(2016) Heights Vol. 63, No. 2

heights vol. 63 no. 2 Copyright 2016 heights is the official literary and artistic publication and organization of the Ateneo de Manila University.

Copyright reverts to the respective ­authors and a­ rtists whose works appear in this issue. No part of this book may be ­reprinted or reproduced in any means whatsoever ­without the written permission of the copyright holder.

This publication is not for sale.

Correspondence may be addressed to: heights, Publications Room, mvp 202 Ateneo de Manila University p.o. Box 154, 1099 Manila, Philippines Tel. no. (632) 426-6001 loc. 5448 heights - ateneo.org Creative Direction by Ida de Jesus and Renzi Rodriguez Cover and Dividers by Ida de Jesus Layout by Nina Atienza, Juan Carlos Concepcion, Philip De La Torre, Zoe de Ocampo, Geraldine Fajardo, Miguel N. Galace, Maxine Garcia, Joan Eunice Lao, Ninna Lebrilla, Cheska Mallillin, Therese Pedro, Folio Launch Team: Robert Tiong, Meryl Medel, Madi Calleja, Lara Intong, Paula Molina, Max Suarez, Luisa dela Cruz, Chao Tiausas Typeset in mvb Verdigris

Contents Michael Orlina 1 Isda Allan Popa 3 Claire dela Fuente 4 Pangungusap Paolo E. Asuncion 5 Agustina Christian Jil Benitez 10 Mga Pagtukoy Jeivi Nicdao 16 mula sa Kung paano hinabi Gian Lao 28 A Farewell Joseph Ledesma 30 Silent Nights Christine Imperial 34 Decrescendo Luis Wilfrido Atienza 36 Company Tiffany Corinne Conde 37 The Hunt Joshua Uyheng 46 Notes on the Scenery Gabrielle Leung 48 [This morning, I started collecting...]

Regine Cabato 52 The Reef 53 The One with the The Killers Concert Catherina Garcia Dario 68 Behind the Trees Exie Abola 82 Phallic Symbols Ja Cabato 96 Mother and Child Kristelle Ramos 97 Delfin Ellice Acayan 98 Perspective (series) Arin Mukhi 101 from neglect/delight (series) Ida de Jesus 102 Apollo— Marco T. Torrijos 103 Children’s Story 105 Cold Food (series) Dominic Alfonso 104 Uniformity 107 Church of Gesu 108 Little Light of Mine Celline Marge Mercado 109 Meat from (I AM NOT A) Feast (series) Alex Tuico 110 Confetti and Happy Endings

Editorial When heights first came to print, it was compelled by what Emmanuel Torres called the death of literature—it was conceived to address an absence. In every generation, the experience of death of art and literature at the Ateneo differs. This year, with dwindling submissions to Filipino and a prompt for social engagement, heights sought to engage Ateneans with various Filipino contexts through art and literature.

In its first regular folio, heights invited its readers and the Ateneo community to venture into the unfamiliar. In the collaborative collection Habi, the unfamiliar is interpreted as the nation outside of Metro Manila. In this issue, the second from a themeless call for contributions, we tackle a different aspect of the unfamiliar that may, for many of us, be hauntingly familiar. Many of the works in this folio confront the presence of an absence.

Art and literature serve as an attempt to capture and understand that which is not there. The different works in this collection interpret absence in various ways, including permutations of that which is no longer there, and that which is not yet there. In Paolo E. Asuncion’s monologue “Agustina,” the titular character speaks of the absence of her parents, and her subsequent responsibility to care for her two siblings, who similarly never make a presence on stage. In Jeivi Nicdao’s excerpt from “Kung Paano Hinabi,” the erasures in verse foreground a loss beyond the deletion of words, and how this loss comes to be understood.

Other works deal with an active vacancy, one that took place within the timeframe of the narrative. In “Silent Nights” by Joseph Ledesma, Patrick’s unexpected losses drive him toward and away from the pet he longs to keep. Tiffany Conde witnesses the death of a wild boar in the mountains of Hawaii in the essay “The Hunt,” and

vii

an emptiness echoes throughout the persona’s tone and passivity in Christine Imperial’s poem “Decrescendo.”

The somber mood brought about by absence is also reflected in the art gallery, where this issue’s selections are dominated by a black and white palette. Most works of digital photography, including Ellice Acayan’s “Perspective” series and Dominic Alfonso’s “Church of Gesu,” explore places devoid of people, while an almost empty refrigerator beckons in Arin Mukhi’s piece from the “neglect/delight” series. Also notable among the works is Kristelle Ramos’ “Delfin,” a sculpture made of cigarettes as homage to a lost family member.

In gathering these works into a cohesive design for the folio, the cover is fashioned with a theme of imprints. Paint is sprayed over stencils, and sand was utilized to effect transitions in response to vacancy. As with most of the works published here, the presence of absence is precisely that which throws us into the creation of art.

The recognition of something missing necessitates some method of response. One wonders whether art is an attempt not only to understand or grapple with absence, but also to fill in the space that absence creates; other times, it is to document, and even to sustain, that space. Imprints capture this impression: the trace that something leaves, and the tension between letting it fade or keeping it there.

Our task as a publication is to constantly ask ourselves what absences are present in the artistic and literary scenes of contemporary times, and how we can respond to them. Some absences that cannot be addressed by the publication are engaged by heights’ organizational aspect. The Ateneo heights Writers and Artists Workshops, now in their 21st and 6th years respectively, were prompted by a lack of opportunities in the formation of young Atenean artists. Later, social engagement and children’s literature was responded to through the Kuwentong Pambata Book Grant.

As heights closes its 63rd year, the publication and organization would like to thank you for joining us in our attempt to engage in Filipino contexts, to keep filling spaces in the artistic and literary development in Ateneo: through our collaborative folio Habi, the exhibit Kisapmata with tugon Ateneo, and various collaborations viii

with Ateneo Mathematics Society, Ateneo speed, Kythe-Ateneo, Quadro Company and Tuloy Foundation, among other projects.

In our third printed publication for the year, the theme of that which is not there picks up where the venture to the unfamiliar is left off. As we invite our readers to continue this engagement, we also invite them to reckon with absence: the absences that make themselves present to us, the absences we wish to respond to, and in our methods of response, the imprints that we wish to leave.

Regine Miren D. Cabato March 2016

ix

michael orlina

Isda

Kapag iniisip ko ang isda, naiisip ko kung gaano kahirap paksain ito sa tula. Matigas masyado ang “S” at matapang ang tunog ng “D.” Hindi, halimbawa kung sa Ingles, swabe ang pagsabi ng fish.

Saka kapag naiisip ko ang isda, naiisip ko ang lata ng Ligo, ang sarsa nito na mapapabago ang lasa, depende sa dinagdag na bawang, toyo, o suka.

O kaya iyong madalas na salitang kaugnay kapag isda—galunggong, tamban, o tilapia. O kung anumang mumurahing mabibili mula sa aplaya at talipapa. Parang may tinik sa lalamunan. Ewan. Kapag naiisip ko ang isda, naalala ko ang ilan kong mga tula tungkol sa hikahos.

Pero wala nang sakit sa lalamunan.

Natanggal na, hindi lang nang biglaang pagsubo ng maraming kanin at pag-inom ng maraming tubig. Siguro, dahil may trabaho na ako. Lumalawak ang bokabularyo sa iba pang isdang higit na malinamnam. O siguro, gaya kanina, bumili ng isdang pangdekorasyon ang pinakamamahal ko, dama ko ang ligaya niya para sa nilalang na ito.

Gusto ko kapag iniisip ko ang isda, 1

iniisip ko siya at ang kaniyang walanghanggang ligaya habang pinagmamasdan ang kaniyang alagang walang hanggang paikot-ikot din sa kaniyang maliit na mundo.

Iniisip ko ang isang masayang tula, halimbawa.

2

allan popa

Claire dela Fuente May bunton ng mga gomang tsinelas na madaratnan sa dulo ng paglalakad sa tabingdagat. Parang huling mga hakbang na wala nang mapupuntahan, naisip mo. Daan-daan. Iba-ibang kulay.

Magtataka ka. Kung paanong napunta roon ang ganoon karaming tsinelas. Kung saan nagmula.

Maaalala ang salaysay ng batang bayani na nabasa sa sariling kabataan. Kung paano siya natutong pakawalan ang nalabing tsinelas nang unang mahulog ang kapares sa pamamangka sa lawa.

Kung nahanap ng dalawang tsinelas ang isa’t isa, wala nang paraan para malaman. Hindi ito ang aral na itinuturo ng kuwento.

Ayon sa agham, may paraan ang dagat, para salain ang mga bagay na lumulutang. Ang hindi matutunaw ng tubig-alat. Nauuri nito ang materyal ayon sa kakayahang matangay ng siklo ng mga alon sa pagpapalit ng panahon. Susundan nila ang hatak ng agos.

Sa ganitong paraan nagkakatagpo ang magkakatulad. Pawang hindi nabibilang sa dagat.

Parang biro, walang dalawang magkapares kang nakita sa bunton ng mga tsinelas.

Lumakad sanang pabalik ang panahon, ang sabi ng paboritong kanta ng panghihinayang sa pag-ibig na hindi na maaari. Paulit-ulit mo itong inawit sa pagbaybay sa dalampasigan pabalik. At paglaon sa isip na lamang habang papalapit sa pansamantalang iniwan.

3

Pangungusap Na nariyan ang hindi pinahintulutang makita bagamat narinig na humuni sa lilim ng maraming dahon at makapal na balahibo ng piniling pag-iisa kung kaya’t napabaling sa awit na tumigil sa iyong pagtingin dahil hindi para sa iyo at wala kang naabutan kundi ang iniwang puwersa ng paglisan na kasimbigat ng kamaong sinalo minsan ng iyong kaliwang kamay dahil wala nang ibang mapagbabalingan ng nasang hindi kailanman mapagbibigyan na pinagmasdan mo sa namumulang palad katulad ng sangang kinadapuan na umindayog hanggang manumbalik ang kapanatagan sa munting sulok na ito ng mundo kung saan maaari kang magsimula.

4

paolo e. asuncion

Agustina tauhan agustina – 17 anyos, nakasuot ng dilaw na bestida tagpuan Hardin sa isang lumang bahay sa Intramuros. Mayroong maliit na mesa at mga upuan sa gitna. Sa mesa, nakapatong ang isang wireless na telepono. panahon Bisperas ng Pasko. Kasalukuyan. ang dula Abalang nag-aayos ng hapag-kainan si AGUSTINA. Tutunog ang telepono sa mesa. Titingnan niya ito ngunit hindi sasagutin. agustina

Limang araw nang hindi umuuwi sina Mama at Papa. Kapag umabot ‘to ng isang linggo, hindi ko na alam kung paano ko pa aaliwin ‘yung dalawang kapatid ko. (Sa kanan ng entablado) Luciano, Macias, lumabas na kayo, kakain na.

Katahimikan. Iiling si AGUSTINA at aayusin ang bestida. agustina

Nung gabing tumawag ang mga— (Saglit.) Noong unang gabi, inaya ko ‘yung dalawa na maglaro ng habulan. Ayun, pagkatapos, plakda sila agad sa kama. Hindi na naitanong kung bakit parang hindi umuwi sina Mama’t Papa. Kinabukasan, saranggola naman, diyan lang sa tapat ng Letran. Nasiyahan

5

naman ‘yung dalawa. Noong sumunod na araw, tinuruan ko sila ng— Sandaling maririnig ang mahinang pag-ugong ng lupa at pagkalansing ng mga kubyertos. Mapapahawak sa mesa si AGUSTINA. agustina

Magpapasko na’t lahat, nagpoprotesta pa rin ang lupa. Malamang wala nang nakakaalala kung kailan nag-umpisa ang mga lindol dito sa Maynila. Lalo pa nung gabing ‘yun, para bang naglululundag ang mga gusali ng Intramuros. At kami ditong naghihintay sa pag-uwi nila Mama, ni hindi makakibo ng bahagya, sa takot na bigla na lang bumuka ang lupa.

Muling tutunog ang telepono ngunit hindi ito papansinin ni AGUSTINA. agustina

6

Nung ikatlong araw, tinuruan ko sila ng bagong laro. Pitik-bulag. Kaso, nauwi din sa tampuhan.

Pikunin kasi itong si Macias. Alam niyo na, bunso, medyo ini-spoil nila Mama. Si Luciano naman, napakahilig mandaya. Ilang beses ko nang sinabihan: Hindi mahalaga ang manalo, basta ba patas ka kung makipaglaro. Pero wala rin, siguro kasi mga bata pa. Parang katunog ko na nga sina Mama sa pangangaral. ‘Wag magsisinungaling, ‘wag mandaraya. At kapag nadapa, tumayo lang ulit.

‘Yan ang paulit-ulit na sinasabi sa’kin nila Mama.

Idinidikdik pa nga. Kapag nadapa, tumayo lang ulit, lalo pa’t ikaw ang panganay. Dahil ikaw ang panganay. Ang dapat nagtatahan, nagbabantay, nagpaparaya, nagbibigay. Kaya’t kapag nadapa, tumayo lang ulit. Dahil ikaw ang panganay.

Iiling si AGUSTINA at magkakamot ng ulo. Uugong ang lupa. agustina

(Titingin sa lupa.) Oo na, Ma, Pa. Siyempre aalagaan ko ‘yung dalawa, kayo talaga. (Matatawa.)

Malapit na ata akong mabaliw sa bahay na ‘to.

At ang mas masaklap, nauubusan na ‘ko ng mga laro. Ngayon pa naman, kailangan creative ka.

Mainipin masyado ang mga bata. Kailangan may variety, may challenge, may element of surprise. Samantalang ako, bahay-bahayan lang dati, masaya na. (Mapapangiti.) Basta ka-partner ko ‘yung kapitbahay naming si Chard.

Pero matagal na ‘yun, bago nag-umpisang kumanta ang lupa. Malamang, wala nang nakakaalala.

Siguro kahit si Chard, nakalimutan na. (Saglit.)

Pero ang mas masaklap pa, nauubusan na ‘ko ng mga laro. Patintero, langit-lupa, piko, tumbang preso, sungka, lahat na ata pinatos ko na. Puwera lang sa isa. (Saglit.) ‘Wag magsisinungaling, ‘wag mandaraya. Hindi naman pagsisinungaling ang pagtatago, ‘di ba? (Mag-aayos ng bestida. Sa kanan ng entablado, iritable na ang boses.) Luciano, Macias!

Lumabas na kayo’t mag-aalas dose na!

Saglit na uugong ang lupa, kasabay ng pagkalansing ng mga kubyertos. agustina

Luciano, Macias! Lumabas na kayo, baka mapano pa kayo diyan!

Mahabang katahimikan. Uupo si AGUSTINA. agustina

Limang araw na ‘kong naghihintay kina Mama’t Papa. Umaasa. At sa maikling panahon na ‘yun,

7

parang lahat ng laro, nalaro ko na. Puwera lang sa isa.

Tutunog ang telepono. Sasagutin ito ni AGUSTINA. agustina

Good evening po. Opo, ito po si Agustina. Merry Christmas din po. Opo, kasama ko sila.

