while eating a hotdog sandwich.

I waited for evening, calmly comforting a hunger and watched the muted pastel sky darkening, the pink and violets all fading to dark blue. There was more sky to look at here in Fort Bonifacio more than four years ago, more uninterrupted sky but I knew if I walked farther away where no condominiums marred my line of sight, it was more or less the same heavens I gazed at.

The evening, before it came, brought out things in finer detail. I noticed the silhouette of trees in the golf course, the empty scaffoldings of an unfinished condo, the bats slipping in and out of sight, the almost lazy traffic during Sundays here in the Fort and just then, I felt the coldness of December. I was not even halfway through the sandwich.

I vaguely remembered tasting catsup in between bites as my mind uncorked after days of fuzz and of just going through the motions, and then there you were again, as distinct as my first memory of seeing you; queen of my mind, keeper of my heart. The evening had just come quietly and I was watching the fading light being overcome by the unnatural orange of the streetlights and the halogen headlights of the cars passing by.

Fort Bonifacio had just gotten a little darker, and a little lonelier this Sunday, despite that big Christmas tree and the lights and I noticed that I had finished eating and was holding the sandwich wrapper tightly, the catsup smearing my right hand that it looked more like blood than condiment under the light.

Before I went up the 12th, I looked around and seeing mostly cars and too little people walking around I realized that I was not really in the mood for Christmas and too many people at the same time, only wishing that it was just the two of us, somewhere warm, somewhere dim and quiet.

Then I rode the elevator to electronic reality and a veiled capitalist dream and while missing you, died a little as the elevator passed the 8th floor.