed never to use the same method again.


She was rushed to the hospital then. The ambulance, to her dismay, arrived with the precision required of it. The rescue team lifted her off the couch, 98 pounds and all, and dumped her on the stretcher. She could hear steps skittering down the hall as she gradually felt more and more drugged; people were rushing to save her life. But blood was flowing out of her, fast.


When she recovered, her family didn’t take it lightly. To this end, she isn’t sure if she has forgiven that day, the numbing heart pain their glances imposed on her. She was asked, harshly, to be seated at the master’s end of the dining table, the members of her clan, faces scowling in disdain, placing blame on her. Did she know how much her confinement cost them? Or did she know how much if it would’ve cost them had she kicked the bucket? They were scraping by for crying out loud! Yes, she was a curse to everyone. Yes, she should get out of herself now because she was getting on everyone’s tits with her fancy for another life some dimension else. They nagged, pecked, and bickered, her mother the longest at it. After they got tired of it, she was dismissed quickly. They didn’t give her chance to explain or excuse herself. Just when she thought she had been above reproach, they came blaring at her like this! Impossible.


No right procedures were carried out. But maybe her case is beyond lunacy that they didn’t send her to a therapist. Or maybe financially, there was no means. Or both.


She repeated the suicide attempts. It became a household routine. Her family members didn’t keep watch despite the considerably daunting propensity that Lailani would keep at it, thereby unwittingly providing her an advantage to go on. Somehow, they found ways to save her each time. At one point, she began looking at their eyes. They read, make no mistake about it, “Let her do her death process in peace.” They wanted her dead, they still do and will ever anon. It’s not worth putting up with her.

Tonight her brakes are off, she’s going to do it, going to stop ruining her life, stop bearing the yoke of wanting to die by ending life itself. She knows now that she has been afraid before that’s why she never achieved success in the matter. She has been a fool to be a chicken. The drone of the crickets is just by her window. She can sense them with utmost clarity. Because the insecticide doesn’t guarantee her purpose’s end, she opts to bring this agenda further from her usual venue. The town’s river is just a walking distance. She knows it isn’t a beautiful choice; she has always been loath to have her corpse discovered by strangers. But tonight the impulse is too great; it’s gathering up its forces to home on her, begging her to end it now because it has been delayed too long already.


She flexes herself up, follows her feet and mind and closes the door behind her. Storm, sleet and snow won’t stop her now.


At the river she opens her arms as if to embrace it, as if to dive unto it like a lover who has travelled a great distance to find it. Then for the last time, she curses.

Sick of Self-worship

(on-going)


By: RDV


Her friends weren’t the sort you trade secrets with. If you wanted something known, and you wanted it known to the world within two seconds, her friends would be the perfect choice. Gossip. They’d be there in one whistle. Tania enjoyed this, this common ground she and his friends flirted on, until the time arrived when they had nothing to gossip about anymore but themselves, praising each of their boyfriends like they were Mars or Apollo.


“Tania, when are you going to get a BF?”


“…”


“Hey, we’re talking to you.”


“Soon. I’m dating this guy.”


“Oooh. Who?”


“No one you know.”


“How come you never talk about him with us? You know a little sharing isn’t bad.”


“I know. I just want it to be private.”


“That isn’t fair. We talk about ours all the time.”


“Well, that’s your choice. You can NOT talk about them if you’d prefer it.”


It was her friends’ turn to be speechless. They sat in a semi circle, in the courtyard. Class had just been dismissed and the next bell wouldn’t be ringing until thirty minutes. Tania got up and excused herself to the washroom, where she’d be in keeping with her unattached, interior world. Enough of those girls for the day.


At home, she immediately commissioned her cousin, Paolo to do her a favor. Paolo had a cute friend named Alex. Tania wondered if she could ‘rent’ him for a fee or no fee to pretend as her boyfriend, just to give her friends something to cackle about. Sooner than she expected, the matter was efficiently carried out by Paolo. Alex was cordially cooperative, thankfully.


At dismissal time the following week, the girls were parked at Yellow Cab. They were chattering on like woodpeckers when a hot guy came swinging in the place. Almost in automatic response, one of Tania’s friends squealed in a whisper,


“Red alert. Cute guy on the loose.”


Tania looked up. Alex. Alex too, got wind of her. He didn’t so much as stride to her direction as swaggered. With one smile he sent Tania standing up to plant a kiss on his cheek. They coddled for a while more, moving like everything would wait for them to finish. Ha! This choreographed act was going better than she expected! The girls’ jaws hung open; the stud took their breath away just like that.


“For mockery’s sake, speak!” Tania laughed as she addressed her friends. One by one they gave out their names. After they were done, Tania took the pleasure of naming his swain.


“Alex, everyone.”


“Hi.” Alex said.