Maririnig ang pag-awit ng dalawang batang lalaki: “Tagu-taguan, maliwanag ang buwan. Wala sa likod, wala sa harap.” agustina

Pasensiya na po. Ngayong gabi lang kasi kami nakauwi galing probinsya. Opo, limang araw kami dun.

“Pagkabilang kong tatlo, nakatago na kayo.” agustina

Naiintindihan ko po. Kahit bukas po, kung kailangan talaga. Opo, sa likod ng Katedral ng Maynila. Sige ho, salamat din po.

Ibababa ni AGUSTINA ang telepono.

“Isa…” agustina

(Rinig ang pagod sa boses.) Luciano, Macias, lumabas na kayo dito.

“Dalawa…” agustina

8

May mga dadating na bisita bukas. Kakausapin nila tayo tungkol kay Mama at Papa. Siguro… alam niyo na rin kung anong sasabihin nila.

Wala na kasing magagawa ang Ate Agustina.

Kung pwede lang sanang magkasama pa rin tayong tatlo, pero… Masaya naman ‘yung limang araw natin, ‘di ba? (Patlang.) Sige na, lumabas na kayo dito’t kakain na.

Katahimikan. Yuyuko si AGUSTINA na para bang nagdarasal. agustina

Kaunting bagay lang ang natutunan ko kina Mama’t Papa. ‘Wag magsisinungaling, ‘wag mandaraya. Kapag nadapa, tumayo lang ulit.

Kahit ilang beses pa, kahit maka-ilang lindol pa.

Kapag nadapa, tumayo lang ulit. Tatandaan niyo ‘yun, ha?

Sa hindi kalayuan, maririnig ang malakas na ugong ng kampana kasunod ng matinis na kalansing ng mga kampanilya. Lilingunin ni AGUSTINA ang magkabilang gilid ng mesa, pipiliting ngumiti. agustina

Alas dose na pala. Sige na, kain na. May ituturo si Ate na bagong laro sa inyo mamaya. wakas

9

christian jil benitez

Mga Pagtukoy Sapagkat totoo ito, may salita dapat na maaaring tunay na tumukoy rito. O marahil, sa isang larawan: May tatlong pagkakataong tinawid ko ang mga lungsod na pinaka-naaalala ko; dahil ang lahat ng ito sa simbuyo. Sa tatlong ito, isa ang para sa kanya habang dalawa naman ang para sa kanya; dalawa sa mga ito ang may naalala ako tungkol sa pag-iyak bagaman sa mga ito, noong unang beses lang may paghagulgol habang sa ikalawa, may malalim na paghinga bago pa man nangyari ang pag-iyak.

Kung minsan, iniisip ko ang posibilidad ng pangangahas kong tumawid muli sa mga lungsod bilang pagpapaudyok sa layaw. Sa tuwing iniisip ko ang posibilidad na ito, o kung posible nga ang mangyaring muli ito, naiisip kong iniisip ko lang naman talaga ang posibilidad na magkaroon ng patutunguhan.

Sa tuwing sinasabi kong patutunguhan, ang ibig ko lang sabihin ay siya. Kung gayon, sa pag-iisip ko, iniisip ko lang naman talaga ang posibilidad na magkaroon ng siyang pupuntahan sa pagtawid kong muli sa mga lungsod; iniisip ko ang posibilidad ng siyang magiging dahilan ng simbuyo.

Kapag iniisip ko ang araw na magkakaroong muli ng isang siya sa kabilang dulo ng mga lungsod, naiisip ko kaagad ang aralin naming tungkol sa mga salita: Pantukoy ang lahat ng mga ito, at magagawa lang na bigyang-kahulugan ang isa sa mga ito sa pagtukoy muli sa iba pang mga salita. Kapag iniisip ko ang araw na magkakaroong muli ng isang mukha sa kabilang dulo ng mga lungsod, iniisip ko kung magagawa ko kayang maipaintindi ito sa kanyang patutunguhan ko, o kung naiintindihan na pala nito ito.

Nang sinabi ko ito sa kanya—“Sa tuwing iniisip ko [ang posibilidad na magkakaroon ng isang] siya, iniisip ko ang—,”—sinabi niya sa aking “Gusto ko iyan,” ngunit kung bakit, hindi ko na siya tinanong pa. Ngunit kahit hindi pa ganoon katagal 10

ang pagiging magkakilala naming dalawa, pinagtitiwalaan ko siya pagdating sa mga salita. Kaya tinanong ko sa kanya kung paano niya isasalin ang mga terminolohiyang ito, at sinabi niyang sumasagisag at sinasagisag; hindi ako umimik sa kanya dahil wala roon sa pasiya niyang salin ang tinutukoy ko.

Naaalala ko sa salitang sagisag ang salitang watawat, at mula roon, ang pagbaba ng watawat bilang pantukoy sa pagsuko. Sa pagsuko, naaalala ko naman ang isang gabing magkaharap kaming nakaupo.

Habang umiinom ng tsaa, sinabi ko sa kanyang, “Hindi na ako ang unang mahuhulog,” at sa pagsabi ko nito sa kanya, alam na niya ang ibig kong sabihin, marahil dahil matagal na kaming magkakilala o dahil gasgas na ang sabihing ito. Alinman sa dalawa, alam ko namang gasgas na talaga ang sabihin ito; hindi na ako magtataka kung sa pagkakarinig niya, nakuha rin ng katabi namin ang ibig kong sabihin.

Tulad ng agarang pag-intindi niya sa ibig kong sabihin, bagaman hindi ko talaga sinabi sa kanya ito. Alam kong nauunawaan niya ako dahil isang beses, sinabi niya sa aking nakararamdam siya ng lungkot kahit walang tuwirang dahilan. Tinanong niya ako kung naiintindihan ko ba ang ibig niyang sabihin, at sabi ko, “Oo, nakukuha ko,” at saka ko sa kanya sinabi kung papaanong may pagkahungkag ang lahat ng bagay at tila hindi ito maiwasang basta hayaan na lang ng tao. Sa pagsabi ko sa kanya ng tao, ang ibig kong sabihin ay ako.

Gayunpaman, sinabi niyang naiintindihan niya, at sinabing ito nga ang nararamdaman niya. Ibig niyang sabihin, sa isip ko: “May mga pagkahungkag ang lahat ng bagay at tila hindi ko ito maiwasang basta hayaan na lang.”

Kung sino ang tinutukoy niyang ako, hindi ko na tinanong pa.

Ano nga ba ang ako kundi isa ring kahungkagan sa sarili nito; maaaring-maaari para sa lahat ang pumasok dito. Natutunan ko ito sa kanya, na ipinahiwatig sa aking wala naman talagang ako na sityo 11

kung saan maaaring pumasok ang sarili at angkinin din ito bilang kanya. O, kung mayroon mang sityong maaaring pasukan ng sarili at angkinin, wala ring tiyak na lugar sa materyal na mundo bilang lunan sa sityong ito.

O, paghiram ng salita niya: “Wala naman talagang sarili,” saka niya sinabing maaari naman naming gawin ang lahat ng nanaisin, o ninanasa, kahit pa gawin namin ang mga ito “sa mga pusa o sa mga puno.” Ngunit sa pagsabi niya nito, alam pa rin niyang kahit “gawin namin ang mga ito” sa mga pusa o sa mga puno o sa anumang pagnanaisan o pagnanasahan, ipinahiwatig niya pa ring muli at muli kaming mabibigo sa paglapit, sa wika. Sinabi niya ito nang tila niyayakap niya ang kanyang sarili.

Ngunit tulad din ng sa pamagat ng tula niya, kung saan ko unang natutunan ang eksaktong pantukoy, bagaman batid natin ang parating kabiguan, parati pa ring pinupunan ng tao ang lahat ng mga hungkag, animo may takot sa kahungkagang ito.

Sa pagsabi ko muli ng tao, ibig kong sabihin ay ako. O, sang-ayon sa pagkakasunod-sunod: ikaw, tayo, sila, siya. Alinman sa mga pantukoy na ito, hindi pa rin maiaalis: “Parating pinupunan ang lahat ng mga hungkag, animo may takot sa kahungkagang ito.”

Ngunit tulad ng isa niyang tula: “Ang iyong buhay ay laging mabibigo.” O akin, atin, kanila, kanya.

Tulad ng isa niyang tula: may mga bagay na hindi magpapang-abot, pawang magkakalapit lang. Ikinumpara niya ito sa makahiya. Sinasabi niyang doon tayo kumikislap. O, muli: ako, ikaw, sila, siya. Alinman, hindi pa rin tunay na magpapang-abot, pawang maglalapit lang. Tulad ng makahiya, doon kikislap.

Ito ang dahilan kung bakit noong tinanong niyang “Pero bakit?” hindi ko mapigilang matawa sa loob-loob ko. Ngunit nagawa kong pigilan ang sarili kong sabihin sa kanyang, “Akala ko ba, matalino ka?” Kaya idinaan ko na lang sa hangin at daliri sa loob ng isang tula—na babasahin kong muli ilang taon ang nakalipas, kung saan hindi ko na mapipigilang tumawa nang malakas.

Gayunpaman, gaano man kalakas ang magiging mga tawa ko rito, naroon pa rin ito at sa likod nito, ang kasaysayan ng mismong 12

pagsulat nito. Hindi ang pagsulat, kundi ang pagsulat. At tulad na rin ng sinabi niya noong sinabi kong “Anong ibig nilang sabihin?” sa kilos noong dalawang lalaking pasan-pasan ang tig-isang babae sa kanilang likuran, tumatakbo at tumatawa nang walang dahilan: “May ibig sabihin ang lahat ng kilos, ‘di ba?” Hindi ako umimik sa sinabi niya hindi dahil sa hindi ako sumasang-ayon, kundi dahil naintindihan ko ang ibig niyang sabihin. May ibig sabihin ang lahat ng kilos. Ibig sabihin: ito ay ito, at hindi kailanman ang ito ay ito lang.

Walang ito ang hungkag lang sa sarili nito. Muli at muli, may tinutukoy ang ito na, sa sarili rin nito, may tinutukoy rin na, sa sarili rin nito, may tinutukoy... Hindi ito natatapos, na may ibig sabihin ang lahat; parating may ipinaparating, at kung gayon, ang lahat ay parating patungo. Noong sinabi ko sa kanyang maaaring ganito lang talaga ang lahat—pati na ang tula—inaasahan kong maunawaan niya ito.

Gayunpaman, marahil, wala pa siya roon sa pag-unawa o pagkakaroon ng pang-unawa. Tulad na rin ng sabi rin niya, naging matagal bago niya naunawaan kung ano ang ginagawa niya: “Palagi ang kilos patungo.” At kung malimit na kasunod na tanong sa pangungusap na ito ay “Saan?” hindi ako kaagad umimik.

Tulad sa kanya, hindi ako umimik sapagkat naunawaan ko ang ibig niyang sabihin. At kung totoo ang sinasabi niyang ito, wala ring tunay na mangyayari. Muli at muli lang kaming maglalapit sa pag-unawa. Kaya sinabi ko sa kanyang, “Oo, palagiang kilos patungo.” Palagi ang kilos patungo, at hanggang doon lang ito makararating muli at muli.

At sapagkat parati lang parating, ang guwang na hindi tuluyang matatawid, o kung saan, sabi niya, nagsisimula ang tula.

At sapagkat parati lang parating, doon niya sinabi sa akin noong sinimulan kong sabihing, “Sa tuwing iniisip ko [ang posibilidad na magkakaroon ng isang] siya na patutunguhan,” ang tanong niya sa akin kung hindi ko ba mas nanaising makasama siya sa lahat ng patutunguhan ko. Sinabi kong “Oo,” sapagkat marahil iyon nga ang ibig kong sabihin, na hindi hantungan kundi kahantong.

Na kaiba sa kandong, na tulad sa biro ng tatay niya: May dalawang 13

magkaulayaw na hindi matiis ang isa’t isa, kaya kahit pa nakasakay sila sa isang bus, animo nagtatatalon siya sa kunwaring tuwa habang nakakandong siya sa kanya. Ngunit sa pagkandong, ang gusto lang talaga ng magkaulayaw, ngunit hindi nila maaaring gawin sapagkat malayo pa ang tutuluyan nilang silid, ang magpatong.

At dito ko naaalala ang kanyang mukha habang nakahiga, at pinagmasdan ko siya sa loob ng isang mahinahong sandali.

Kung papaano tumama ang huling liwanag ng dapithapon mula sa kanyang bintana sa kaliwang bahagi ng kanyang mukha.

Kung papaanong maaari ko siyang tingnan nang hapon-hapon nang hindi mananawa. Ngunit bago ang ano pa man, ang sumunod ko nang naalala bago kami huling nagkita ay kung papaanong pareho kaming nakahiga, nakatunghay sa kisame hanggang sa tuluyan nang lumubog ang araw.

Itong katahimikang iyon. O, sa paghiram sa kanyang taludtod: “Magkaharap hindi sa isa’t isa, ngunit sa parehong direksiyon.”

Araw-araw, sa biyahe ko patungo at pauwi, tinitingnan ko ang mga nakakasabay ko, iniisip kung maaari bang kasabay ko na ang tinutukoy ko sa isip. Minsan, nakikita ko siya, at naiisip kong maaari ko siyang tingnan araw-araw nang hindi mananawa. Pinag-aaralan ko ang kanyang mukha; may pagtuon ako sa kanyang mga mata.

Ngunit pagkaraan ng minuto, isa sa aming dalawa ang kinakailangang bumaba. At doon huli ko siyang makikita. Kinabukasan, titingnan ko na naman ang kanyang panibagong mukha, hanggang sa bumaba itong muli. Araw-araw, makikita ko siya at araw-araw, iba-iba rin siya.

Sa paghahanap na ito sa mga mukha niya sa araw-araw na biyahe, doon ko natutunan ang kapaguran sa pagiging parating paparating.

May ilang ulit ko itong sinabi sa kanya: “Gusto ko ng kapanatilihan.” Ibig kong sabihin, gusto kong maranasan kung papaanong maging ito. At sa pagsabi kong ito, ibig kong sabihin ay ito, at hindi ito. Ito. Ito, tulad ng mga pagkakataong kaharap ko siya at sa kalagitnaan ng pag-uusap, nauunawaan na namin ang mga sasabihin ng isa’t isa. Kaya sa pag-aabang pa lang ng mga susunod niyang sasabihin, tumatawa na kaagad ako bago pa man niya tuluyang sabihin ito.

14

At sa paghalakhak namin nang malakas dahil sa isang biro, kahit pa man hindi pa niya nasasabi ang birong ito, pareho naming nakakapa kung ano ang nakakatawang nangyayari dito. At sasang-ayon kami sa mga hindi pa naman namin tunay na sinasabi, sasabihing, “Oo! Oo!� sapagkat nauunawaan namin talaga ang mga nais naming iparating, kahit pa man wala pang salitang nasasambit dahil palaging pinuputol ng mga malalakas na tawa o ng mga paghabol ng hininga sa pagi-pagitan.

O marahil, matapos ang malakas na halakhak, itong pakakawalang buntong-hininga. O, ito, ito, ang pagiging bilang pagiging nang hindi nagbabago.

