flickers.

The bus he was in had passed Guadalupe long before he noticed that his body was flickering. By the time he saw Megamall, he realized that as he flickered his sense of time was also fading away. He sat uncomfortably watching traffic go by him in East Avenue and knew he was about to lose his sense of place and he blanked out and he could feel himself lose integrity; snowy, static like a dead channel in TV.

He couldn't think ahead, that even thinking about the next 15 minutes would be a stretch and an impossibility. All he knew was this moment, this moment he felt certain like he was about to disappear and about to scatter into his basic molecules but he wanted to welcome that certainty, and lose himself in his emotions. Then he was back in traffic in Ayala, and it was early evening; then a flicker again and he couldn't remember anymore. This was something way beyond logic and bus rides didn't mean anything when his brain had let go. All he could hold on to were his feelings; there were the only things that felt solid and unmoving, they were the only things that vaguely told him he was alive.

Everything was on autopilot. And the bus that stank of cockroaches was gone and he was walking somewhere he knew wasn't Manila. He saw jeeps passing by; going to Concepcion and Del Rosario. He recognized the yellow sodium arcs of the lampposts of Panganiban. And he was still walking, and he was talking to someone who was walking beside him and he turned and he saw her. Vivid and lovely, her and heartbreaking. This time he hoped for the flicker, but everything remained solid and he held her hand, in the way he had always held it, his thumb always over her thumb, always. He felt something tearing in his upper chest and then she looked at him and he felt a tremor coming and before he flickered back to another place and time he realized that he was remembering, that the floodgates in his mind had opened and there was nothing else he could do but remember and relive all the emotions that he had ever went through during that time up to now.

In his bed, he was looking at the ceiling in near dark. He lay there for a long time then he rose and, flicked the light switch on and closed his eyes in the harsh sudden fluorescent light and forced them open and everything felt familiar and strange at the same time. 2008 was dying, but the years he had lost was back in his mind and he wanted to cry but the tears weren't coming, and there wasn't anybody to embrace, or touch or hold hands with. It was just him and his overbearing emotions at the moment and then his mobile lit up, silent and telepathic. He opened the new message. " ü ". And finally broke down.

Later, he wrote for hours until his fingers were sore, and until his mind was exhausted then he slept and he never flickered again after that.