“Hi,” the girls replied weakly, incredulous.


They invited Alex to sit with them. Confident Tania smiled all throughout. The pathetic state she always played to her friends in their love-struck litany was now displaced from her head. Here, with Alex, the phantom of her happiness knew form, finally. This life owed her that love; she waited for it all along, too long. It was like stepping into another body, this business. It was almost real…


TBC

The Order of Things

By: RDV


There was a loud skip, then a thud, then a crash. Mr. Cunanan vigorously turned his steering wheel to the left to avoid it but in the whirl of things unfortunately got caught. No sooner than he realized it than his brand new Picanto was lurched to a stop at the muddy sideway. It was relatively dark already. The thoroughfare was illumined only by the meager headlights of motorist cars. Mr. Cunanan uttered a loud curse, cranked himself out of his damaged vehicle and moved forward the culprit. It was a jeepney driver. As usual.


The driver had nothing on but a tank top and shaggy pair of shorts. Mr. Cunanan glared at him, quantifying him. the driver looked as though he had been kicked out of third grade schooling. Mr. Cunanan asked him what the hell he was doing, with no restraint. The driver spat back, disrespectfully as he drove. By the way the cars were positioned after the crash, it could easily be told that luck was on Mr. Cunanan’s side had the cops arrived. He would not even attempt to explain what happened, the picture of the two vehicles in collision would suffice. It was not even a collision, it was allision. And there was nothing the damned jeepney driver could do to keep anything out of evidence. He was fucking dead. The die is cast.


So curses, the likes of which hadn’t reached both their ears in a long time flew. They swore at each other as though they both reserved their profanities exclusively for each. The scene of the accident alone caused trauma, what more of these two well-built guys launching at each other? The passengers of the jeep, one after another, jumped out, not wanting to take any part of this. At one point, Mr. Cunanan screeched at what must have been a comment by the driver that attacked his sensibility. He roared, made a motion to move away and went to his car as if to search for something. In the next minute he could be heard throwing not only invectives, but a threat to gun the driver. I will shoot you, he threatened. The driver backed away as Mr. Cunanan rummaged through his glove compartment. At this state, it was pretty difficult to determine the lies from the truth. His face was full of anger, hate, impossible to quell.


In fear, the driver pled. He said there should be a negotiation. For a moment, Mr. Cunanan considered this. He massaged his chin; he always did that when waiting for his mind to settle on something. But drivers who drive like that deserve nothing but the fires of hell. This one should be dead, who endangered not only the image of Cunanan but the lives of his passengers. Then as if to answer the driver’s prayers, the police came. One of the passengers probably summoned them. At any rate, the interrogation began.


Now since the driver was one of those people who couldn’t be trusted to do the unexpected, he lied, being a piece of trash and a lowlife. He had far more talents than was suitable for him; he was good at acting the victim’s role, at making up stuff, at lying. He told all sorts of lies contrary to the blatant evidence, including which his previous records of reckless driving on account of several complaints filed by his passengers. In the hope of getting washed clean of his sins, he pointed a finger on Cunanan. Yes, it was the bloody elite’s fault. There was now no other witness to counter this, everything would be fine.


Cunanan stayed silent. He had a knack for keeping calm in situations like this. It would be implausible if the police took in even a word of what the bastard said. It would be. In his abstract rumination, there came to him the basic answer to all this. He opened his mouth after a long interim and told the police that they should get rid of the driver now. He pulled out his pistol, threatened to blow out the knave’s brain if the police tarried longer.


With one look at each other, clearly operating their common sense, the two policemen handcuffed the driver amidst the latter’s curses. In a while, the doldrums was over and Mr. Cunanan was left in silence.

Bounds of Civility

By: RDV


She was acting in good faith when she agreed to meet with her text mate after a month of haphazard communication. Like all victims of this kind of relationship, she fell prey to anonymous attraction and admitted to him, through SMS, that she might be falling in love with him, whom she hadn’t yet seen at the time.


On the day of the rendezvous, she put on her Tommy Girl perfume, her off-shouldered red top and plaited denim mini-skirt to state her exquisite fashion sense. She smiled upon boarding off the MRT. They would meet in Shangri-La, at Starbucks at around seven o’clock at noon. The city was under a cool, windy evening. No signs of rain for later disappointment were making itself known. Everything seemed perfect.


She found him at the meeting place, clad in fitting pants and rock star type shirt. Thank god he didn’t have a bonnet; it would rot her first impression of him. He stood up to greet her. They shook hands and exchanged smiles. At close perusal, he wasn’t someone one could describe as handsome. But his face had a certain charm to it, and his voice, as she had heard him on the phone, was invigorating and lovely. Thus, she passed her judgment on him.