Tulad noong isang gabing muli at muling binabalikan ko, ang ito bilang ang lahat noong gabing ito, noong doon bago ang bahaging nagpaalam siya at umuwi. At bagaman magkikita pa kaming muli ilang araw lang mula noon, may hindi na muling maibabalik.

Noong kasama ko siya at nakaupo ako malapit sa kanya, nakaupo ako malapit sa kanya at siya sa akin. Maaaring baguhin ang panahon at ang lunan, ngunit hindi mababagong sa layo ng aming pagkakaupo, kung gaano kami kalapit. Kung papaano kaming magkaharap sa kung saan-saan, bagaman alam kong nakikita pa rin namin ang isa’t isa.

May isang kapanatagan dito, at kung ano pa mang hindi ko matukoy.

Sa kung papaanong walang umimik. Wala alinman sa aming dalawa ang umiimik. Wala maging ang pangangailangan sa amin upang umimik.

15

16 mabilang na daliri. At patuloy silang naglalaro nang walang pahintulot, lumilikha ng mga sapot mula sa sutla ng isang haplos. Ngunit ako

sumundo sa akin. Kinikilala ko itong kinahinatnan sa pamamagitan ng pagsila. Sa panimdim, nahagilap ko itong hindi mabilang na bisig, at sa dulo nila, hindi rin

buhol at buhol na lamang ang manatili. Kinikilala ko ang kalam sa pagdakmal sa sino mang lalapit, tatapik, susubok

pinapalupot ang sinulid sa aking katawan nang sa paghubad ay wala nang puwang mula sa latay. Niyayakap ang sarili hanggang

Kung paano hinabi ang panimula nitong alamat, gayon ko rin binabaybay ang kahihiyan. Walang dahang

mula sa Kung paano hinabi

jeivi nicdao

17

katawan. Kalaunan, himpil sa habi. Kalaunan, tanggi sa sikip. Mapapatahan ko na rin ang mga alingawngaw.

Mapapatahan ko rin ang mga alingawngaw.

matubos itong mga himulmol ng uhaw.

Pinipilas na ng halimaw ang sariling tahanan, likhang naging sariling

mambitag at mabitag. Binubungkal ko ang mga langib, kinakalmot mula sa balat ang dagta ng isang tinig. Wala akong dapat dinggin, wala na dapat maaari. Pinapatid ng pagnanasang

ngayon ang nag-uumpisang magwakas sa pagsalat. Ako ngayon ang umaalpas sa bitag ng pangangailangang

18 mabilang na daliri. At patuloy silang naglalaro nang walang pahintulot, lumilikha ng mga sapot mula sa sutla ng isang haplos. Ngunit ako

sumundo sa akin kinikilala ko itong kinahinatnang sa pamamagitan ng pagsila. Sa panimdim, nahagilap ko itong hindi mabilang na bisig, at sa dulo nila, hindi rin

buhol at buhol na lamang ang manatili. Kinikilala ko ang kalam sa pagdakmal sa sino mang lalapit, tatapik, susubok

pinapalupot ang sinulid sa aking katawan nang sa paghubad ay wala nang puwang mula sa latay niyayakap ang sarili hanggang

Kung paano hinabi ang panimula nitong alamat, gayon ko rin binabaybay ang kahihiyan. Walang dahang

jeivi nicdao

19

katawan. Kalaunan, himpil sa habi kalaunan, tanggi sa sikip. Mapapatahan ko na rin ang mga alingawngaw Mapapatahan ko rin ang mga alingawngaw

matubos itong mga himulmol ng uhaw Pinipilas na ng halimaw ang sariling tahanan, likhang naging sariling

mambitag at mabitag. Binubungkal ko ang mga langib, kinakalmot mula sa balat ang dagta ng isang tinig wala akong dapat dinggin, wala na dapat maaari. Pinapatid ng pagnanasang

ngayon ang nag-uumpisang magwakas sa pagsalat. Ako ngayon ang umaalpas sa bitag ng pangangailangang

20 sumundo sa akin, kinikilala itong kinahinatnang panimdim. Sa wakas ng dahan, sa paghagilap ng salat, patuloy naglalaro

niyayakap ang kalam. Sino mang lalapit, tatapik, susubok

Pinapalupot ang aking katawan sa puwang. Sa paglatay, paghaplos, pagsila,

Kung paano hinabi ang alamat nitong kahihiyan, gayon ko rin binabaybay ang panimula nitong uhaw.

jeivi nicdao

21

ang sarili. Himpil. Tanggi.

Ang mga alingawngaw, tatahan, mananatili sa kalam.

muli’t muling mangangailangan.

Kalaunan, ang mga alingawngaw: pilasin

umalpas sa bitag ng balat. Wala akong pagnanasang matubos itong halimaw, lumikha muli’t muli ng pananahan, matubos ang katawang

nang walang pahintulot: mga sapot, isang haplos. Isang tinig:

22 isang tinig na walang pahintulot na maghihimulmol. Maghihimulmol hanggang hindi na ako makaalpas sa pananahan

sa wakas ng dahan, sa kinahinatnang alamat. Kinikilala ko itong alamat, sinisikipan itong sapot nang makahagilap ng isang salat,

lalapit, tatapik, hanggang ang hindi mabilang na bisig, ang hindi mabilang na daliri ay mabitag na ang mga sarili. Kinikilala ko ang panimdim

hinuhubad ang buhol mula aking katawan nang sa paghaplos, sa pagsila, ay wala nang sapot na mamamagitan. Niyayakap ang sino mang

Kung paano hinabi ang panimula nitong uhaw, gayon ko rin binabaybay ang puwang. Walang kahihiyang

jeivi nicdao

23

bagong halimaw ang bawat latay, ang kailangan ko’y manatili sa paglikha, tumahan sa kalaunan, tumahan sa kalam.

sa sutlang likha sa sariling sinulid, matubos sa dagta ng pagpilas sa sarili, sa dagta ng kawalang-himpil. Dahil walang himpil na nagiging

sa katawang muli’t muling nangangailangang dinggin. Wala akong dapat dinggin. Hindi ko kailangang tumanggi

sa balat. Pinapatid ko ang mga alingawngaw ng nasa mula rito sa tahanan ng mga hindi dapat maaari, kinakalmot ang mga langib mula rito

24 isang tinig na walang pahintulot na maghihimulmol. Maghihimulmol hanggang hindi na ako makaalpas sa pananahan

sa wakas ng dahan, sa kinahinatnang alamat. Kinikilala ko itong alamat, sinisikipan itong sapot nang makahagilap ng isang salat,

lalapit, tatapik, hanggang ang hindi mabilang na bisig, ang hindi mabilang na daliri ay mabitag na ang mga sarili kinikilala ko ang panimdim

hinuhubad ang buhol mula aking katawan nang sa paghaplos, sa pagsila, ay wala nang sapot na mamamagitan niyayakap ang sino mang

Kung paano hinabi ang panimula nitong uhaw, gayon ko rin binabaybay itong puwang walang kahihiyang

jeivi nicdao

25

bagong halimaw ang bawat latay, ang kailangan ko’y manatili sa paglikha, tumahan sa kalaunan, tumahan sa kalam.

sa sutlang likha sa sariling sinulid, matubos sa dagta ng pagpilas sa sarili sa dagta ng kawalang-himpil. Dahil walang himpil na nagiging

sa katawang muli’t muling nangangailangang dinggin. Wala akong dapat dinggin hindi ko kailangang tumanggi

sa balat. Pinapatid ko ang mga alingawngaw ng nasa mula rito sa tahanan ng mga hindi dapat maaari kinakalmot ang mga langib mula rito

26 makaalpas, manahan sa maaari:

niyayakap ang lahat ng mabibitag na sarili. Kinikilala ko ang wakas ng isang tinig. Pahintulutan akong

Walang kahihiyang hinuhubad ang sapot na namamagitan sa bawat sarili, walang dahang

Kung paano hinabi ang puwang nitong katawan, gayon ko rin binabaybay ang kahihinatnang alamat.

jeivi nicdao

27

Kalaunan—

kalam. Kalaunan, kalam. Bago ang lahat, paghagilap. Kalaunan, paghagilap.

Hindi ko kailangang tumanggi sa sariling dagta, sa kawalang-himpil ng pagpilas. Nagiging bagong halimaw ang bawat paglikha. Bago ang lahat,

dinggin ang balat, salat, alingawngaw:

gian lao

A Farewell I have dined with this city’s ghosts.

Shot the breeze about the crowded Chuo screeching into the city sky.

I told them about myself, the boy who sang a foreign song into his palms to keep warm on a windy avenue.

I have said everything there is to say.

Even that I fell in love with Emma who sat close to me and stayed quiet as we watched the gulls spell the Japanese word for Amber.

Who could have prophesized that that world would end?

The horizon was always moving.

The waves, in some far country merging with the sky. Now, the world counts into forgetfulness.

Hanging calendars in the chambers of every unsettled heart.

The other day I did laundry in Koganei and sat

28

in the December cold as the water slushed and the sun illuminated the box houses.

It was like prayer.

A whole country completing a tectonic shift to the past.

Its ended world. Warmth only a shade in the sky. I see it now.

I asked only for silence, and received it.

29

joseph ledesma

Silent Nights patrick’s parents didn’t know that it was he who was feeding the black cat that kept coming back every night, waking the whole house up with its persistent meows. His parents hated that cat.

In the daytime, it would crawl under their gate and knock over Dad’s pots. His dad would chase it away with his trowel, but as he was nearing two hundred pounds he could never chase it for long.

Sometimes it would go around the back to where mom was doing the laundry and they would hear her scream. She didn’t like animals in general.

It was unfortunate that Patrick had always wanted a pet.

It was serendipitous when he had met the cat—he had started taking long walks around the village after his girlfriend of two years, Clara, had left him for a close friend of his and it disheartened him from hanging out with his other friends. The cat meowed to him as he returned home, sitting a street away from the porch in their house.

It was an act of impulse: He snuck out with a small slice of the meat mom had taken out from the freezer for dinner, stood halfway on the street and coaxed the cat over with a gentle “come here, kitty.”

They met regularly and in secret; he would bring a small amount of fish or chicken or beef or his dad’s favorite, bacon (whichever meat the helper decided to take out of the fridge for dinner), to his walks, and the cat started loitering outside their house. He started calling her Evangeline, after his favorite poem, and she let him pick her up and joined him in his walks. He learned a lot about the cat in these times: She had no physical deformities or external signs of unhealthiness, she was comfortable around people and other animals, and she had blue eyes just like Clara.

Just a few days being with Evangeline had emboldened him to start hanging with his other friends in school again, even Miguel, Clara’s current beau—and even though they had yet to talk about the 30

matter, Patrick was just glad he wasn’t letting the pain get the better of him. On nights where he could hear Evangeline singing outside, he wondered if he could talk his parents into letting him keep her.

Mom would be easy enough to convince—she was always open to ideas or arrangements that she didn’t like, as long as he could explain why he wanted it and how much it means to him. It was Dad that Patrick was worried about.

He and Dad would often get at each other’s throat. He hated how Dad always seemed to infantilize him. No drinking, no driving until you’re 18, no parties unless we know who’s hosting, and the most contentious issue: no pets.

“We’ve already told you,” Dad said in one of their arguments.

“We’re not sharing the house with a smelly, expensive animal that we don’t even need. What happens when you get tired of taking care of it?

We’re not going to take care of it for you.”

“I’ll take good care of it,” he said, but he realized he had no leg to stand on. Convincing Dad would take more than just words; there would need to be a good amount of fortune and divine intervention for Dad to trust him, much less understand why he wants so much—and truth be told, Patrick couldn’t even explain that to himself.

But now with Evangeline with him, he felt like he could.

Both his parents were home in the afternoon, retirees living off a healthy income from the family pig farm in the province. Mom was watching TV in the living room. She turned to him as he walked into the room, cat in his arms, and her eyes opened wide.

“Mom, I named this cat Evangeline. I found her outside and she is really nice and well behaved. I want to keep her and take care of her.” He recited the spiel he prepared in his head. He explained what he researched about cats and how Evangeline seemed to be properly 31

trained. He told her how to take care of cats and how he will take responsibility for her in every way. Then he told her about Clara and Miguel and how much Evangeline meant to him at this point in his life.

“Go talk to your dad,” Mom said, lowering her glasses to meet his eyes with hers. “He’s out in the garden.”

Patrick nodded. His heart was pounding—the helper had burnt the bacon that morning and it made Dad irritable the rest of the day.

Dad raised his voice whenever they would talk to him and they could hear him screaming into his phone at times.

The garden was a bit like a jungle with all of the orchids dad owned.

They were just as tall as Patrick was, and were shielded from rain by a huge tarpaulin that hung over their garden. “Dad?” he called out, unable to see anything past the leaves and stems. “Dad?” He went through the rows of orchids until he finally found his dad: on his back, hand over his chest. Patrick tried to scream, but shock had clogged his throat and paralyzed his body. It wasn’t until Evangeline jumped out of his arms and disappeared into the orchids that he shouted for his mom. She was the one who screamed on sight, while Patrick had recovered enough to call for emergency services.

But it didn’t matter. His dad was dead. * A wave of condolences came upon Patrick’s grieving family, as well as a lot of paperwork that his mom handled with uncanny numbness.

Absent from the commotion was Evangeline, who seemed to have disappeared into the orchids that day.

On his end, Patrick hadn’t been exerting any effort to find her.

He replaced his long walks with work on the garden—it was what he decided to do until they figured out what to do with Dad’s orchids, if they were going to do anything with Dad’s orchids; he had also thought of buying another one.

They saw each other again while Patrick was watering Dad’s orchids after a tiring day of school. Evangeline meowed at him, and 32

he could only stare at her as though she were too distant for him to acknowledge. He looked behind her and saw that she had knocked over one of the smaller orchids, the soil and the flowers a mess on the ground.

His heart felt like it reached boiling point. He was about to throw the watering can at her when he managed to catch hold of himself.

“You’re a stupid cat,” he said. “But you’re just a cat. You’re just a cat.”

That’s when he started sobbing. When she approached him, he picked her up and hugged her and sobbed onto her fur.

I named this cat Evangeline. I found her outside and she is really nice and well-behaved. I want to keep her and take care of her.

“Can I keep her, Dad?” He cried. “Can I keep her, please? Please, Dad, answer me!”

There was a light breeze as the orchids shook their heads, and the night responded with silence.

33

christine imperial

Decrescendo I can’t watch blood being drawn.

A syringe punctures the vein of my lower right arm. Blood rises into tapered tubes of glass. Too easy to disappear. Too easy to be contained.

God will lift up your soul and your body will rot into the ground. Lola wants her body burned then kept in an urn she picked out months ago—porcelain, baroque molding concealing dead powder. She says designer urns are a thriving business. She says her ashes

will look great here.

Soft music, fading

music, lift me up. My feet, tethered in chains, swell when I pull away. I am tired of touching the surface. Hands blistered from untying these knots. Cut the cords and let me—

34

Yes, I know

it won’t work, but I need a break. The other day I walked through a crowd of strangers going the opposite direction. They pushed

against me. I took off

my glasses. I wiped the lenses. There was so much smoke in my eyes. Vendors tried to sell me

cigarettes, chewing gum, sampaguitas.

It was so hot. I tasted someone’s sweat. His salt warmed my mouth. I wiped my neck. My palms turned

gray. My arm hit the mirror of a tricycle. The driver stayed asleep.

