Shifting Gears

My father believed that life could flourish even when surrounded by cold concrete sidewalks, black asphalt roads and the row upon row of silent houses that sat on stiff but detached cobbled stone shoulders, staring blankly into space as the days went by. This was Manduriao, Iloilo, my first home. The noiseless streets never drove me away. It only meant that there was more space for laughter and interesting chatter. It meant more space for my dreams, dreams that were expanding and multiplying. It meant more time seeing what else I could when everything seemed so familiar.

Hello, Father

CAST

Gabriel Angelus, 15, a sacristan

TIME

Dawn, nearing time for mass

(Around four-thirty in the morning)

PLACE

A dark and silent room in the seminary

Cursed

Sampaguita petals shone like
helpless whte stars
trapped in her hair
black as the moonless sky.

Prodigal Steps

I started to hike from our town in my quest for nowhere: a place where nobody knows me. I didn’t know where to lead my sneakers but I was determined to be wherever my parents wouldn’t find me. The sun was up. But it wasn’t enough to make me stop walking. I forgot what halt meant that day.

My back ached and my limbs were bruised. I got them when some assholes snatched my guitar and hit me with it. And a storm of punches and kicks followed after the initial attack. Three men nearly killed me. I did not have the chance to fight back. I fell to the ground and passed out. They took my bag and all the money I had.

Piercing Silence

Our house was still the same way it has been after two months when I last left it. I stood at the gate for a moment. I needed a breather.

My mother welcomed me with a smile. I did not smile back. It was not the time for us to exchange our happiness. I still had to unpack the bad news I have been carrying since I left my dorm.

“Ma, I pierced my lips,” I told her guiltily while showing the month-old hole under my lips. It tore her heart when she learned that my rebellious dream had already come true. She gazed at it and said nothing.

A Still Photograph

When sunset rays walked by the terrace,
little kids and their smiles come by our house.
They left their slippers before the entrance
and went inside the four cornered
playground that will soon be

The Grief of Mt. Makiling

It was on this steep earth
that I once stood upon,
when she spoke of the sweetest secret
that made the night the happiest of
Mt. Makiling; the blooming flowers
swayed with the blowing wind