They talked for a while, walked around, had dinner, talked again and did minimal shopping. At ten o’clock they announced that they both had a good time and expressed their wish for a sequel to this meeting. Both agreed, parted and went to bed with unconscious smiles on their faces.


Later, she’d do a horrid confession to him. She already had someone else, her boyfriend of three years. She couldn’t leave him; she loved him too much. In her abundant guilt, tears came running down her cheeks as she pressed the keys of revelation. Her text pal took it lightly, to her surprise. His reply was understanding; he said it was okay. But could they remain friends? Surely. Could they go out sometimes still? Uh, okay.


On Halloween they went out, not in direct relation to dating, but to being good friends. They had a great time at Alabang where children in costumes went out on a trick-or-treat. But they night caught up with them. Her place was several rides away and it would be too dangerous to commute alone, especially for a girl. His apartment, however, was nearby. She could stay for the night; he wouldn’t mind if she didn’t.


After much hesitation, she agreed. She had by then accepted the fact that something might happen, as what happens between a boy and a girl who are alone together. He led her to his abode. For his age, it was a bit extravagant. Sure, it was homely there, and she felt quite certain that he had rich parents. He closed the door behind him. She could feel it, what was bound to happen. He walked towards her. He, alone in the world, was in slow motion as he took slow gaits forward. She hadn’t seated herself on the sofa, since he hadn’t asked her yet to. But now, standing face to face, she felt herself going red all over. His gaze was straight and in contrast, she flinched constantly as though she couldn’t stand being steady.


But then his actions turned weird. He raised his right arm and swung it to her face. She fell onto the floor, too shocked to react.


“You slut, I’ll kill you!”


No longer than a heartbeat passed when he picked her up again, this time, only to give her another blow and another and another, until she lost it altogether. When she woke up she was enclosed in darkness. Groping, she knew that she was inside a movable cabinet. He had stuffed her there. Her whole body was aching, a pitiless bone fracture in her hip forestalling further movements. She closed her eyes, pondering on the folly of her deeds. She presaged what was going to happen to her next. She would be found dead, with a hammock rope tied around her neck. Black and blue bruises covered her body and telltale signs of genital distortions would lead the investigators to conclude that she had been raped. A corpse, a cold, rigid, defiled corpse she would be in no time. Alas, it was a one-way ticket to purgatory.


She tried to moderate her breathing; even the oxygen inside the cabinet seemed no good for inhaling. In suffocated sobs, with her spirit becoming something outside of herself, she composed herself to absorb the situation. Then slumber and fatigue from hazing took hold of her.


Two days later the authority, with the help of a local, discovered a shattered wooden cabinet at a cliff’s landing. No doubt it had been dropped there from the top. Among the wreck was a body of a young woman in signature clothing and botched makeup. Further studies on the carcass proved that the victim suffered from no sexual assault. She pre-deceased the disposal of the cabinet.

Hierarchy

By: RDV

Katie always got what she wanted. Even the best of littlest things should belong to her. Her siblings, of which she was the second, accepted the bias as the general rule. They were brought up to think that they were inferior to her, thanks to their rarely present father who spoiled her to both his and her hearts’ content.

On her eleventh birthday he gave her a Tagheuer watch. In the succeeding months, he gave her every luxury a girl that age doesn’t deserve. Her cell phone’s model was serially up to date. Once a new one came up, hers would be passed down to her mother, then to her younger brother, then to the eldest child who was born of a different brother. The youngest one was too young to own a phone. At any rate, this was the life Katie came to know.

They were rich, undeniably, but the wealth was all dirty money. Their father was a public official; along with the job comes inevitable corruption. A great deal of it. It follows that he fathered many children, possessed countless mistresses and hence had them all to feed. Katie’s mother, of course, wasn’t the legitimate wife so this family was more often than not neglected. But the father made up by providing for them generously and sating Katie with his gifts. He was his favorite and they loved each other dearly.

The money, until the disaster struck, was sufficient. When the disaster did hit, it hit hard. The father, haply, fell ill. He could no longer work and in time, he had finalized his retirement. Old age had done this detriment. More than that, bad karma did. For once, Katie looked upon the graver aspects of her relationship with her father. Her visits to the hospital where he stayed were strictly limited, since the legal family had full charge. She became depressed for a time, venting it on her mother, cruelly making it plain to her that it was her fault why things were such. She could never forgive her for being his whore only. She called in question her fidelity when she started dating someone else, which at any rate was due her since Katie’s father was a philanderer and they had been separated for four years now and were only on technical terms. But Katie never understood all this. She wrote her a letter, expressing how unfair she had been. But did Katie understand what she had been through? That love for his father blinded her such that she would never come to realize how much her mother suffered for him and for their children, something one could easily realize just by breathing.

“Katie, listen here--“

“No.”

“He’s left us. He left us long before you knew.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the one who wants to leave this family.”