I bumped into a friend. She asked where I was headed. I said I didn’t know. I stopped to sneeze.

No one blessed me.

35

luis wilfrido atienza

Company There is a lizard that lives in my trash can, and he is the reason my desk is never swarmed by ants when I throw away junk food wrappers, bags of chips that still have crumbs in them.

He comes out in the dark, I can see him scurrying away when I turn on the lights. For a split second I think he’s something unfriendly, a cockroach or a different lizard.

I hope he doesn’t mind when I throw away old receipts, pens that don’t write, drafts of poems, things on paper he can’t make a meal of.

He persists. I can’t have ants or worse, spiders.

All I have to do is keep things coming his way, and try not to think of ghosts when I hear the tiny, raspy sound of his breathing on quiet nights.

36

tiffany corinne conde

The Hunt “flash floods!” the warning signs read before the trail; on them, a cartoon man slipped from a rock and drowned under an incoming wave. “Be alert, water may rise without warning.” On a March afternoon, at the foot of a state-owned path named Kamananui Valley Road, I waited for spring showers to drum a heady dance over the island. But the rains never came, and it was a hot and sticky Sunday when mud should have pooled around my shoes, and I crossed empty streams under bridges that were over a thousand years old.

In this valley there was no end to the trail other than the hike itself, no postcard vistas to be found after hacking your way through vines and thorny brush. Kamananui Valley, the last of Oahu’s undeveloped valleys, climbed deeper into thick woodland until you stumbled upon the winding path of Ha‘iku¯ Stairs. Where trees only led to more trees, this dearth of sights meant that few people would choose to hike the mountain. So plain was the journey that they sometimes brought dogs to be their running partners. Still, the entrance to the valley had to be fenced off with a chain-link gate, for it was one of the few places in the island where you could run into a wild boar.

Away from the main road, I saw fan palms and bamboo stalks guarding a stairway where an ancient house once stood. Nothing had survived its original foundation but spray-painted walls of stone and a red-brick fireplace, crowned with ferns and moss. Clustered beside these artifacts was a plant that looked awfully familiar. Here, they called makahiya by another name—sleeping grass. I nudged them with my shoes to see if they would curl into themselves, shy, like the ones back home. Before I left the house, I noticed a navy blue pick-up truck parked by the wayside; its front seats were empty, the dashboard swathed in leaves. In the surrounding ruins the truck seemed to look all the more conspicuous, situated so close to the antiquated estate.

37

That day, the hounds were loose in the forest. Yellow Labradors, Siberian huskies, a Pomeranian scuttling on a red leash. Two brindle-spotted hounds lunged at my direction, their pale limbs stepping gingerly over an invisible trail, noses scuffing the earth.

They did not resemble their master, a deeply tanned, burly man who held both their leashes in one hand. He wore a camouflage jacket, washed-out khaki cargo trousers, and hiking boots covered in dust.

I nodded in polite hello when they passed.

In the footpath that curved almost entirely uphill, the freshly turned soil looked like it had just been rototilled. Animal droppings dotted my path like Easter eggs, and I stepped aside to avoid them. * As early as nine years old, I would stay up past my bedtime to catch the late-night programs on Animal Planet and National Geographic.

Not to learn basic scientific facts or trivia, but to observe, in my own curious way, the laws that ruled the animal kingdom. The cheetah in the savannah leaping to execute a strangling bite on the gazelle’s windpipe, before landing, front paws on the body to cushion its fall; its bite swift and precise, because unlike the lion, the cheetah had neither the musculature nor the time to wait out a long struggle, not when hyenas were pretending to sleep below the baobab trees.

The lion, twisting artfully under a water buffalo’s horns to hang, upside-down, claws around the scabrous head. Even smaller, deadlier for the detail, a hornet breaking into a nest, the honeybees vibrating their wings to scorch the interloper alive. The greedy frog swallowed by the pitcher plant. The light of the anglerfish in the depths of the ocean, a halo to which all the lesser fish swam. Such a shame, I thought, that I would never get to see these in person. * On my way up the mountain I already pictured how it would gore and toss me like a bull. I imagined long ivory tusks protruding from its bottom lip, a bite force powerful enough to cut through whetstone.

38

It would know, before I did, when I crept too close. I could spend days in an understory like this, retracing cloven hooves and the flattened orchids behind them, the deep gashes along the bark of octopus trees and still never find one, simply traces of their presence.

A sudden rustle in the leaves, crackling and snapping like a forest fire.

Gnarled roots torn and exposed, near-ripe avocados scattered like seeds. Or a straightforward hike could go horridly wrong after disturbing a den of piglets, their mother barreling into me as I tried to climb a breadfruit tree.

But I had a slightly better chance of running into them just before sunset, when they emerged from hiding to burrow their snouts in muck, searching for earthworms. They would choke out all the low-lying plants that surrounded them, rolling and carving shallow pools in depressions left in their wake, defecating in water sources that would eventually become a breeding ground for mosquitoes transmitting avian malaria. The virus would spread rapidly to the scarlet honeycreeper, the warblers singing in the trees, all the native birds of the forest that never learned to resist the disease.

It was true that unlike the rest of the United States, teeming with dangerous animals attempting to reclaim their habitat, the Hawaiian archipelago had neither crocodiles nor giant snakes, no mountain lions slumbering by the neighbor’s backyard. But because the islands were so isolated, most of its native fauna and flora population had evolved without ever encountering many of the world’s more competitive and predatory species. And so, native Hawaiian species were considered gentler than most, leaving them susceptible to the alien and invasive species which had been introduced to the islands when Captain Cook placed Hawaii on the world map in 1778, species whose rapid breeding caused environmental and agricultural harm, the most ferocious of which was the Eurasian wild boar. * It was around five-thirty in the afternoon by the time I finished my hike, swatting itchy cones that whipped back and hit me in the face as soon as I pushed them aside. As lush greenery twined through 39

the valley, sometimes the trees gave way to a mist-capped mountain range in the distance, the beginnings of a treacherous spine of ridges.

I came across hibiscus and naupaka blossoms, a spray of white and purple flowers from which the locals spun their leis—soft petals gathered through a string. After several miles, I reached a clearing with a wide banyan tree at the center. An anti-climactic, yet strangely fulfilling end to my journey.

When the canopy cleared, I saw a lady wearing a green cap and a matching camouflage jacket standing by a corner of the road with several dogs keeping guard. She was talking to her friends when the hulking man I had met earlier brushed past me. He disappeared into a thicket, chasing his two dogs.

Greyhounds, I suspected. The dogs were really too thin to be anything else.

But in a few moments I heard a deafening cry, and everything around me snapped. A muffled crash rose from beyond the trees.

With it, the chilling wail that rocked the forest. * What is happening to our beautiful land? These were the words spoken

by Father Sean McDonagh, an Irish Columban missionary priest on a mission to South Cotabato in the Philippines. A theologian and environmental scholar, Father McDonagh wrote fervently about the natural world, pointing out the disintegration of ecosystems that had taken place within a few short years. Halcyon days stretched out before him: memories of coral reefs in storybook-blue seas and sparkling rivers that once ran through the country, the bright plumes of birds sailing through the wind. “We see the beauty and the pain of the earth,” remarked Father McDonagh. From the eroded hills to the weathered stream beds, he warned us about the dire consequences of not confronting the fragility of nature. His message is as relevant today as it had been in 1988, imploring mankind to act as stewards so that the earth would not be destroyed.

40

But in the case of the Kamananui Valley, what was to be done when the ones endangering the forest were the animals themselves?

It was clear that the Eurasian wild boar did not belong to Hawaii, in that forest beside the river, sharpening its tusks to skewer humans and dogs where they stood. At the same time, they never chose to be there, to overgraze and disrupt the biodiversity within the islands.

They were simply being animals, fulfilling the instincts natural to their kind. This became a deeply polarizing issue in the early 1900s, when the Hawaii Territorial Board of Agriculture and Forestry began an eradication project that removed a total of 170,000 wild boars from forests. Conservationists, with the support of the Hawaiian government, encouraged local hunters to kill these pests for the survival of the rainforests and native endangered species, but several animal rights groups felt that boars were being exterminated specifically to save a more charismatic type of fauna and flora, when the boars, too, deserved their rightful place in the islands. Father McDonagh’s was a call to respect and defend life, but which one? * I didn’t know what the horrible sound was until I saw the camo-jacketed lady race down the trail, her companions following behind her in similar apparel. It occurred to me now that these people were hunters, and the truck which had been parked along the hidden house had been theirs all along.

I couldn’t see anything through the trees but I could hear a man shouting, “Get him, boys! Good boy, good boy!” Branches crackled underfoot as the barking reached a crescendo. Suddenly, they seemed more than just two dogs.

“It’s okay,” the deep, masculine voice bellowed over the increasing din of struggle. “You can come out and watch.”

It took a while to realize that the hunter was talking to me.

Part of me desperately wanted to watch the spectacle, but I was also too frightened to see what lay beyond the thick screen of trees.

41

John, another hiker, whispered to me that the dogs had it pinned, so it should be safe to come out. But they were just dogs, I argued.

The boar would ram straight into all of us the moment it broke free.

“You sure it’s safe?” somebody else wanted to confirm.

“Yeah,” the hunter said, “it’s not getting away.” * He had been hit in the heart, it was as it should be. In her memoir entitled Shadows on the Grass, Isak Dinesen confessed that when she first arrived in Africa she could not “live without getting a fine specimen of each single kind of African game.” Hunting for Dinesen was “a love affair,” a vision of desire in which the shooting of a predator was “in reality a declaration of love.” But after ten years she found hunting to be “an unreasonable thing, indeed in itself ugly and vulgar, for the sake of a few hours’ enjoyment to put out a life that belonged in the great landscape and had grown up on it.” Even so, when she was about to leave her farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills, she had intended to shoot all of her horses and all of her dogs, until she was persuaded by friends and family to spare them.

Hemingway was the opposite, exceedingly calm even when telling the story about the time he was mauled by a leopard: “The leopard charged. I shot him. It was a bad shot. He jumped on me, and we just kind of looked at each other. I remember those yellow eyes staring back at me. He bit me twice and dropped to the ground. He also pissed all over me. For about a year, I’d wake up in the night and I’d smell that strong cat smell. But I don’t think about it anymore.” * Not far away, hissing trade winds shook fresh leaves from a guava.

Mosquitoes buzzed and centipedes as long as knives sashayed from their hiding. The birds grew silent in the trees. Something had flicked a switch in the valley, triggered some primordial instinct within me.

The hunt was getting closer now, a tell-tale snapping of hooves on 42

grass. Finally, I grabbed the branch of a nearby hau tree, and parting the leaves that shrouded my view, used it to leverage my way down into the pit.

When I got there, a crowd had gathered but there were no hunters and still no boar. The dogs were nowhere to be found either. I stood on a boulder caked with moss and waited for something to happen.

Three other hikers stepped beside me, standing immobile and hushed. In this sun-lit dome of trees, we strained our eyes ahead for bulky silhouettes. Then our cover of leaves broke, and the pack of dogs came running down the ridge in plain sight.

With a strength that belied their gangly bodies, they drew the boar toward the waterless creek, where it began to struggle and whine bitterly against the sharp rocks. One of the hunters had crouched behind the frantic creature to carry its hind legs, allowing the pack to pull it down the ridge faster. Gravity delivered its body further down, where the dogs took a firmer hold of it and carried it to the middle of the dry bed without us asking. All this time I expected a gunshot to ring out through the forest, but the traditional way of killing boar in Hawaii was by dogs and knives. Where hikers meandered through this trail every day, stray bullets in the valley were strictly forbidden.

Before the boar appeared, I was already prepared to run away from its tusks. But when it tore through the hollies, it possessed no ivory, only a glint of white teeth as it opened its maw to grunt.

The soot-colored hide was coarse and wiry, deep as midnight. There were scrapes of red where its left ear had gone missing, severed by one of the dogs. All of the bristles on its back were raised. It stood its ground, even as the muscles throbbed in the dogs’ necks when they all bit at once, holding the feebly struggling boar as in a wreath. There weren’t any tusks emerging beside the snout. Only adults had those.

This one couldn’t be older than two years.

Every now and then, I would hear one of the hunter’s dogs yelping through the tangle of bodies and I wondered if it was getting hurt.

Only after the hunter informed me that there were puppies among the pack did I realize those were sounds of eagerness to please, not of terror. He said it took five years for a dog to hunt boars successfully, 43

but they were training these pups early to see if they would have the instinct to bite. They bit so well, in fact, I could not distinguish them from the adults.

Some of the dogs had black coats dappled with spots. Others sported purely white, black, or tan coats. Crossbreeds, most likely.

A strange device sprung from their necks, like antennas. From what I understood, which was not much, given that the hunter spoke a lot of Pidgin, the dogs had been fitted with gps collars in order to track their movements across the valley, sending signals to handheld radios that the hunters carried with them wherever they went. Another one was still chasing a scent elsewhere. “We have one more dog on the other side of the mountain,” the hunter told us, waving a handheld radio.

“Sometimes when we get there we just find the boar all torn up.”

Occasionally the pack would take breaks. They continued standing, but some would leave the others to handle most of the biting while they caught their breath. They surveyed the terrain with blank gazes and wagging tails furled in white, ears perked in the simplest of joys that only animals knew. Purple tongues lapped at the air.

I could hear the rhythmic puff of their panting. At that moment they resembled ordinary dogs after a long walk, raising their heads to pant and grin. If this were a dog park, I could just come over there and pet them. But I had to look away. More than the biting and the shaking, it was witnessing the efficient predator in one minute, the docile house pet in another.

The boar reared back with a loud shriek and staggered, a surprising testament to its strength. For a while I imagined it had a chance at escape, and would sooner run all of us down for doing nothing to ease its suffering. But the hunter, who kept his eyes on the dogs the entire time, never broke a sweat. He assured me, yet again, that it would not get away. True enough, the pack worked together to pull it back down to where it had been before. So the boar fell again, howling on the hard ground. Nothing had changed, except now a camera was rolling because one of the hikers was taking footage of the scene.

The hunt was not suited to a prolonged struggle. With his powerful hands, a hunter unsheathed a knife from a side pocket attached to his 44

belt like a holster. Everybody knew how the fight was going to end at this point, and perhaps he, too, grew tired of suspending the poor thing’s misery any longer. I turned away, thinking he would be the one to slay the boar. But it was the other hunter, the lady in green, who knelt beside the boar and plunged her knife into its fluttering heart. * The dogs were still going at the boar’s neck, though the barking had long stopped. Soon, the trodden earth became a grave of flies as the boar lay flat as a carpet. For all that it had clung to life before, all that remained now was a hide to be thrown away and fleshy parts to be used for food. Smoked sausage, the hunter had said when we asked him what they would be doing with the body. I wanted to pry open its eyes for an indication of the life it had lived before it bled its colors upon the rocks, but the dogs were still crowding the body. When I allowed myself one last glance on the trail, I could still see their white-tipped tails, swaying over the rocks that hid the body from sight. Their perked ears, buried in slowly tightening skin.

Outside the forest, an afternoon sun shone over the valley.

