December 2010
37 posts
235/ December 21, 2010 - Always, as children.
It wasn’t morning until a couple more hours but the streets were filled with early churchgoers: children half-asleep, mothers in full regalia, teenagers ambling along and eyeing each other. Not all of us were here to pray. We stayed in the car and drank hot chocolate. We listened to the bells signal the start of something we loved but didn’t understand.
“Last Christmas,...
234/ December 20, 2010 - Open book
In family gatherings, relatives always ask: “What do your tattoos mean?” Always, I bite back saying: “I got ‘em so I wouldn’t have to explain myself.”
232/ December 18, 2010 - Declarations of war, war,...
During the interview they asked me how I saw myself in ten years. They wanted my definition of ambition— from this point forward, how did I envision charting the rest of my life? I wanted to rise from my chair and exclaim: I want to wake up to a view of the sea! I want to fall asleep next to a warm, handsome body! I want to build a library of classics, a den of poetry! I want a kitchen...
231/ December 17, 2010 - Taxi music
Your car broke down and we’ve been in and out of taxis ever since. You hate it, I know, because you can never seem to trust the meter and the driver, the seats smell of other people, the radio stations are always horrible, and the suspension doesn’t work or the tires always screech and we’re left balancing headaches in the backseat. There are things I fail to say before I...
230/ December 16, 2010 - (re-tale, his-story)
I found an old cigar box in one of the novelty shops in Cubao. It had a hard mahogany top with brass locks, the inside was lined with leather trim. I wanted to give it to you for Christmas but the owner of the shop said it was not for sale. I long for so many things I know I could not, should not, have. These sterling lockets look so lonely on their velvet cushions; theirs is a loneliness I...
229/ December 15, 2010 - Ballads for Billy the Kid
I love this morning because it is simple. You are reading a novel as I type from the opposite side of the bed. Bob Dylan and Cat Power are on loop in your player, and in between their riffs and rippling notes, the shuffling of your pages, the clacking of my keys. You reach for my hand in between verses; our hips touch but we do not speak. When you put down your book, you tell me: “You...
228/ December 14, 2010 - Like birds
On poems for/about other girls, you say: i have no idea why they take these poems from me and think that they’re for them. i mean, i barely own these poems, not that i’d want to, mind you, but i have to assure you that none of these poems belong to anyone. they’re just there, like birds are there, they are in the places exactly where you think they are. One of your poems...
227/ December 13, 2010 - (excerpts from the unsent...
Dear Ma, I am writing to you as I spend another afternoon tangled in holiday traffic. I am in a taxi on my way to work (I recently got a promotion; I am starting today). I think about who I would have been if I stayed there: the city apartment, the master’s degree. And I tumble back into the backseat of this taxi— pinned to this point, I am the personification of...
226/ December 12, 2010 - Yes
I asked you if you ever thought of leaving me and you said yes. Other people would have said no because it was easier to avoid the truth; or maybe they didn’t know the truth at all. But you’ve thought about leaving and you might have even pictured the girl who would come next. You weighed your chances at other circumstances; you plotted out the steps for how you will disappear,...
225/ December 11, 2010 - (parties, reunions,...
I fear I may have forgotten what it’s like to be with people. I write letters because the distance makes it possible. I like the freedom of missing calls and neglecting notifications. I can delete posts and forget on purpose. When someone asks me how I am in person, I panic and shatter and dissolve. I spend the trip home trying to remember who I am.
224/ December 10, 2010 - A prologue to past things...
When you revisit a place you knew as you were growing up, do you lose yourself to a younger you— do you disappear into who-you-were? There is a corridor of books in our old house in the province. I remember running through it with my arms outstretched, my fingertips grazing an endless collection of creased spines. I follow my laughter down the stairs. I hold on to the banister like a...
223/ December 9, 2010 - Beginning/end
Upon reaching over to the other side of the bed, she knew that winter had started. It covered her body like a blanket.
222/ December 8, 2010 - What if, in Manila, snow?
In one of her letters, a friend asked: what if Manila had winter? We had yelo, the word for ice, nyebe, the word for snow. The closest we had to winter was taglamig, a season of cold. The word, and the people who use it, held nothing of winter beyond temperature. Winter teaches people to prepare, and perhaps then we will learn how to become patient. I would like to learn how to enjoy a fire,...
221/ December 7, 2010 - Fugues for forgetting
The first night she was to sleep alone, my grandmother borrowed our radio. She picked a station that swayed to the slow dances of her youth; she drifted to tunes that crooned how to forget a war. She kept the radio on until she woke. The entire house listened and aged. Before last night, I didn’t know about how my grandfather sang to my grandmother to ease her sleep.
220/ December 6, 2010 - Encyclopedia of closeness
The first time you hold a girl’s hands, you check for half moons on her fingernails. I’ve read your notebooks, your descriptions of eyes (how sad, how empty) and examinations of ears (does it look good enough to kiss?). I read even the parts where you noted down cup sizes, measured the gaps between each deep intake of breath, the curvature of backs, the briskness of blinks as...