“Oh, I wish I could.” Her mother paused. “Katie, we’re not number one. We’re not even number two. We’re number three, and there are number four and number five. Your dad left behind him a whole village to feed. He’s near death, and there’s nothing for us in his will. We have no right over it. He left us practically beggars--”

“Stop it! I’m not hearing this!” She covered her ears with both hands. Her mother held them away.

“You will listen to what I say.” She said with a biting austerity. But she knew, knew too well, that she couldn’t be supplicated by mere explanation.

“I’m not hearing your ugly voice--”

Smack.

Her mother slapped her, hard, whereas before she hadn’t the guiding instinct for such cruelty. She hadn’t done it before, even in Katie’s toddler years. Because her father loved her so, her mother was afraid to lay a hand on her. Now that he was to disappear, the mother would be free to regulate their children’s discipline. Nothing would hinder her now.

“You are a mean little bitch. You are a spoilt, useless brat.” Her mother blared. “I was wrong to secretly hope that you’d see through him. Of course you won’t. I could never give you what he gave you. Material shit.”


Her mother was panting as she finished the affected monologue. A part of the weight was lifted off her chest, but the debris was still there. An equal measure of hate and pity was in her eyes, for Katie, for her father, for everything. She went on,


“You never reproached him for his mistresses. You blamed me for your being an illegitimate child. You always saw me as this perverted slut who runs after money. But what about a thirty-year-old man who seduced a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl? Isn’t that something? And a man who has five families to feed, who pitched into his pockets government money, isn’t that disgusting? He left us, Katie, he left me for a younger woman even as he did with the other two before me and even as he did to that younger woman. You have no right to judge me if I go out with another man if you worship a person like that.” There were tears in her mother’s eyes. “I love you but you don’t own my happiness. I’m not gong to let you take it.”


They were both in the chaos of tears now. None dared restrained the flow, and the howling proceeded. After she eloped with Katie’s father, at sixteen, her mother never was a whore. She was a mother, a housewife, a slave to her family at best and worst. She always worked hard to make ends meet, worked like a cow until it hunched her back. There were times when she didn’t do things the way she should have, but like the servile maid she’d take deep care to apologize to her children even if it meant losing her integrity as the head of that incomplete family. She only thought of being romantically involved with another man four years after Katie’s father abandoned her. And Katie was angered beyond words by this. She couldn’t of course understand. He wanted her mother to be loyal to that scoundrel even if there was no recompense.


As they looked at each other, her mother realized how alike Katie was to her father; same eyes, same lips movement, same nose. It pained to look at her thus and she wondered if Katie still looked at her father as a saint, which she apparently had fallen into the mistake of believing as a very young girl. Then as if a glimmer in Katie’s eyes shed the truth, she knew, she just knew that Katie would never love her the way she did her father. She was suspended eternally between love and ignorance, from which she could never recover. Slowly, the mother turned away, retreated to the thought of how repulsive that man was to her and in the bedroom, learned that she had that same hatred for her daughter too.

Truth for Thought

By: RDV


He looked at her, not really regarding her or anything. She was just a dirty linen to him, a piece of dull furniture which isn’t worth a second’s notice. He clasped his hands in front of her; no spark of amazement slanted on his face. They were over now. Thank god.


She walked away, not begged to go back. She had been through this countless times before; guys ditching her. If anything could be more predictable, she could murder herself now.


Sometime later she gave up heterosexuality altogether. Without thinking she sought out girls who loved girls. They didn’t satisfy her, she knew that, but she insisted in order to show those guys that they were pushed to the margin of her interest now, even as she had been by them prior to this. Her friends were half-disbelieving; how could the flirty, self-proclaimed boy-killer change gender preference now? It wasn’t logical.


What they didn’t know was that she had her pride to keep. She wanted to slam it on their male faces that she didn’t want guys anyway so it was perfectly fine if they ditched her. What she needed was a form of parallelism with her sexual frustrations, something to keep her pride intact. Lesbians came as an almost prompt answer. They were an easy target. They weren’t bad, but they didn’t do either.


“Are you happy?” One of her friends enquired of her. As if she had reason to suspect that she was unhappy.


“Very,” She said. Even she knew the quality of lie underlying that answer. She wasn’t happy; she was going against her nature for chrissake.


Her friend smiled and paused for long, long enough for the fear to recommence inside her. There was now a delicate tension between their gazes, as if each were dying to read the other’s mind. Whatever filthiness germinated in her friend’s head, she would prevaricate it later, eventually. She had to put up with the disguise no matter what, else she’d have her shattered pride to answer to.


“Listen, honey, let’s go to the pub. You’ll meet a lot of nice guys there.” Her friend offered.