Birds took flight again, muted insects began to hum, and the stillness that had once reigned in the forest at last began to lift.

45

joshua uyheng

Notes on the Scenery 1.

In the middle of the field, there’s a boy out in the sun, a hat on his head, a flute between his lips. The boy has a name. He is out on the field watching the grass bend with the wind. The colors shift. I am calling him home.

2.

In the middle of the field, there’s an ancient tree. There are leaves on its branches, rings in its bark. The tree does not bend with the wind; only shivers, sighs. Sometimes, in this field, we can hear its branches creak. It sounds like it’s trying to call the boy home.

3.

In the middle of the field, there’s an old stone well. Sometimes he sits on its edge as he blows into his flute. There’s a bucket that’s hanging from a pulley. A rope that’s holding it midair, steady. If you let it down gentle, you can barely hear it kiss the water’s surface. If you throw in a pebble, the splashing almost sounds like music.

4.

In the middle of the field, if you try hard enough, there’s a song that you still might be able to hear. Under the shadow of a tree, by an old stone well, the song of a boy in a hat with his flute. Listen. If you can hear it, look behind you and see the house where he once lived.

Look behind you and see how the colors shift.

5.

In the middle of the field, there’s the field itself. Older than the scenery that it now foregrounds, it will be here when the house is no longer a house, when the well has collapsed into a pile of stones, and the tree 46

has become a forest. In the middle of that forest, perhaps the wind still pierces your heart. In the middle of your heart, perhaps the sliver of a name. Singing.

47

gabrielle leung

1 This morning, I started collecting metaphors for your laughter, tucked them into my front right pocket where I keep all the rest of my borrowed imagery. Lately, all my pockets seem to be filled to the brim with memories of you. I don’t know what to do with them, see.

Haven’t quite worked up the nerve to start writing. Instead, I’ve taken to scribbling down notes on the crooks of my elbows, pressing pen deep into skin in hopes the ink doesn’t smudge. I’ve started running out of words that don’t remind me of you. When I move too quickly, I hear my pockets jangling with the metallic sound of your laugh (lately, I’ve been comparing it to the clink of keys in my hand as I stand by my front door). I should throw out the metaphor comparing your laughter to liquid sunlight. That’s clichéd.

2 There’s a fine line between a cliché and the universal. It’s hard to put in words. Clichés are universal, but they’re tired. When you repeat things too much, they start to lose their meaning. The words I love you attain the height of their power in their absence. The moment they have been said, they provide the easy way out, a shorthand for some other, unnameable, universal thing. That’s what poetry is for. Trying to use words to bridge the gap between shorthand and feeling. Getting at new ways to say things we already know at their most powerful.

Objective correlative: this is how we are supposed to speak of love.

A set of images, designated universal symbols to evoke a particular sensation. How to name a thing without actually speaking of it. How to name a thing with every syllable.

48

3 The other day, you asked me why I never write about you. Or rather, that is what you didn’t ask me directly, but what you really meant when you asked what I was writing about all the time. See, it’s important that you didn’t actually ask me the question you were thinking, because it allowed me to willfully misinterpret you and wave away your queries with a catch-all answer. It’s also important that you allowed yourself to move on to the next topic of conversation. It’s also important that all of this is me trying to extrapolate from my limited understanding of our conversation. It’s also important that you could have been asking something else entirely, your shorthand misinterpreted in its approximation. The truth is, I don’t know why I don’t write about you. Everyone says that writers write about the things that they love.

Believe me, I’ve been trying.

4 The problem with borrowed imagery is that there is so much left unsaid. Subtext is simply a byproduct of any attempt at shorthand communication. No matter how vivid the metaphor, how universal the image, there is room for misinterpretation. A universal image becomes a symbol because we attach meaning to it. But to attach meaning is personal, and therein lies the central contradiction.

To draw from the universal, I would say that you are the waves crashing against the shore, fireplace warmth, clear blue skies. There are too many poems about the ocean, about the home, about the sky.

What remains unsaid is what makes this one any different, what the borrowed images mean to me, and why I am borrowing them to talk about you. What remains unsaid is the most important conceit of all.

49

5 No metaphors ever exactly convey your laughter. I could settle on transliteration (ahi-hi-ha-ha-he-hah), which implies I am familiar enough with your laugh that I can write it out from memory.

That I am setting out to write about your laughter at all betrays your significance. Even this failed attempt successfully conveys some limited meaning. But this isn’t quite right. There are sounds, patterns of breath and releases of syllables, that are impossible to accurately communicate. Even careful transcription is shorthand––sheet music for a symphony, script for a blockbuster, hastily captioned photographs for the days that went by so beautifully I hardly remembered to take out my camera. It is insufficient to speak of your laughter in words, other than to say I love you (there are only so many ways to say goddamn, you are something else). I have only words.

6 The thing about images is that they gain meaning in the juxtaposition.

A thunderstorm and an umbrella together mean something different from the two things apart, or a thunderstorm and drenched clothes, or a thunderstorm and rumpled bedcovers. Meaning is enriched by context. They say a good poet is able to load image with emotion, even when the image itself is claustrophobically specific. The trick is to be able to communicate feeling without the reassurance that the images will be understood. See, specificity reassures us that the metaphors are genuine. That this person in particular is capable of loving another, not that love is possible in the abstract. To concretize the image lends it weight. To say I love you is not as powerful as talking about the first time you kissed me, with The Empire Strikes Back blaring in the background and your smile afterwards equal parts embarrassed and knowing.

50

7 Perhaps all my attempts to speak of your laughter have failed because they are lacking. See, the only way to make sense of all my fragmented sentences is to start at the beginning. To answer the question of why entails a detailed examination of how we have come to arrive at this point, where I can only ever attempt to write about you. But even then, secondhand imagery is a poor substitute for experience. I would have only shorthand glimpses of strawberries as bouquet, the red Shakey’s light on your face, darkened cinemas, the brown notebook with movie tickets, claustrophobic trains an excuse to stand a little closer, racing tricycles, museum visits, carefully curated streams of pictures, the powder blue dress and black tie forgotten at the door, that roll of film that never got developed properly. I don’t know what these are metaphors for.

8 In a way, this feels like a betrayal. To breach the specific runs the risk of misrepresentation, of tampering with the weight of memory, of using what was supposed to be precious for this writing. I am inviting strangers into the private moments that were supposed to be yours and mine alone. I wonder if you think some moments are too sacred for poetry. I wonder if you would hear yourself breathing in the line cuts, if you would notice the passing references to your anatomy, if you could close your eyes and feel the full weight of every metaphor. If I were trying to reassure you, I would tell you that in a way, each moment still belongs to the two of us only. I am not trying to reassure you. Any attempts would only result in a failure to convey the truth. Instead, I will write about writing about you.

Talk about objective correlative. Your skin against mine. Different ways of being understood. Forgive me for allowing this trespass.

See, some moments are too sacred not to write about. Too sacred not to try.

51

regine cabato

The Reef The legend of Simariki is that it is made from the skin of mangroves. Their ancestors covered this with coral stone. The Datu is not lying. When we reach the island I trip on the dry coral, its shellshocked shells twice dead. I pan the camera: It is bare desert in the middle of a sea. Across the water, mangroves sink their feet into the sand. The rebels only passed here, said the man at the outpost. No military encounters. Only legs of houses and the hollow mosque, riddled with bullet marks. It makes no sense to shoot at your own place of worship. The soldiers shift uneasily, but ask for a photograph; it is lonely looking out to Basilan. The Datu does not tell us what else Simariki is made of. When we arrive at his house, the vines cling to the rusted gates.

Paint peels off the walls, stuffing peeks out of the sofa. Built into the wall, a large cage. In it, three eagles. At the interview the Datu wears a faded T-shirt, malong around the waist, and good old-fashioned tsinelas. He tells us: We will fight to keep this land. You should see—during the low tide the butterflies come flying out of the mangroves.

When we return the next day, the birds on the wall are gone. The Datu tells us: Our ancestors, Muslims, built Fort Pilar from coral. A companion nudges— there were eagles, but they were in that cage. I thought, yes, they were in the cage, but they are eagles.

52

The One with the The Killers Concert This is how I imagine we would meet: On the platform of a train station, in tune to Give me a shot at the night— In the dream, the strobe lights race across the audience, violet and then blue and then green, casting themselves over the far bleachers.

There is smoke from the stage, a glowing red K looming over us.

“I hope you brought your dancing shoes,” says Brandon Flowers, vocalist of The Killers, and he begins tapping his feet. “Tap along with me, now.”

It’s September 26, 2013 again, the first concert the band is having in Manila since their cancelled show in 2010. They are playing a new song. Give me a moment, some kind of mysterious— This is how I imagine I would meet you: I push my way out of the pulsing mosh pit of the The Killers concert and into the cold evening air of Cubao. I race to take the last trip to Ayala, and when I dismount, the leaving train takes with it every reluctance I have left. On the opposite platform you are standing with a ticket in hand, about to leave.

This is where the imagination stops short: The locked gaze between you on one end and I on the other, the tracks interrupting our short distance, and the urgency that takes us to this middle. * September 2013 was a bad month between two bad months.

The month of the Zamboanga siege was only a few weeks after the 7.2-magnitude earthquakes that rocked the Visayas, and hardly two months before the devastation of Super Typhoon Yolanda, known internationally as Haiyan.

Some meteorologists called it the perfect storm. The ingredients of a typhoon include warm seas, inward winds, and humidity.

53

The result would depend on the varying degrees of temperature and speed, its strength abandoning itself to chance.

This is not an essay about Super Typhoon Yolanda, only a sequence of incidents—a perfect storm, so to speak—that I still struggle to make sense of. About a year after the events of September 2013, I was cleaning out my wallet and I recovered a pink slip with a professor’s song recommendation. I realized I had not heard it yet. I typed it up on the search tab and plugged on my earphones. It was a piece from Motion City Soundtrack called “Timelines.”

Its chorus went: Someone said, it’s not a matter of time; it’s just a matter of timing. Do you ever wonder how you got to here?

I do. The only thing I am absolutely sure of is that that month, I went to a The Killers concert.

Less than three weeks before the concert, Robb used his last cut to take me to the university archives. It had been two days after Rafael and I broke up. We ditched tai chi and were in search of a certain Aegis Yearbook, School of Management: Class of 2003.

“It’s not here,” I said, rummaging through the yearbooks on the shelves. “Only 2002 and 2004 are.”

Robb let out a low cough and pushed his glasses up his nose.

“It’s an omen,” he said. “God does not want you to see him.

Magkakasala ka.”

We were looking for a young Jesuit instructor whom I had spent the last two years heavily crushing on. This was Robb’s idea of getting my mind off the break-up, and that much worked.

“Hey,” I said, looking up. I spotted 1974. “This is my dad’s yearbook.”

I pulled it off the shelf, a tattered brown hardbound with brittle pages clinging to its spine by a string. On the second page was my father, exactly as I had seen him hanging in a frame on our living room wall. Ever the quintessential chinito—clean shaven, fair and lanky—he peered onto the right side of the camera through small eyes behind a pair of glasses. His smile was a reserved curl, as his hair.

“Wow,” Robb raised both eyebrows as he peered over my shoulder.

“He looks like Rafael.”

54

I did not know what to say. Later, on the fifth floor of the library, Robb and I would huddle into a corner and I would bury my face into my arms and knees. A friend, Ameera, was coming over in a few minutes, and I had to make a request of Robb, quick.

On Valentine’s Day that year, Rafael made a collage of post-its on my bedroom wall, each one containing a portrait of, as The Killers put it, the way it was: our trip to the Mind Museum, our first karaoke date, and a horrible postmodern play we’d watched where the characters ate soil. It was the first week of September, and I had just taken down the collage. The wall was marked with squares where the post-its once were, dirt gathering around their corners.

“My God,” Robb interrupted. “It’s like that painting in One More Chance after John Lloyd and Bea—” I laughed. Robb pulled me into an embrace, and I pulled out a clump of post-its. Scribbled hastily in pen was: Regine, you once told me that when you have an experience, you miss out on a hundred others.

I’m just glad that out of the million experiences I’ve missed, I didn’t miss you.

“These are the only ones I couldn’t throw out,” I told Robb quietly.

“I don’t want to regret anything. My possibly unstable post-breakup self will soon be undergoing despair, anger, and other stages of loss, and I think I’ll forget to just be thankful for all that’s happened.”

“Well, you’re self-aware,” Robb mused.

“I am,” I said. I had just watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or some such film. “I wanted to ask you, could you keep this for me?”

Robb’s face fell. “What would you like me to do with it?”

“Just hold it for safekeeping, and when the moment comes that I need the reminding, you could return it to me,” I said thoughtfully.

“I think you’ll know when that moment is.”

He hesitated. “All right—” The entrance doors opened and Ameera came in. I threw Robb a glance and slipped the post-its back in my pocket. * On September 9, 2013, nine days after the break-up, I found Robb 55

outside of Psychology 101 with an open laptop and a worried look.

“Have you heard?” he asked.

“About what?”

He showed me his laptop screen, then turned and coughed.

The article bared the headline: Zamboanga City under siege.

Four barangays had already been taken by the Moro National Liberation Front, rebels who had declared independence in the south a mere month before. They planned to hoist their new flag at the city hall and were making their way to the city proper. I remember thinking, Didn’t they see this coming? The national government had shrugged off their declaration of independence the month before, dismissed it as a petty mosquito bite.

“I’m so sorry,” Robb said, as if it were his fault.

In my last year of high school, I was more than eager to leave the province. I thought myself a big fish in a small pond, an enlightened person in a conservative culture. “Guess what, I did pass the exams,” I told my classmates who said that I couldn’t make it to university.

“Hasta la vista.”

I never turned around until that moment. The window on the screen for the live feed became a window to what I left behind: burning houses, children being loaded onto trucks, women on the run.

I was overcome by a sudden guilt, like I had somehow cut through the line, that I was somehow entitled to a better evacuation. I had always, I realized, thought of Zamboanga as a place to escape from.

And now that it truly was, by virtue of the siege being dubbed an official humanitarian crisis, I could not help but look over my shoulder. Zamboanga was not the only place I had known, but it was the first.

After class, I headed to the study hall and called my parents.

“We’re fine,” they said. The grocery stores, banks, and commercial establishments were closed; they didn’t know how long the encounter would last. They said the streets were empty and the city quiet, the calm before the storm. They had enough food and water for the next couple of days. My parents said, “We’re fine.”

56

When I remember this moment, the song “Be Still” slips in after this utterance, as I stand with my phone in hand, staring into space.

Don’t break character, you’ve got a lot of heart, Brandon Flowers tells me.

Exams were just around the corner. All around me the study hall buzzed with the steady stream of conversation. Rise up like the sun, labor ‘til the work is done. * In Brandon Flowers’ music video for “Crossfire,” Charlize Theron repeatedly saves the singer from ninjas. We had always sung along to it in high school, but the onslaught on our hometown had given it a whole new meaning for us.

One of my friends slammed her fist on the table. “Don’t people understand that we’re caught in a crossfire?” she exclaimed.

She paused, and did not resist humming the lyric—“between heaven and hell.”

The joke burrowed a small space for laughter in the tension of the time. It was nervous, and once it died down we returned our attention to the television.

We’re searching for shelter, the song goes. Lay your body down… next to mine.

