I need.

a break, when I am broken
a little time, when I have ran out of it

and Adam Duritz, sings inside my head "if you wrap yourself in daffodils, I'll wrap myself in pain."

I miss Rain, I miss being embraced by her small arms, all innocence and curiousity. I am waiting for Saturday morning to see her smile again and I won't mind if the tears come, I miss her, and I guess, she'll ask and I know I'm just happy to see her again. I'll watch her sleep on our way to somewhere cold and somewhere far from the familiarity of the places I have lived in and far from the strangeness of the places I have been. All 13 kilos of her will be real on our way there, it'll be as real as gravity will permit and it'll take the weight off my thoughts even if for just the short time I will get to hold her. For a few hours I will get to embrace something part of me. I will also be whole again, even if just for the duration of a bus ride and she'll continue to sleep; and my emotions will wonder about a possibility, a probability and a necessity. Then I'll look outside the bus window and see only the actuality of distance; real and slowly being overcome by time.

bus out of Pili.

Stepping inside the bus going to Naga, he felt a certain sense of dislocation at four o'clock in the morning. He wanted to put the blame on the bus, not with how he felt at that point. There was this pervading scent of jackfruit inside the bus suddenly; swift and everywhere. He sat near a window, to breathe the early morning air and his face numbed in the cold biting wind of the dark infant morning. He gazed up and stared at the black, thinking how the vacuum of outer space would feel like right now. This was strangeness staring back in black and straight at him.

The almost empty bus rattled along; metal groaning for want of passengers and human noise. The fluorescent light inside flickering imperceptibly made the sense of motion just more pronounced and more otherwordly like he wasn't supposed to be there and he knew he wasn't; he was supposed to be somewhere warm and familiar.

So he tried to think of other things but the memory of a recent hurried lovemaking clung to him like a second skin, like peeling sunburned skin and he smiled instead, feeling warm despite the chill. He could feel and smell it off him like some aura of warmth and intimacy and he smiled, contented, that it wasn't just bodies colliding.

It was still uncomfortable seeing all that black and strangeness, and as he spaced out in the asphalt of Maharlika Highway in a bus that smelled of ripe jackfruit, he could only think of her and familiarity and of the few hours left before he would have to leave for strangeness and permanent dislocation.

It has been a long time since he missed anybody this way. He missed her smile and the way she closed her eyes.

eight arms to hold you.

When rain falls after you have just opened your eyes in the morning, to hear it fall like a soft remembrance and clothe you in yesterdays and everything around you is in soft focus, covered in a haze when you gaze at the face beside you asleep and you almost cry, enfolded in the taste of that memory and the rainscent rising along the warmth of your bodies stirring and then you touch the face and it fades into a mirage and only the soft falling rain outside remains; and you; warm and alone and longing.

-o0o-

of all the five senses, scent is the fastest and hardest ride to remembering.

-o0o-

and in the meantime I'll write for myself again, an audience of one.

-o0o-

veruca salt.

ateneo ta.

tadom sa paggiromdom, na mayo munang paghorophorop, ang pagsakit, ang kaogmahan, ang paghiling sa harayo, ang paghanap sa kamot na makapot ta ngonyan uya na ngani ang pagmati na inisip lang, dai man minati na maray kundi pighinimbang lang sa maarabot na aldaw, taon o buhay o kung ano talaga ang rason kang mga pagmati na ni, na pighinghing mo sa sadiri mo na totoo, na mayong kaputikan arog kang mga urulay ta kang mga hapon na maharopohop ang duros sa Ateneo, naghihilingan lang sa mata, naghahalat sa saldang na magsulnop sa kung sain man na dai ta nahihiling, nagmamati lang, na may dikit na pangadyi na maghaloy ang mga arog kaning pagmati, sa arog kaning panahon igdi sa batibot, igdi sa mga sementong tukawan na ini, sa irarom kang mga ulpok na kahoy kang niyog igdi, kaya mga halipot na paggiromdomon lang mientras na yaon kita igdi sa ngonyan, na namamati na ang edad, na aram na ang mga boot sabihon kang pagkawara, kang nawara, kang puedeng mawara asin ang habong mawara, mga pangapudan sa sadiring tang pigerokan na sato lang, na magakbay na, na magkapot na ning kamot, na mangkagat na sa kaogmahan ta kataid ta ka na, naghahalat sa banggi, sa diklom para magsulo giraray ning marlboro lights na gold, ta bistado ta man si guard, dai man kita sisitahon, makatabang lang sa pag alaw ning namok, asin makatabang sa pag agi kang oras.
gusto ta ka kutang kuguson sa pagiromdom na ni, 'yan lang ta nainot ka na palan, iniisip ko pa lang ngani.
sabi ninda dai na daa puedeng magkidkid pabalik sa nakaagi na. mala, sala baga sinda.

file system consistency checking life.