She just shook her head. Alas, her friend knew. And with this realization, the desire for men was instilled, or renewed, inside her. How many years had it been since she had been with men? Oh, she lost count already. It had been forever. She stretched up, said goodbye to her friend and walked away. Alone now, around the warmth of her bed and pillows, she cried and cried.


“God, when will this end?”

underage adultery

By: RDV

She had forgotten the time when her life had turned into a rainy day. All she knew was that her heart had turned into nothing but a sac in her chest. The boyfriend, unfaithful, with no face to speak of had done well to do it just when she believed the relationship was working out in smooth synchrony.

Fifteen fucking years old. Juvenile. Puerile. Brainless. The only shelter she knew apart from her uncontested beauty was her mother’s arms and her father’s forgiveness, which by the way was often mistaken for paternal malpractice for being too profuse and easily earned.

She wept for long, saying that the reason why she chose an ugly guy for a swain was that so no girls would come after him.

Well they did. That’s the wonder. And the favors were returned, responded time after time until it became a habit. How in life there came a person like that remained a mystery. And it was ever the constant question why she’d stoop down to him. Each time the subject was brought up by concerned friends, she’d say she loved him. Then like a child that said something stupid, got reprimanded and felt horrible as a result, she’d sink in, quiet, drowning in their amused stares, doused in shame. But she had been so knotted in her worries, she never could understand them anymore. Whether she sank or swam, the worst of them would catch up with her, fresh, new and renewed each time.

Oh she never forgot the times when he’d asked her to make his school projects. Which was a clear testimony that he was of no value, studies-wise. And he wasn’t loaded either. Just a person with something dangling between his legs, which wasn’t the point.

The point is, the mistakes could not be reverted.

She was crying alongside her soul, clouded around her mom’s warmth. Somewhere in that minute, the tears disappeared without being hushed. She tried to explain it, but her story ended before she could open her mouth. Her mother knew. It was like when he forgot their monthsary, on the 6th of never, and she swooned , cried, broke down in a deluge of tears like it was the end of the world.

The flower of youth withered there. It was time it was reborn.

She told her mom she loved him still. Ah, what bullshit. When would she see that she’d been used and overused? Tomorrow? By then it would be too late and the relief somewhere down the line would be gone for no second chance. Fate had had enough and it would no longer take excuses. But maybe it could take pity. Who knows or cares?

She cried still, disconsolate. It would never end, whatever it was she mourned for. The only thing to wait for was realization.

Dear Eddie: A Tribute to Pearl Jam

By: RDV



She has no picture of him. The only piece of him she has is in her memory and there she’s quite sure it will always be fresh, like the morning she has come to greet each time she opens her eyes first time of the day. He has long hair that goes down just an inch below his shoulders, as far as she knows, auburn, frizzy and seemingly un-shampooed for several days. His face, of course, is the most beautiful thing to her eyes, like she has always envisaged. And his outfit, always the same; boyish but comfortable, minimalist but eye-catching nonetheless. She sees him whether she chooses to or not. It seems like her mind has been programmed to flash his image each waking moment.


But of course, his voice is what captivates her. It has been about that from the beginning. She heard him, and love made itself felt, had been set into motion, never to cease. She was bound for a lifelong obsession, as her ears trapped the melody of ‘Black’. Sheets of empty canvas, so says the first line. And so was she for the first time of hearing the song, disappearing to obscurity while she listened with a full, honest heart. When she saw a video his performance at a concert held in Seattle, his hometown where Grunge music thrived in its seminal years, the admiration took on a dramatic metamorphosis that threatened to go on forever. It didn’t start from a petty crush; it started, unprecedented in its enormity, big. It was love, irreducible and eternal. She knew that too as she watched fog come out of his singing lips as he sang Black in front of four million audiences. The awareness was prompt in coming; the love, deferential at first, was pitiless, and she, unchanged.


She didn’t buy their box set which contained their greatest hits. It was released in her 16th year. Apart from the fact that she couldn’t afford it, there was what one calls fear. She didn’t know if she was ready for the Pearl Jam’s greatest hits. If Alive and Evenflow were too hot for her to handle, what more the 30 others that were in that set? And if she did have the chance to listen to the singles, how would she be able to bear the brunt of such high-flung obsession? She knew it would be just too much.


It’s enough that she’s here, and he’s there in her mind. Burning, his face comes to her in both dreams and nightmares. Where in the former he is her savior, in the latter he is the ghost that haunts and torments her. She loves it, no matter. The fantasy remains; her fidelity to that love, undying evermore. But she loves more the music, the sustained but power-charged vocals, the ever-so controlled but sentimental tone in his voice, the roughness and the softness just the same. The way he was always relaxed in gigs, never making a movement above a single jump while either throned on a stool or standing stiff in front of a microphone, never trudging the bounds of the hard-core mainstream of rock such as head-banging and air-splitting; all of it, doubtless, are what made the group so deserving of her loftiest praises. Their songs—which are thus far familiar to her---are the only gospel to her.