We sat in Ameera’s condominium unit—four friends who had come to university in the city—because we were supposed to go drinking. Instead, we were huddled in front of the television with Ameera’s parents, watching the breaking news and Jessica Soho’s State of the Nation.

“If the rebels break into residences, my family would be fine,” said Ameera when the advertisements came on. She was Muslim, and it was said that the rebels were nicer to believers, even those who did not follow their cause. “It’s your families I’m worried about.”

“I’m worried about my family too,” I said, picking at my food.

I wasn’t hungry. I thought of how lucky Ameera was, how her family would be given consideration if it came to the worst. Then I thought

57

of how Ameera and her family weren’t saved from the trouble the siege had cost either.

“Robb cut class today,” Ameera said over the commercial break.

“He had a check-up today,” I said. “He just told me this morning.”

She nodded. “Are you guys pushing through with the concert next week?”

I looked at our two companions apprehensively. We had purchased tickets to The Killers’ concert a couple of months before. “I dunno,” I said wistfully. “I feel bad about partying here when people in Zamboanga have no place to stay the night.”

“I guess,” said Ameera. “But we need time to be teenagers too, you know.”

The commercial break ended. The camera panned through the city proper of Zamboanga. The same street that we had crossed for a school parade was now empty, with soldiers occasionally running from one side to the other. Tanks rolled down another main street.

Snipers hid on rooftops. All the establishments were boarded up.

Jessica Soho was on a phone interview with then Interior Minister Mar Roxas, who had been sent to lead government response to the siege. In a three-way call, the media patched in Attorney Emmanuel Fontanilla, spokesperson for Nur Misuari’s faction of the Moro National Liberation Front. We need third party involvement, Fontanilla had said, if the government and mnlf are to talk about it.

The audio was overlaid on clips of Red Cross workers wrapping a bandage around the head of a victim hit by debris, and civilians—with backpacks and their children in tow, towels wrapped around their heads to protect them from the heat—making their way to trucks headed for evacuation centers.

I was quiet when Attorney Fontanilla was speaking, Roxas said in Filipino. The least he could do is afford me the respect to speak for a while. Are there or are there not thousands of— Fontanilla interrupts anyway, and the two begin to bicker like schoolboys on national television.

There is third party involvement, retorted Roxas heatedly.

We don’t negotiate in front of the media. Why don’t you ask him, Jessica, why they keep firing at Red Cross workers?

58

I am, said Soho, successfully masking her exasperation. I’m asking him now. Roxas had been interrupting her questions for Fontanilla.

She said, I think you need to answer this, Attorney— If you don’t mind Jessica, I’d like to excuse myself, Roxas announced, interrupting her again. I think I’ve made my point.

The line went dead.

You see that they won’t listen, said Fontanilla. They shot at us first.

Lumaban lang kami.

He didn’t answer the question. So who was firing at the Red Cross workers? At the firemen?

“They have to stop fighting back with force. Reresbakan sila ng mga anak ng mnlf,” Ameera’s mother commented. “The rebels’ sons will keep coming back after them. This will never end.” * That September, I inhabited Candy from The Killers’ “This Is Your Life.” I joined a group of dormers and other Zamboangeños who volunteered to respond to the siege. We were tasked to release information graphics and collect donations. I spent all my breaks at the donation booth in the cafeteria, pushing through the students at lunch hour, all of whom were so distant from the war. Candy talks to strangers, thinks her life’s in danger— We went table to table, told our schoolmates the same practiced lines: “Do you have any money to spare for the victims of the Zamboanga siege? We’re from there, and there are 24,000 evacuees who have no food or water. Your ten pesos will get them a water bottle to last them a day.”

Sometimes they would start and say, “How is your family?”

“Is everything alright?” and it was the fellow provincianos—especially those from other parts of Mindanao—who would dole out the whole Ninoy Aquinos. Then there were people who would give us the side-eye and dump their extra change into the jar.

At one table, the students tapped away at their tablets, continued speaking to each other. I said the mantra, added, “Please,” and they all looked down at their laps and their phones, refusing to look me in 59

the eye. They gave no money at all, but their wallets and tech were laid out in the open. In the background of my memory, Brandon Flowers tells me to wait for something better: Take a number where the blood just barely dried— They probably felt that if they ignored me enough, I would go away. So I did not leave, willing to make them as uncomfortable as possible. Not one of them looked at me.

In my last year of high school, Ameera and I sat on a bench in Paseo del Mar, the Zamboanga City boardwalk. We were trying to take a time lapse of the sunset for a school project, and had taken shots of Badjaos sailing.

A Badjao girl with chocolate skin and sun-dried hair climbed up onto the walk from a boat, leaning on the arm of our bench.

Her clothes were ragged, and she was dripping from the swim.

The Badjaos, also known as sea gypsies, make their living off the ocean.

When she realized that neither Ameera nor I had any plans of giving alms, she opened her mouth and proceeded to sing the whole of “Super Bass” by Nicki Minaj. (This was from a time when memorizing this single was an achievement.) I shook my head and told her that we had nothing to give. She did not stop singing, and I did what I could do: avert my gaze from her, embarrassed.

When she finished, she asked for money, out loud this time. I said we did not have any. Please go bother someone else. She grumbled and went away.

In “This Is Your Life,” Brandon Flowers instructs Candy to “wait for something better,” there’s no one behind her. She has to be stronger than the story. On the intersection of the main highway, the Badjaos would come to tap on the windows of cars, beating makeshift drums and carrying their children over their shoulder. They were one of the first victims of the siege. On the news they sat at evacuation centers, tents falling apart, waiting for something better.

Wait for it, says Brandon Flowers, wait for it…

Finally, a girl at the end of the table said, “I’ll drop by your booth later,” or some such thing. Suddenly everyone else’s screensavers 60

seemed very interesting to them, and I realized I was tapping on the window of a car door. I couldn’t believe it.

I bit my lower lip to keep myself from crying. I remember thinking: I have never had to beg my whole life. I most definitely was not going to start now. * On the third week of September, I relapsed into a post-breakup state. I began to wonder about Rafael and why he had not yet called.

I wanted, at the time, for him to ask me if my family was safe.

Or maybe I wanted him to ask something more. In any case, he had not called—and I could not accept it. Wasn’t giving your ex a call if her hometown was under fire the polite thing to do? I told Robb this.

He texted back: “Kapit lang.”

His next message read: “I’ve been waiting to tell you this, but I tested positive for lymphoma. I’ll be gone for a year to receive chemotherapy.”

I called him immediately. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

He said: “I have cancer.”

Be still. One day you’ll leave fearlessness on your sleeve. The only sound in the room was the static over the line, and the tick of seconds on the wall clock. Don’t break character. And then the low sob that grew to a ceaseless crying. It was me crying, not him.

“Hey,” he said, “hey.” It was as if he were in the room with me.

When I calmed down, he began to tell me how his recurring cough had been a symptom, and they had found water in his lungs. He was going to the States, he said. He was born there, his father worked there and it was where he would get proper treatment. Having a double citizenship, he said, would help them save money in the long term. I imagined him being rushed to emergency rooms, losing his hair, having no friends to wait on him.

Be still. Close your eyes. Soon enough you’ll be on your own. It was for the best, but Robb’s departure seized me with fear. I had been harvesting fears all month. Fear for Robb, fear for my hometown, and, 61

more than I cared to admit at the moment, fear for myself. I felt as if the rug had been pulled beneath my feet, and I had fallen into a pit that circumstance had dug specifically for me. The ground had also given way under the only person who could temper me, who could pull me out. I had been left with no ladders, no shortcuts, no hands but my own. Fear tugged on my sleeves, weighing me down.

“When are you leaving?” I managed.

“Next week.” It was so soon.

“It’s unfair,” I cried. “It’s unfair. You are the last person on earth who deserves this.”

“It’s okay,” he said calmly. “We all have our bad days.” * During my final oral exam with my theology professor, I remember wishing to pick up the thesis statement on the Exodus.

We had discussed this in class: Moses had been raised in a culture of realpolitik, where he was conditioned for a survival of the fittest, and his people—the Egyptians—got their way through violence.

The Israelites were conditioned as slaves, taught to live in fear and inferiority. When Moses gave up his lifestyle and led the Israelites out of Egypt, he died before he even got to enter the Promised Land.

What was up with that?

Forty years, our professor explained, is the average number of years it takes for a new generation to step up. The old generation— who had been conditioned in realpolitik thinking—never got to the Promised Land, and it was the humbler second generation, who had grown up in the desert, that did. It’s not about Moses, our professor had said, or about you. We do what we can to give our children a better life.

Instead, I got a crummier statement about something I don’t even remember.

“I was hoping you could have done better,” he told me after the exam. “You were doing so well earlier this year.”

“I’ve been going through a lot lately,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

62

“I know you have,” he replied. I had failed a major exam; it was a big fat F in a line of A’s. Go figure. He added, “Did you bring our trade?”

“Yes,” I said, presenting a small card with a label on it. He told us that he always rearranged his playlist at the end of every semester, and he had always asked each student for a song to remember them by; he would give them a song back. I picked one at random and slipped him my recommendation.

There is little in common between Moses and Brandon Flowers, except perhaps that they both grew up in a desert. I had not grown up in a desert, but I had grown up by the sea. And here The Killers was, in the conclusion to “Heart of a Girl,” making sense again: Deep in the night, I feel the presence / Of something that was long ago told to me / There is a hand guiding a river / the river to wide open sea.

I turned at the door when my professor called me again. “I know you are fighting internal and external battles,” he said, “but I want you to remember that there is Someone, infinitely calm, who is holding up all of this falling.”

I nodded. I had cried too many times that month, and I was so tired. I glanced at the card before tucking it in my wallet. Timelines, it read. By Motion City Soundtrack. * I took the train to visit Robb in his aunt’s condominium unit in Taguig. I had no class for the rest of the afternoon, and he would be having a quiet despedida with high school friends and family members that night. I would be at the The Killers concert in Cubao.

I brought with me a mixtape I made for him. Track 1 was Brandon Flowers’ “Crossfire,” which was—for reasons I did not know— of extreme sentimental value to him.

When I arrived, he was alone. I handed him the mixtape.

He muted the television and slipped the CD into a player. When the first song came on, he smiled and said, “You know me so well.”

63

He asked me how I was coping with the break-up, and then how my family was. I found it ridiculous that we would talk about this first, after he had just been diagnosed with cancer. We sat down on the sofa in the living room.

“I have something very important to tell you,” Robb spoke carefully. “If I tell you this, you have to promise me that this is not going to change our friendship.”

“You bastard! You don’t have cancer, do you?” was what I should have said.

Instead, I said: “It won’t. I promise.”

Besides, I thought, what could he possibly say that would change our friendship?

In the split second between my promise and his reply, my mind plunged into a flashback: Robb takes me to the archives. Robb is the first person I call after the break-up. Robb is lying down next to me in the grass at Bellarmine field. It is past eight in the evening and there aren’t even any stars.

“So why don’t you want to be Rafael’s girlfriend?” Robb had asked then.

I had remembered something my Jesuit teacher had told me.

“When you say yes to one thing, you say no to everything else,” I had recalled. “I was afraid that I’d give up a hundred experiences by committing to this one relationship. I realize now that I’ve been calculating the experiences I’d miss out on, but not the experiences I would have with him.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to tell him I’m ready.”

Robb had looked sideways at me, and I had looked sideways at him. He gave me a smile. “I’m glad,” I remember him saying.

Or maybe he didn’t say anything at all.

I zoomed out of my memory and back into the couch in Taguig.

I knew exactly what Robb was going to say.

“I really like you,” he said, and then he corrected himself.

“I love you.”

64

The statement settled over us. After some time, I said, “How long?”

“Ever since we first met,” he answered promptly.

And suddenly there was nothing left to say. I could imagine, correctly, what our friends would tell me afterward: Didn’t you see this coming?

When the hardest part is over, we’ll be here. And our dreams will break the boundaries of our fear— Robb put an arm around me and kissed me on the forehead.

I leaned on him, curling into his embrace. Lay your body down, lay your body down…

“I’ll see you in a year,” he said. He stroked my head tenderly.

“Maybe we’ll have things figured out by then.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”

But we did not move. There are no ninjas, no Charlize Theron, no rescue operations. A storm rolled over the city outside. We just lay there quietly, the closest and the farthest we had ever been. * I took the train from Ayala and sped northward. Billboards and buildings and the Pasig River sped past, and I stood clinging to a strap on the metal bar above my head. My earphones were tucked snugly in place. A song from The Killers was playing. Change came in disguise of revelation, set his soul on fire / She says she always knew he’d come around…

The woman in front of me shifted in her seat. There were children in the cart. It was the middle of the afternoon on the Metro Rail Transit. And there, in a cart crowded with people, I had never felt so alone. I thought to myself: I have had enough with all this happening.

And the decades disappear like sinking ships / But we persevere, God gives us hope / But we still fear what we don’t know— Looking back at it now, there are no reasons for why the events that took place would be aligned. No motive but chance, or coincidence.

The siege came nine days after the break-up, and diagnosis a week after the siege, the confession a week after the diagnosis, six hours before the The Killers concert.

65

I have had no time to mourn for my relationship, no time to panic for my hometown, no time to lose before Robb’s flight.

It compensated by eating at the edges of time periods for other things: school, and now the concert, where I was supposed to have a good time. In the train wreck of multiple accidents, I had displaced all time for myself. Now that it was ending—and I felt in my gut that it was, as a train slowing before alighting at a station—I had nothing but.

There was simply no logic for these events, no causality, no reason save for that nature had chosen to play a cruel trick on me.

At the time, taking the train to the The Killers concert, that trick struck me as extremely funny. Cruel and daunting, yes—frightening even—but extremely funny. So I threw back my head and laughed. * “Pasensya ka na,” said Robb, laying down his food court tray. “This is all I can afford for now.”

“Why are you apologizing?” I said, biting into my World Chicken.

“This isn’t a date, is it?”

We both grinned. We had just watched a movie. It was the first time we had seen each other in a long time.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Excited,” he replied. “Nervous.”

Robb, now in remission, was finally ready to go back to school.

It was over a year since the break-up, the siege, the diagnosis, the storm. Perhaps it is not comparable to the literal storm that was Yolanda, and the recovery it demanded—but it was similar in that when I had resurfaced, I found that a part of me had drowned.

Maybe with Robb, that was the case too.

“Have you heard of the phrase ‘Quo vadis’ before?” he asked suddenly.

“No,” I said, taking a bite of my food. “What does it mean?”

“There’s a story about Saint Peter when he tries to escape from crucifixion in Rome,” he answered. “He’s on his way out of the city, and he runs into the risen Christ, who is going in the opposite direction.

66

Peter tells him, ‘Domine, quo vadis?’ which means, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Christ tells him, ‘I’m going to Rome to be crucified again.’

So Peter turns right around and continues his mission in Rome, and is eventually martyred there.”

I chewed my food quietly, paying careful attention. I took a good look at him: Robb, brown-skinned, with straight, jet black hair.

He put on a bit of weight after his stay in the States, but the sideburns and the stubble look good on him. He pushed up his glasses and looked at me with his wide, brown eyes.