219/ December 5, 2010 - Fitting room
There are days when I don’t fit into my body. I know my arms are shorter when I can’t reach the books on my shelf, or scratch my shoulder, unhook my bra. Some days I am too limby, too spindly to walk straight-legged. I notice even the smallest alterations: a dent near the jaw, a fold in the tongue, an eye in need of an adjustment. No one notices as I teeter-totter to work, or...
218/ December 4, 2010 - Sylvia
I’m back to my usual self, I think. This morning I deliberately delayed doing my shirt. I delighted in the fit and close of buttons, in their smallness, in their significance. Have you ever noticed how water sounds solid as its shape embraces the basin, and how the sound slowly softens, like the beginning of a conversation with a stranger where you’re almost yelling as you first ...
217/ December 3, 2010 - Great, big things are...
but the little things get me up again. a) Like how I took your jacket home by accident and I fell asleep wearing it. b) And the way you said my name from the other side of the door from when I locked it. (I didn’t mean to shut you out for so long.) c) Or how trains have a knack for arriving the moment I emerge. These days, I am almost never late; both my pockets have not run out of...
216/ December 2, 2010 - On counting on something...
I gave you a notebook and refilled your pen. One word a day, one memory, one name. When the time comes, you would have written hundreds of reasons to stay alive— if lucky, if willing. You didn’t touch the notebook at first. You are starting to forget who I am. But soon enough I saw you lift the pen and slowly start to scribble “son.”
215/ December 1, 2010 - On counting.
It started with apples: one, two, three on the table. Four, five, six plates. Seven, eight, nine spoons. When I counted up to a hundred (staircase steps, toothbrushes, closet doors, hair pins, heartbreak), my mother fed me an apple. Today, the doctor said you had a year to live. More (how much more?) or less (how soon is less?). I could not tell if you were relieved or angry because you now had...
214/ November 30, 2010 - I'm sorry, A.
Give me time to recover from this sallowness of self. We will take your motorcycle to the mountains. We will take pictures of things people cannot see. I will tie a kite to my body and you will feed me more string.
213/ November 29, 2010 - Hide and seek
A Christmas tree with no gifts. Valium bottle with no pills.
212/ November 28, 2010 - Slow, sweet sun burn
We were riding a train through a forest and our window framed the familiar strangeness of trees. There were leaves in our hair from the autumn we just left. Thin branches traced lines on misty windows as we moved. Wooden fingers played the shadows of notes. (We were holding hands.) A woman’s voice in the wind’s echoes. (We were whispering.) “I’ve forgotten what...
211/ November 27, 2010 - Elevator musical (louder...
My five-year old cousin asked why hospital elevators were wider and longer. Consider this his first lesson in geometry: the perimeter of a rectangle, the volume of a life. (Louder, listen, louder now.)
210/ November 26, 2010 - Dear K.,
There is nothing about grief we have to understand. After I read your letter (thank you, from a winter away), my mother called to ask about my grandfather. She did not want me to hear the trembling of her hands and the tiredness of her eyes. She did not want me to hear her grief. And yet I know about the weight her chair has placed on the floor. Measure memories worth half a hundred years...
209/ November 25, 2010 - A prayer for things I...
For the keys to work, to my house and to patience, because I misplace them all from time to time. For passwords, pin numbers and pet names. For the ability to retrieve things that are held back. I lose memories as easily as I can rebuild them. For the ability to rebuild. If one day I lose my hands. For the sense of seeing, which is sight, and the sense in seeing, which is vision. For the faith...
208/ November 24, 2010 - 11 hours ago
When my grandfather didn’t agree to go to the hospital, my grandmother told us to prepare an altar. She plucked prayer books out of the shelves and handed us one each. When I left the room, it wasn’t out of disrespect or that I’ve forgotten what it was like to pray. I left so I could look for today’s newspaper. I saw that no one did the crossword puzzle. I ran to the...
207/ November 23, 2010 - Heart disease
Write to me, I keep saying. I still believe that the card in cardiovascular means a letter: that enveloped word-cure, a careful heart-gift.
206/ November 22, 2010 - Sound, check.
There are no conversations in this house. In the morning, we take turns stirring our coffee; we listen to the clinking of teaspoons against cups. I know it is time for lunch when I hear the cabinet doors creak and the pots and pans bang against the kitchen counter, the stove sizzles. At night, we rely on the memory of measured footsteps: we know who arrives by the sound of brisk little taps,...
205/ November 21, 2010 - Our alphabets
(It isn’t uncommon for the tricycle drivers to bring their children with them on their trips. As long as the wind was good, the distance not too far.) * She sat in the sidecar with me as her father revved the motorcycle engine. I asked her how old she was and she held up four fingers. She pointed to my wrist, she touched the tattoo there and said “school.” I asked if she had...