She is his Daughter, his Last Kiss, his Jeremy.


As she rouses from her ritual acts of worship, she smiles, she laughs, she vows for whatever it takes to be loved.

One of Us

By: RDV


At twenty one, Andy was leaving everything behind, his family, his friends, the hometown he grew up in. It was his independent decision to go; even if his parents vetoed it, he’d find ways to run away anyway. He knew they had exhausted their resources; the income was meager and the cost of living conversely higher. If he stayed, he’d just be another luggage on their back.


But he had other reasons. All his friends are fathers now, even those who were considerably younger than he was, and he looked at this as a potential hazard to his overall life. Somehow, his gang ended up in bed with girls and found them pregnant the following morning. No, Andy had other ideas in life. He didn’t want to be one of those good-for-nothing fellas with no jobs and only more mouths to fill. So he was going away, far from their influence.


When he voiced this out with one of his friends, who already had a two-year-old kid to feed, the latter called him a hypocrite. And not quite unreasonably. Andy had been sexually active as far as everyone was concerned. Basically everyone saw his excuse as no more than a ridiculous pretense to keep his slate clean somehow. He was the master deflowerer of virgins, the fucker of everything, the bed-master who by some magic made girls hanker for more after several rounds. But he was going away, because being a father at this age was not his intention.


He packed his bags to Baguio soon after. He wanted to save what dignity he could by splitting. The contingencies were on his side, what was ahead looked bright. His demands were few so a measly pay would support him. Nothing should be a major problem, of course. And so he embarked on his journey with the highest spirits.


He frolicked, he had fun, he had spent.


A year and a half later he returned. Quite ironically he wasn’t alone. A woman was with him and so was a so-and-so-month-old baby girl. It was his, both of those people. He introduced them to his parents as his wife and kid, willing to reveal the un-concealable. They, for their part, kept quiet. They knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. With the environment Andy grew up in it was pretty hard to expect otherwise of him. He was a father, at last, a doom which everyone knew would befall him.


When asked if he remembered the raison d’etre why he left nearly two years ago, he’d answer ‘yes’ and laugh it away.


“I was being delusional then. I had to face the facts too, you know.”

Psychology Unrewarded

Under dim moonlight she wrote a song for him
Her pen provoked at the mighty mention of his name
As it fell, tumbled on the cold floor
Of her barren room.
She mumbled the name as she did when alone
And clutched her chest while it
Expanded, shrank and back again
In rapid succession.
Seconds whirled away with the memory
Of bitten nails, the desperate sighs
That never reached their clandestine destination anyway,
Like the final draft of the song composed
For him.


She bent her fingers to trace
The lovely letters of his name.
That ink stain marked the stretched absence,
The absence that never left the damp,
Echoing cavern of her bones, her within.
No breath was caught, no warmth lingered
Except at the sudden tinker of his name
Whence she jumped and sat once more,
Silent and incomplete evermore.


Sheets of paper, boxes of gel pens,
Countless clockworks drifted past her listless eyes
And unrelenting age.
All these did not suffice the syllables
Of that lovely name.
They lay crumpled and heaped, brimming the rim
Of the trash bin in the corner of her
Sad, quiet, breezeless room.


Underneath the ceiling her mutters echoed
And frolicked here and there,
Irresponsive of the blisters caught in her fingertips
And the persistent immobility of her worn-out wrists.
The sounds continued, burdened, locked away they seemed
In a hole
And only went back
To the chattering, repeating lips of hers.


She called his name in the dark
She called his name night and day
She called his name until she trembled,
Her jaws stuck, her tongue dry.
She called his name when slumber
Touched her at last in her fatigued unconsciousness.
She slept with his name inside her mouth.
The light bulb was switched on
Her eyes visibly wiped of yesternight’s tears.


She forgot what it sounded like to have the doorknob turned
She was no longer familiar with the wind beyond her room
She forgot what the mirror had use for
And her face wrinkled 4 years faster.
She got hold of logic then as it returned
In lieu of protracted lapse, fresh from the grave
She learned that
She forgot the face behind that lovely name.

A Mere Rhetoric

By: RDV


He said “save me,” but she didn’t care about him anymore. Said it to the now empty expanse of her heart. How could she respond to that? Wasn’t he the one who left her? She hated his primitive thinking, the way he’d always think that she was available to get back to. She wasn’t about to fall into the mistake of taking him back. Too much repetitions, negligence on his part, have blunted her love for him already.


He did say he was sorry. He always did. And his offer of apology never expired; she was always ready to accept, no matter what. She loved him then, in her forced, modified way. Wrongly, that is.