“Everything in front of me is a crossroads,” Robb said. “I feel like I’ve been asleep for so long. Now that I’m awake, there is so much to be done, and I don’t know where to begin. I feel that there is somebody shaking my shoulders, asking me, ‘Quo vadis? Quo vadis?’ and I don’t know what to tell them.”

I remembered a single by The Killers. He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus, it went, but he talks like a gentleman—like you imagined when you were young.

“Well, we can’t really know, can we?” I said, giving him a little smile. “But I guess we’ll find out.”

67

catherina garcia dario

Behind the Trees The night before Nora left for Manila, Marvin had kissed her on the footbridge. She was sitting by the door of her aunt’s hut— one foot perched on a hardwood rung of the ladder, another tracing the gravel and sand below—and picking nipa leaves from their stems. Inside, her aunt was already asleep. Marvin must have known that Aunt Ida would not have to chase him past the bamboo fence.

From afar, Nora had seen the lamplight aglow in the midst of the paddy field. She knew it was Marvin; he had promised to see her before she left for the big city.

She put on a jacket and crossed the field, careful not to trip and fall from the narrow ridges. The night was cool; the midevening wind rushed through the tall stalks of rice as she made her way down the field. Marvin was waiting for her by the road. His face was dirty, and he was still wearing his school uniform.

They had grown up together, playing street games with the other children and walking to school every day. They would sometimes fish at the creek near their neighborhood. Marvin would roll up his pants and dip his fishing net into the clear water. Nora would crouch in the grass, and then slowly watch him lift the net—heavy with a trembling heap of small, silver fish. Sometimes, they’d return them to the water.

Other times, Marvin’s mother would cook them over charcoal and serve them with salted vegetables. They would sit together and pick at their plates. It was on a night like this when Nora had told him about her cousin in Manila, and how she had landed her a well-paying job with a wealthy family.

“We must write each other every day,” said Marvin. It was 1984.

The only postal office was in the capital of their province, where all the government offices were. Nora couldn’t imagine how they could possibly stay in contact, but she promised that she would come home for the holidays.

68

“What if your boss won’t let you?”

“Lina tells me that Mr. Enriquez is a kind man.”

“If he is so rich, then he might not be.”

“I believe Lina. She is eighteen years old.”

“They only speak Tagalog there. Or English.”

“I’d like to learn how to speak better English.”

Nora imagined Manila: tall buildings, shiny automobiles, train stations, discotheques, cinemas. When Lina had come home for Christmas, she had a stack of American fashion magazines and a purse full of imported cosmetics. She had taken them from Mrs. Enriquez’s dresser.

They came to the footbridge which ran over a wide creek. It was larger and slightly deeper than the small one where they usually fished. Marvin put his hands on her shoulders, leaned in, and kissed her.

The journey to Manila took almost two days. Nora had watched the island disappear; the jetty grew smaller and smaller as the boat propelled further away. They had departed midmorning, and by halfpast four her body already ached from the rough, splintered mahogany benches that were lopsided against each other. She fell in and out of sleep, jolting awake whenever a large curl of water would hurl itself at the hulls and cold sea spray would shower her skin.

She would think about the Enriquez family. Mr. Enriquez was a businessman who travelled around the world, and Mrs. Enriquez was a stunning mestiza who only wore custom-made designer clothes.

Sophia, their only child, was five years old. According to Lina, she was very talkative and only spoke English. Nora hoped that they would like her.

They arrived at the port early in the morning and the passengers were immediately ushered into a bus. Dawn had just broken; the sky 69

was the color of a ripe pomelo. As Nora settled down, she looked out the window. The streets were bare, save for a few cars parked by the sidewalk. Nora spotted a Nissan Bluebird; Lina had mentioned that Mr. Enriquez had one. She had shown Nora a picture.

Nora admired the large advertisements splayed on the buildings.

There was a Pepsi-Cola neon sign mounted on top of a shopping complex, along with a cartoon billboard ad for beer. Thick black wires ran from post to post, sometimes tangled up against the branches of acacia trees. Now and then, they passed by grand hotels with elaborate water fountains and flower arrangements displayed behind glass doors. Aunt Ida once told Nora that the President’s wife often held lavish parties and entertained important people at these sorts of places. Nora wondered if she would get to see the Palace sometime.

After sometime, the bus slowed down and stopped at its station.

Nora saw Lina sitting on one of the plastic chairs. She was wearing her uniform, which was a pinstriped frock with an eyelet apron. She had a cigarette in her mouth, and was talking to an older man. The older man, whose gray-white hair was slicked back behind his ears, was wearing a navy blue button down. As they spoke, he twirled a pair of keys between his fingers.

Lina saw Nora and called out to her. When the bus stopped, and the engine slowed down to a purr, Nora took her things and got off the bus. The older man was drinking from a coke bottle; his eyes scaled Nora as the two girls greeted each other. “This is Fred,” said Lina eventually, “He’s Mr. Enriquez’s driver.”

Fred unlocked the car, and Lina helped Nora put her bags in the trunk.

“We’re using Mr. Enriquez’s Mercedes Benz,” whispered Lina.

“Where is he?”

“He’s in America. He’s always out. But you’ll get to meet Ms. Enriquez.”

Lina stubbed her cigarette with her slipper, and then opened the door. Nora made a mental note to write to Marvin that evening, and tell him about the leatherette seats and the bottle of expensive alcohol that was tucked in a marble drink holder.

70

The drive to the Enriquez home was longer than Nora expected.

Lina explained that they had built a new house a few months ago, and just moved in. Lina watched Manila disappear behind them, and the road stretched between fields of wild grass.

When they finally arrived at the subdivision, it was almost midmorning. The wheels grinded over the dusty dirt road as it approached a wrought iron gate. Fred spoke to the security guard at the guard post, and was responded with a salute. The village, which had only a few houses, appeared to be a winding maze of mango trees.

“Mr. Enriquez told me once that during the war, there had been a prison camp around this area,” said Fred. It was the first time he had spoken the entire trip. His voice was low and raspy.

“Not this story again,” whined Lina.

“When the prison would get full, the Japanese officers would release the prisoners to this mango grove. The prisoners would think that they had escaped.”

Nora remained quiet.

“And then,” continued Fred, “They’d gun them down here.”

“So this place was a dumping ground for bodies.”

Nora opened her mouth to reply, but they had finally arrived at the house. It was a white-brick manor with a red roof, and rows of pale green shutters. From the driveway, past a concrete latticework wall, she could see a swimming pool and cabana. The clear, blue water glistened underneath the midmorning sun.

Nora had never seen ceilings any higher. The marble flooring, occasionally interrupted by a piece of furniture—the grand piano, then later a round hardwood table on which stood a glass vase of marigolds, then later a billiards table—extended from the doorstep to the patio, preceded by sliding doors. Nora saw a woman seated outside, her back against a white garden chair; her slim hand poised against the tabletop. “That’s Mrs. Enriquez,” whispered Lina, as they heaved Nora’s bags into the house. Mrs. Enriquez heard them, and turned around.

71

She was much more beautiful than Nora had imagined. Lina had described her as mestiza, but never mentioned her high cheekbones and light brown hair. She was tall and very young—probably in her early thirties—and she reminded Nora of the supermodels in the American magazines.

“Nora,” she said gently, offering her hand. She smelled like flowers.

“Good morning po,” Nora squeaked. She shook Mrs. Enriquez’s hand, hoping that she wouldn’t notice her calloused, sweaty palms.

“How was your trip? Are you tired?”

Nora tried to remember the few Tagalog words she knew.

She didn’t say anything.

Mrs. Enriquez smiled at her genially. “Sophia is upstairs.

Mr. Enriquez is away. Your uniform has been washed and pressed by Lita.”

Another girl appeared by the door. She was younger and smaller than Nora, who had just turned fifteen that year. Her pinstriped frock hung loosely around her skinny frame. She waved at Nora, her wide eyes like teacup saucers.

Nora met Sophia later that afternoon. She had been trotting around the living room, still dizzy from her nap, and wearing a pink tutu. Her big belly bulged from the garter. Like her mother, she had rosy cheeks and fair skin. When she saw Nora, she pounced and wrapped her sausage legs around her waist. As she peppered Nora with kisses, Nora noticed that her black hair twisted from her head in bouncy ringlets. Nora imagined that Mr. Enriquez had dark, curly hair as well.

To Nora’s surprise, Sophia was a very easygoing child. Prior to accepting the job offer, Nora imagined that the little girl would spit out her vegetables; throw her toys at the wall, and kick and scream when put to bed. However, Nora found herself enjoying Sophia’s company —braiding her hair, and helping her dress into her starched, plaid school uniform, fetching her at the elementary school gates, watching afternoon cartoons with her during merienda time, and listening to Sophia’s stories before her bedtime. Nora would tuck her

72

in her pink duvet covers, sit on the floor, and listen to Sophia’s silly, often nonsensical narratives. She only spoke in English, so Nora had to listen very well.

“There is a land far, far away,” said Sophia one night. She lifted her hands and spread them in the air—a routine that Nora noticed every time she began a story.

“And the land is full of trees.

“And behind the trees, there are people! Old people, young people, big people, small people. And some of them are evil.” She wiggled her fingers and widened her eyes.

“And they live behind the trees. They don’t come out. They stay there. And they listen. And they watch. Hundreds of them.”

She fell asleep before finishing the story, as she sometimes did.

As Nora shut off the bedside lamp, she remembered the bamboo thicket back at home. She and Marvin would sometimes pass there on the way to school, because it was a shortcut that saved ten minutes of their time. They would be careful not to tread atop a mound of dirt or a thick patch of grass. The dwarves, Aunt Ida often warned them, would get angry and make them sick. One of their neighbors had pissed in the thicket, and had suffered high fever and painful boils on his legs. Nora and Marvin stood by his bed, along with a flock of other townspeople. They watched an old lady pour candlewax on a basin.

Little stumps of people emerged from the sticky wax.

Later that night, when Lina and Lita were both asleep, Nora crept out of bed and wrote to Marvin. She had been writing him since she had arrived in Manila, and was still waiting for a response.

Lina did not seem to think of home much. She and Nora barely spoke during the week; Nora was busy attending to Sophia, Lina was in charge of general cleaning. When they would talk, however—during mealtimes or before lights out—Lina would always share the latest celebrity gossip, the new American film being shown at the cinema square, or the new handbags and shoes that Mrs. Enriquez recently bought. She would whisper and cackle excitedly, trimming and painting her toenails in between. As for Lita,

73

she never said anything at all. She went about the kitchen, fiddling with the pans, her small face always shrouded by a cloud of steam as she hovered over a boiling pot.

Once, when Mrs. Enriquez was out, Lina brought Nora to her dressing room. Nora had been watching over Sophia as she took her afternoon nap, flipping through some of the English storybooks that she had found on the bookshelf. Lina opened the door slightly, and coaxed Nora outside. “Come,” said Lina, “I’ll show you something.”

Nora had never been inside the master bedroom. Mrs. Enriquez, although kind and gentle, was tight-lipped when she explained that only Lina was allowed inside to make the bed, vacuum the carpet, and dust the drapes. Mrs. Enriquez kept the key to her dressing room inside a music box, which Lina furtively fished out when they came across Mrs. Enriquez’s desk. They unlocked the door, which led to a roomful of closets. Lina opened each of them, revealing rows and rows of dresses, shoes, and handbags. They were displayed behind glass. Lina told her which ones were from Paris and Milan and Hong Kong. She pointed to them as if they were artifacts on display.

“What about Mr. Enriquez’s things?” asked Nora. An entire month had passed and he still had not come home from America.

She was beginning to doubt that he would come home at all.

Lina opened a few more closets. A dozen black suits hung from hangers. They looked like large bats, wings folded against each other.

She noticed a cardboard box at the bottom of one closet. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it before,” said Lina. They bent over and lifted the lid. Inside were stacks of papers, each one held together by metal fasteners. Nora took a pile out and set it on her lap, trying to study it. There were numbers printed on them; Lina remembered Marvin’s accounting book. It had belonged to his older brother’s, who had also worked in Manila as a houseboy for a bank officer.

Lina grabbed the stack of papers and put them back in the box.

“I don’t understand anything,” she said. “Mr. Enriquez is a lawyer.

Lawyers are very complicated people.”

74

Lina wanted to try on some of Mrs. Enriquez’s clothes, but Nora insisted that they leave. She was worried that Mrs. Enriquez would come home anytime now, and she didn’t want to get caught snooping around. They locked the door and left the room. Lina went back downstairs, and Nora returned to Sophia’s room. She sat down by the bed and watched Sophia’s chest rise and fall as she slept.

Almost four months had passed when Mr. Enriquez finally arrived home. It was the middle of the night, and Nora’s eyes flickered open when the glare of headlights flashed at the window. Mrs. Enriquez knocked at their door, instructing Nora and Lina to help Fred with Mr. Enriquez’s things, and Lina to prepare a small meal.

Nora and Lina quickly filed into the garage. Mr. Enriquez had already gone upstairs; Nora could hear his heavy, patented leather shoes thump against the floorboards. He and his wife talked in low whispers.

Nora, Lina, and Fred carried several bags and suitcases upstairs.

“I didn’t know Mr. Enriquez would be coming home tonight,” said Nora to Fred.

“He was scheduled to come home next week, but then he called up Madam from Hong Kong and told her he will be arriving in Manila tonight.”

Nora didn’t say anything. She remembered the box of papers that she and Lina had found inside the closet. She had not thought about it in a while, although it had bothered her for many nights.

Mr. Enriquez appeared at the top of the stairs. She was surprised to see that he, like his wife, was very young. He had dark hair and thick eyebrows, and black-rimmed glasses that framed his angular face. “You can just leave them here. I’ll take care of them,” he said, pointing to the bags.

Mrs. Enriquez followed him. She was carrying Sophia, whose legs were wrapped around her waist. Her eyes were heavy with sleep, and she reached out for her father. Mr. Enriquez took her and carried her.

“You haven’t met Nora yet,” said Mrs. Enriquez softly.

Nora felt her face grow hot. Mr. Enriquez looked at her.

75

“I’m sorry, Nora. Good evening.”

Nora placed two of his bags gently on the floor. “Good evening, sir.”

“Is Sophia too much to handle?”

“I love Yaya!” Sophia chirped, draping an arm around his neck.

Mr. Enriquez laughed and pressed his finger to her nose. Nora watched them, as he bent over and kissed his wife on the cheek.

Marvin’s letter arrived a few months later, around late March.

Neither Nora nor Lina had gone home for the Christmas or summer holidays; Mrs. Enriquez had offered to triple their pay if they stayed.

Nora encashed the check, and sent money to both Aunt Ida and Marvin instead.

By that time, Nora’s Tagalog had improved. Fred, who was fluent, had helped her practice. On the way to fetch Sophia from school, for instance, he would help translate Bisaya sentences to Tagalog.

When he would join the three girls for dinner, he would write down words and phrases on a paper napkin. Nora would stare at these for hours, examining Fred’s twisted handwriting underneath the dim light bulb that dangled over her mattress.

She had also learned a bit of English from Sophia, such as “I’m hungry,” “I’m tired already,” and “Why can’t I have another slice of cake?” She continued to read the picture and storybooks, which she always took from the shelf whenever Sophia took her afternoon nap.