A few days ago, from a few storeys up, I was watching the rain turn everything grey and knew that down there in that offcolor downpour I could see more clearly than up here in this cubicle. It would be warmer there for my mind than up here in this global connectivity indifference. The truth was, I wanted to be cold in that rain in order to be warm again.

(After I found the reason why I had missed myself for so long, the resulting truth was a kind of a letdown by itself. No, I take that back, letdown is too inadequate a word. That truth was a tragedy but perhaps there is just no mot juste or mots justes for this truth. The recent catharsis although it brought me back - to my own internal truths and eventually back to myself - also brought me closer to see my own tragic flaw face to face. A conspiracy of fate, of tragic fools bound by the mylar ropes of time and written promises; yes, I have known even as a child that God has a dry and wry humor. )

I continued to stare outside to lose myself in the rain as they wove against each other on the windows of this building, and the want to just go and disappear was there for a moment; true and bleeding.

(And the feeling of being apart from everything else is back; I am looking at the world again with a sort of detachedness that I had years ago, of not really being part of anything or anyone's emotion one except this time I don't feel alone, just that pervading sense of loss and longing that will never really go away as long as I breathe. There is no other choice but to continue and like a long time ago, I will just let my tears come.)

Tonight, a cold wind blows and I feel no promise of rain, just a kind of a chill to the bone. The yellow lampposts and almost empty streets are taking me to a time and place far removed from here and now, years and miles away. I realized this is a rather bad time for reading Haruki Murakami.

160 characters.

There was a certain challenge before in the limitations of a mobile phone's capacity to send text messages, just 160 characters and that was it. You had to create another message to continue your thought but, now, you can write a sonnet and you'll still have space leftover for a few haikus. So back then, I took those limitations further and tried electronic poetry. I even wondered back then who else was doing this; thinking it'd be good to share a few hundred digital characters with that person about poetry in 160 characters or less.

These are just a few I have salvaged from my old journals, organizers whenever I had the time to copy what I wrote before I sent them to whoever, because we didn't even have a sent item folder back then in our mobiles and texting with the knowledge that you were only going to see your poem once -- as you had to delete it after it had been sent contained a sort of lyrical loneliness for me, of brilliance and the abrupt loss of that shine. I think I can even say with some degree of certainty that of all those 160 characters I sent, only these few are left.

in the space between dream and waking we held hands and watched each other breathe in silence and quiet desire; dreaming only for the world to stay this way.

you run like warm cappuccino in my mouth when we are afternoons forever, together we look like the perfect coffeetable book, dog-eared and missing pages.

the lost routine and vanished certainties.the faded sidewalks and silent restaurant doors.the dark early morns and wasted twilights. us, the ghosts in between.

i wish for rain and i know every time i wish it may not always rain but i wish anyway, beyond belief, for each time it rains, it is you that rains in me.

i miss you like life after death and even if i may not live beyond the love collective i'll still miss you forever like fishball sauce and summer sunsets.

i want to create another word for love,for no standard definition fits or exists.i have another word unknown by Webster or the World Wide Web,that word is you.

19 other odd things we did, 40 other even things we wanted and 30 other things to miss since you're not here and 10 more things to do when you come back.

love song lyrics are running through me and i have holes in me the size of Ateneo, i am not okay. i am not level. i am romeo with an acid flashback of you.

A film we should have watched together.

(On a balcony, overlooking a lower part of the city. Jesse is sitting on the stone rail, Céline is leaning against it.)

Jesse: I feel like this is uh, some dream world we're in, you know.

Céline: Yeah, it's so weird. It‘s like our time together is just ours. It‘s our own creation. It must be like I'm in your dream, and you in mine, or something.

Jesse: And what's so cool is that this whole evening, all our time together, shouldn't officially be happening.

Céline: Yeah, I know. Maybe that's why this feels so otherworldly. But then the morning comes, and we turn into pumpkins, right?

Jesse: Ahhh...

Céline: Yeah, I know. But at this time, I think you're supposed to produce the glass slipper, and see if it fits.

Jesse: Yeah?

Céline: Yeah.

Jesse: It'll fit.