But now, by coincidence or by design, she didn’t want him anymore. It was like magic, this sudden shift. He was weeping in front of her, like the prodigious son, expectant and spoilt. In her mind, if she could push him away, if she had enough strength, she would. She looked at his pitiful face; there was an amalgam of two emotions lying behind her chest.


It was hate, despise and another one she wasn’t sure of yet...


“I’m so sorry. I can’t.” She said. It was his fault. It was he who dug a depth to drown himself in, like now. If he hadn’t run off with that girl—no, with all those other girls---everything would be much easier. Forgiveness wouldn’t be grudged. If he thought she’d say otherwise, he was sure to be verging on delusion of the worst kind. Ha!


“Why not?”


Well, for starters, what she had for him now certainly didn’t amount to love. For another, he’d just do everything all over again. With minimal variations sometimes, but all the same he’d do it again. She had no wish to hurt him. But enough is enough.


“Well, I don’t want you anymore. I don’t want you around me, that’s it.”


He stared at her then, unbelieving. For the first time he had no firm hold over things. He was losing them fast. In addition to his fear, she seemed bent on keeping her word. A leap of faith swept over her; yes, all this was pointless.


“Go home now. I don’t want to see you ever again.”


As he heard it, he felt the web that hitherto held them together fell apart. He felt a strong desire to cry just then, because he knew in his heart of hearts that it was as she said it. It was over. He walked away like a scalded kitten, vowing never to return.


Alone, she realized what it was she felt. The anger, no longer anger, turned to pity. She knew he never really had peace inside him. He kept on going back to her because she was her only home. In others, there wasn’t that kind of comfort. He loved her, of course. She stared at the segment of the sky which was starry. She swore that she’d never stare at the same sky with him again, anymore.

Tit for Tat

By: RDV


She was screaming ostensibly. Her voice rose over the disturbing sound of the boom box which was playing Slipknot’s Prayer. He could tell by now that the usually passive neighborhood had been woken up by this commotion. Not quite annoyed, but intrigued rather. Lights from across the street switched on, heads peaked stealthily from windows that were otherwise clouded by curtains; nonetheless, silhouettes of their neighbors who didn’t want to miss out on the action could easily be made out. They were listening, of course, to augment his embarrassment further.


“Why are you doing this to me, why are you doing this to me?” She repeated again and again. Her face was now smeared with tears, her mascara running, her hair thrown in disarray out of wringing. She was rested on one of the dining stools, exhausted and miserable. In front of her was her husband, standing motionlessly as he got lost in amusement.


He, the son, continuously tapped his mother on the shoulder. She went on crying, as though they’d never stopped hurting her, as though they were using a cane on her.


“Tell me, why are you doing this to me?” She wailed once more in maximum volume.


None could find the answer. None could tell what it was she obstinately referred to. The son couldn’t understand why she plunged into this fit of hysteria over a broken plate. He could hear his mother as she went on with her bout; his father, lulled into speechlessness, stood staring at her. Did he know from the start?


Then suddenly he motioned for his son. They went to the kitchen, out of her earshot. The son could read discomfiture all over his father’s face now. He was shaking his head in clear display of frustration. It took him a few minutes before he could start, as if rehearsing what to say.


“Your mother needs help. I’m so sorry; I should’ve told you this long ago. She needs to be locked up.”


The son didn’t say anything. An immediate realization came over him, unbidden however; yes, it was plain to see. In silence, he tried to absorb its enormity. He had always been different from his peers, he noticed. There was something awry with the way he was brought up by this mother of his. It was in her where the screws were loosened up, where the behavioral code took on an entirely different phase. He was different from the rest because of her.


Looking at his father, he nodded quietly. It was time to return the favor; he should be the one looking after her now. He fetched the car keys from the master’s bedroom and gave it to his father who was now transporting his mother to the family car. Tonight, when they returned, it would be a vacuously peaceful night for father and son.

Dream in a Nutshell

Dream in a Nutshell

(I made a poem again. I feel so wordless. I don’t know why I want to write something I couldn’t vaguely touch or see. I’m just currently twisted, I suppose.)


Believing that there's such a thing
as receding then charging forth,
I look up above me and
there's a zigzagging line across the sky.
It stops dead, still as the fossils
of Triassic Earth.
I hang my head low, once again
it stirs itself to life, moving
as it wills, torrentially, hastily
against the painted colors of the clouds
until the rest of it is discolored, distorted
even as the image my eyes long ago projected.


I step on the grass, toeing the softened
soil underneath.
Dirt nestles cozily inside my nails
I feel the coldness of the infinitesimal,
the wetness they electrify me with.
I shiver a little,
I hum while I pray
I curse the weather
but thank the inconceivable.

I survey the world
the wind shocks me just by being real.
The bones inside me crack
little by little as the whole
infrastructure collapses.
Like a house of thousand cards,
It kneels altogether now, snapping
the fragile joint tissues, and becomes
a single red sheet of ambiguous patterns.

An outside noise twists my neck
to the right,
The backdrop blurs to a swirl.
I touch the nearest stone on the ground,
I feel the distasteful roughness of its covering.
The pain is replaced by wanting
The anger is usurped by cluelessness.
A momentary warmth seeps inside my ears
but stops dead faster than I could
command it to continue.



I mop away the sweat
and blustered in doing so.
I fall, spread-eagled on the filth,
moss and mounds and bugs
and worms on my face.
I hear my conscience laugh
sinisterly delighting in my near demise.
I laugh along, out of allegiance,
tracing the spoor
of her wandering train of thought.
I get lost at one point,
I scratch my eyes for confirmation
I feel the barren stroke of nostalgia,
I yearn for repose but don't get it.

And elsewhere
is out of touch.
And nowhere is
virtually everywhere.

I hesitate between the 3rd and fourth step
The bloating entity behind me catches up,
swiftly reshaping the path I trudge
by heavily stomping its soles on it.
I name it emptiness.
It stretches its hand to me,
extending its mangy fingers without
literal effort to stride forward.
I forget to marvel at its elasticity,
I forget its ability to consume me
corporeally whole and solid
Any unchecked moment.
Reason or rhyme,
Harmony or discord,
I sink to its embrace, swooning
Peacefully like a newborn child
of long-awaited spring,
Repeating what it has been
doing ever since.

The waves tide over
The sands slip no more between my fingers
The last of the seashells is enmeshed
in salty bubbles.
The gulls begin to abandon
The terrifying echoes of the shrieks of the Water Lord.
Then the Brine-ish flavor of the air effaces
the perfume on my nape.
Suddenly a current sweeps me away,
Far from the windy, nautical crowd
Bearing me atop of my bedroom's roof.

That's when I see me
In a rapture of unaided incubus.
I scream for life, in ecstacy,
In unwonted blissfulness.
I dream a dream about
A young couple that sits on a hill.
Their tonsils touch the tip of each other,
Their arms under lock and key,
held together by fleshy skeins
and sticky epidermal liquids oozing here and there.
I split in secrecy, knowing naught
And understanding little.
I let out a brief sigh and dry
me under the sun.
My hair drips with orange juice,
colorless and slightly bitter.
My tongue begins to bleed
and an impulse to jerk my feet off
takes over.
If only to transport me back to
my conscious world.
I wish to wake up.
I miss managing physical motion.
I burst to go back and feel
the oily surface of my skin.
I panic, I scream
but no syllable puffs out.
I force my lids up
but the blackness persists anyway.

I put my arms around me
I cling for dear precious life
My grip tightens around the stone
I feel my other fist squeezing freely
the choking, dying heart of me.

The Coldness of your Bed

By: RDV


The difference between delusion and fact is always made apparent when something final happens. Death, for instance.


He’s gone now; no use covering the fact that he suffered long and immensely. His deathbed was sleek and kept well soon after he stopped breathing. No traces of sweat or any bodily fluid tainted the sheets. During his last many days, there was nothing that could be extracted from him anymore. He was a dry vegetable, barely breathing, and only living through the dextrose that ever towered over his bed. An instrument of death. He never sweated, slobbered or bled even when the bed sores had produced map-like marks all over his back. His body was too emaciated to contain liquids. His life hung in a perilous balance. He was dead long before he was officially pronounced so.


His loved-ones took turns watching over him in fulfilment of their duties as his beloved. When he gasped, they’d come to his rescue; with the alacrity of a bleeding wound requires, they’d fix his oxygen mask. Did they even know how unbearable that was to him, and how, it should’ve been to them? Even during the time at which they should be serenely asleep, one of them would be there by his side, on a stool, watching, commiserating with his every labored breath. They thought he wasn’t aware. He was, and if he could just open his mouth he’d beg them to commit euthanasia through whatever means. He hated these last days, living in dereliction and near death which wouldn’t push through.


They continued to water his mouth, scrub his body regardless of how disgusting it had since become. He never understood why they never let go, why they went on clinging to his last breaths, why they chose to prolong his suffering in a way that made life feel like the core of hell. When his respiration became inordinate he knew it was time. He was carted off immediately to the hospital. He’d suffered for three days before he died altogether. His last visions were fragments of hallucinations in which he was clothed in white and was well and alive. But in reality, it was quite the opposite save for the clothed-in-white part. With him were one of his daughters, one of his daughters-in-law and one of his grandchildren who was a nurse, who were until now under the pretense that he could still make it, somehow. He died in a summation of suffering. He died on a life that didn’t deserve to be endured. He was glad to go, to everyone’s denial.


At last. The crowning of his life had come.


His bed stood still, the blankets white and clean. He left no trace of ever occupying it.