Her diligence paid off eventually, when she and Lina took a bus to Makati during their weekend off. They watched a local movie at the cinema square, and then spent the afternoon at one of Lina’s favorite eateries. Besides the cheap noodle soup, Lina liked it especially because of the handsome European man who often frequented the place. That was the day Nora learned that Lina was not a virgin; that was also the day she learned to flirt in English. She remembered a soap opera that she once listened to on the radio: “I want to kiss your lips,” a woman’s voice purred through the speakers. The European man seemed very impressed.

That evening, the gardens were lit up. Mrs. Enriquez was hosting a dinner party. The President and his wife arrived, along with several 76

other men and women whose cars pulled up on the driveway. Nora braided her hair and put on the navy blue uniform that Mrs. Enriquez had custom-made for each of the girls. She stood in the dining room for most of the evening, tray positioned against her chest, keeping an eye out for empty champagne glasses. Her eyes would always wander to the President, who wore a gray velour suit over a velveteen necktie.

His wife sat at the other end of the table, whispering to Mrs. Enriquez.

Everybody else clinked their spoons and forks against their plates.

When dinner was over and the girls had finished clearing the plates, Nora followed the guests to the gardens. Mrs. Enriquez had moved the grand piano to the gazebo, and hired a pianist to perform below the string of lanterns that hung from the white beams. The women whipped out their woven fans; the men puffed their cigars.

A hand clamped on her shoulder. It was Fred. “I overheard the President talking to Sir,” he said. He was wearing a white cotton button down which fit well around his arms. Nora thought that he looked handsome.

“What did he say?”

“People are angry. Things are about to change.”

Nora didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

Fred curled his lip.

“Mr. Enriquez will leave the Philippines soon, and so will Madam and Sophia.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie?”

Nora shrugged. She felt Fred’s hand snake around her waist. His fingers tapped against her ribs.

She did not tell Fred that she was a virgin. She made up a story about Marvin, and how they had made love in the coconut grove outside her house. “Did he do this?” asked Fred, crouching to his knees and lifting her skirt. When he put his tongue inside her, she felt her entire body stiffen.

He waited for her now. He had locked the door and told her take off her clothes. She retreated to the bathroom, took deep breaths as she unbuttoned her uniform and unclasped her bra. She ran her 77

hands across her breasts and down to her belly, feeling the hairs at the back of her legs stand against her skin. When she stepped into the bedroom, she almost forgot to undo her braid.

In the dark, she felt much younger. His body was large and heavy against hers, and her thin legs trembled underneath his weight.

She groaned every time he tore through her, hoping that he would mistake it for ecstasy.

When they were done, he kissed her and swiftly changed back into his uniform. She did not realize that the music had stopped, and that the light outside had dimmed.

Fred left and went to the garage. Nora went back into the main house. She was relieved to find Lita and Lina sweeping the floor, unsuspecting of Nora’s momentary disappearance. In the dining room, the guests were having coffee. Mrs. Enriquez beckoned Nora to come over. Sophia had fallen asleep, and was slumped against her mother’s chest. Nora lifted the child from Mrs. Enriquez’s arms, and carried her up the stairs. She seemed heavier than usual.

Mr. and Mrs. Enriquez left the country the following week. Nora woke up to find their bags parked by the front door, and Mr. Enriquez perched by the telephone. Lina told her that he had been making calls all morning, and he and his wife were leaving for Hong Kong for a business trip. Mrs. Enriquez assured Nora that they would be back in a few days, and that Sophia would be staying at a cousin’s house until then. Nora poked her head out the garage door, and saw that Sophia was already seated at the back of the Nissan Bluebird.

She knew that she should’ve felt excited that they had the house to themselves, but Nora felt her stomach squeeze and churn as she watched the car lurch into the distance. Fred, whom she had not spoken to since they slept together, had his eyes fixed to the windshield. His lips were so tightly pressed against each other that they appeared stitched.

Lina threw off her uniform and put on some jeans, complaining that Mrs. Enriquez had taken their radio and locked the entire upstairs area. “I don’t know about you,” she said, brushing her hair

78

in front of the mirror, “But I’m going to catch a movie at the cinema square.” She took off before lunchtime, leaving Nora and Lita alone in the big house The clock ticked slowly. Lita slept through the afternoon.

She curled up against the wall; she looked like a tough piece of clay folded against itself. Nora noticed that she quivered in her sleep.

At midafternoon, Nora decided to take a walk. She unlatched the gate and opened it slowly, careful not to scrape the wrought iron against the concrete driveway. There were no other houses nearby, just the snaking mango grove that stretched from either end.

As she walked, she tried not to think about anything. She focused on the rust-colored leaves scattered above the undergrowth, and the foreboding canopy that towered overhead. She remembered the story that Fred told her on the day she arrived in Manila—how the subdivision is a grave for prisoners of war. She imagined being released from the prison cell and running through the expanse of trees, then hearing bullets being fired from behind her.

She had been walking for quite some time when she came across the creek. It was a small, shallow stream that cut across the woods.

Nora crouched above it, picked up a stone, and tossed it in the water.

It sunk to the bottom. Nora looked at her reflection, which had wrinkled when the stone hit the water.

The orange sun broke through the canopy, and Nora made her way back to the house. She was worried that she had lost her way, but then saw that she had left footprints in the soil. By the time her hand closed against the iron latticework of the gate, it was already dark.

She went into her room, and saw that the lights had not been opened. The room was purple, and Lita was whimpering under the sheets.

“Lita,” called Nora, “What’s wrong?”

Nora switched on the lights, and saw that Lita was indeed crying.

Lita opened her mouth and spoke, but her words came out garbled and incoherent. Nora sat next to Lita, and hesitantly took her hand in hers. “I can’t understand you.”

79

“Don’t tell Lina,” Lita mumbled, “She will call me a slut.”

Nora saw that Lita’s eyes were red and swollen. Mucus ran down her nostrils.

“Fred,” Lita began, “Fred forced me to.”

“What are you talking about?”

Lita lifted the bedsheet. Her thighs were caked with brown, dried up blood. Nora felt her throat dry up. “Lina can’t know,” Lita wept.

Nora stood up, her knees almost giving in to the sudden weight of her body. Lita called out to her. Nora’s fingers trembled as she closed her palm against the doorknob. Lita said something to her again, but Nora couldn’t listen. She slammed the door behind her and headed for the main house. The room was purple; the moonlight stained the marble floors.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the phone. In her panic, Nora imagined that it was police. In her mind, they had found a dead body in the mango grove. Somebody behind the trees had slashed her throat. The phone continued to ring.

Nora picked up the phone. She could not say hello. The receiver crackled.

“Nora?” It was Mrs. Enriquez. “Nora, is that you?”

“Mrs. Enriquez,” “I only have two minutes before the operator opens the line again.”

The ring of keys, as Mrs. Enriquez explained, was inside the piano bench.

Nora’s palms were sweaty as she took another key from the key ring and opened the door to the master’s bedroom. She tossed the keys to the bed and hurried to one of Mr. Enriquez’s cabinets.

She lifted it from its box—the gray paper shredder that Mr. Enriquez kept sealed in cardboard package.

She went to the dressing room and opened Mr. Enriquez’s closet. The suits were displayed in their rack, still lined up together like sleeping bats. Nora took the box, too heavy for her to carry, and pushed it to the master’s bedroom. She switched on the paper

80

shredder. It gave a metallic screech. Nora unfastened the papers and began shredding.

Mrs. Enriquez had told her that she would not be coming home anytime soon. What about Sophia? Nora had asked. Sophia’s aunt would chaperone her to London, where they would be staying for a few months. Until things settle, were Mrs. Enriquez’s words.

She was almost halfway through when she saw it: the crumpled piece of paper smoothed and flattened in between the stacks of pages.

She grabbed it, cutting her finger in the process, and saw her name written in Marvin’s distinct handwriting. He had written it months ago. Most of the letter had been smudged, but she still understood it.

Nora We are scared. We are thinking of leaving, but don’t know where to go.

People are disappearing and dying. It is not safe here anymore. Please do not come home.

Marvin

81

exie abola

Phallic Symbols* Bettina Galang said she’d rather be dead than fat. That’s a bit extreme, but I understand where she’s coming from. If I think about all the crazy things that could happen to me, yeah, getting fat—as in, really big mama fat—would be horrible. I’d want to slash my wrists. Well, no, I like being alive too much. I’d slash my gut instead, hoping the fat would spill out. But seriously, I’d think about it. Bettina’s worried because her boyfriend Jobert had a string of really skinny girlfriends, all models, and older than her too, before she came along. What if he thinks she’s fat? She isn’t, not at all, but she watches her weight a lot.

She’ll eat half a pizza for lunch then worry the rest of the day if it will show. (The other half is mine, thanks.) The rest of the day it’s coffee and cigarettes. Long weekends Charisse Cabrera and I go to Bettina’s beach house in Batangas, and she fills out a bathing suit better than any of us. She even looks more like a swimmer than any of us on the swimming team. That taper down her back, that flat belly, those slim, strong legs. Charisse said she’d kill for a body like that, and so would I, but then I’d kill for pizza too. When Mama had a TV producer friend over one day, I asked him point blank if I could be a model or join a beauty contest. He looked me over, said “Lose ten pounds,” then ignored me the rest of the day.

Jobert’s lucky to have Bettina, but you never know what a guy will think. As if they’re all hotness and abs themselves. Maybe he’ll find another model-type girl and dump her, telling her he needs time to find himself. Guys are assholes like that.

Which is why I’m so grateful for lucking into Mikael. I didn’t think I’d be his type. He’s already a sophomore in college, and he’s handsome, in a roguish, tisoy way, if you can see beyond the spiky *1st Prize, Short Story, 2015 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature

82

hair and piercings. I didn’t know he’d already picked me out in the crowd that night I caught his band playing in a bar off Timog, the kind with cheap beer, no toilet paper in the bathrooms (but in fairness they’re clean), and floorboards that bounce like trampolines when you dance. They’re called The Bad Bananas and he plays bass. It’s a stupid name (supposedly a tribute to an old TV show none of us ever watched), and they wear these ratty yellow shirts that make them look silly (they all have spiky hair or chains or tattoos), but their music is actually good. Well, if you like your rock music really loud and fast with plenty of growling. Each song lasts maybe two minutes. You can’t even dance to them, you can only hop in place like a drunk pogo stick (the bouncing floorboards help) and whip your head around till your neck hurts.

That first night he walked up to me and Charisse between sets. I wasn’t sure if he was coming on to her or me, he gave us both such intense looks. He speaks with a trace of a conyo-boy accent, which tells you how much resentment he needs to expunge with that music.

The next day he asks me out, and we meet at a mall restaurant (safe, so it’s easy to abandon ship if disaster strikes). He looks different.

A navy blue button-up shirt, jeans, sandals. “He looks human,” Charisse mumbles. A month later I’m introduced to his home in a plush Ortigas subdivision (plush before the “village” got built over, too many big houses standing shoulder to shoulder) and we soil his sheets before he drives me home.

I catch his band when I can, they play maybe once a month in small bars in QC or Eastwood. After the last set, he packs his guitar in his case and we walk to his car. (Actually, I walk him to the car, so he avoids too much boozing, which used to be a problem. I feel like I’ve been a good influence.) Sometimes we don’t leave right away, he just leaves the engine and aircon running, and I put my hand under his 83

shirt and he puts his under mine. In bed he’s such a cuddler, he gives as good as he gets, he doesn’t stop till I’m happy, which is one reason we’ve lasted this long.

But nights out are getting to be a luxury in my senior year.

Graduation looms, and beyond that, college. I have no idea what I want to do, though sometimes I think I’d like to be a lawyer just so I can sue the people I hate. Unbeknownst to her parents, Charisse has applied only to arts programs. They want her to be an accountant, but she’s worse at math than me. Of course this will end well. * As Charisse and I walked out of the school gate and down the wide concrete sidewalk one day, we passed by a tree, one of those poor trees in a square meter or two of dry earth with cement around it, with two men sleeping under it with a jackhammer beside them.

I’d seen one only in cartoons. The instrument lay gleaming on the pavement. So this was what made all that noise. We could hear it from our classroom on the second floor this past week. Like a pogo stick.

Red and dirty. A short handle like on a scooter. And the bottom, long and pointy, with a shiny, snub-nosed end, smoothened by all its work.

“Ooh!” Charisse said, pointing a finger at it. “Phallic symbol!”

That’s what Miss Maya Vallejo was talking about just last week.

Phallic symbols, she said, are objects that look like a male sex organ, a phallus. Anything that looks like a phallus is potentially a phallic symbol, she said, matter of factly. Tittering in the classroom. “Phallus, phal-lus, phal-lus” came from a row behind us like a whispered chant. She continued, unfazed. Notice how in Dr. Strangelove —we watched it last month when we read stories about war—the crazy general smokes that huge cigar. The planes refueling in the opening titles, the one above extending that long tube into the one below, romantic music in the background. She hums the tune, sways her slender hips. We laugh. Miss Maya is a good teacher, and she isn’t afraid to look silly in class. She is young, pretty, and writes poetry that gets published in magazines and wins prizes. I wouldn’t mind turning out like her.

84

But sometimes the things she chooses for us to read or watch make me scratch my head. It didn’t help that it was a Monday morning that we trudged to the AV room to watch the movie. I was too groggy to get the black comedy. But then I’m groggy most mornings because of swimming practice. I didn’t even think it was funny. When I leaned over and asked Lanie Dumiliang why it was a black comedy, she said it was because it was in black and white. Stupid me, I believed her. For a few seconds, just before Charisse cackled.

But when I thought about it and me and my classmates talk about it later in the canteen, it makes more sense. The cigar, the rifles, the planes, the nuclear bomb itself. All phallic symbols. All showing how destructive men are. (Funny how there are no women in the movie, except for the secretary the general with the bushy eyebrows sleeps with. But she’s gone in two minutes.) We stab the longganisa on our trays. “Phallic symbol!” Connie Magno points to the Coke bottles on the table. “Phallic symbols!” Margie Bermudez puts her hand on her bottle, her thumb on the lip, and strokes it up and down, a lascivious look on her face. “This is what you do with a phallus,” she says, moaning. She goes faster and faster. “Whoosh!” Charisse shrieks. Margie sprays the table with the fizz, and the table explodes with laughter, even those who put their hands over their mouths.

Then Krissy Lambino holds up three fingers, her eyes wide, and we clam up. Sister Irma Talumpati—Sister Tatlongpanty, or Irma the Impenetrable, Charisse once called her, and now the three-fingered salute is enough—passes by. Our math teacher who also happens to be the assistant principal for discipline cocks her head at us and gives us the stare that can melt steel before floating away in her gray frock.

The next day, I have a question for Miss Maya: When is something a symbol? When is something, well, just a thing? You could go crazy thinking about this. Which is what happens sometimes in Miss Maya’s class. If you look hard enough, Miss Maya said, anything can be a symbol. So don’t fall into the trap of hunting for symbols.

Anything can be a symbol but don’t look for them? Well, that clears things up. Our English teacher in third year did nothing but hunt for symbols. Sometimes we wondered, the three legs of a stool can’t be a symbol, right? That’s too much. But no! Miss Guanio saw something 85

in it. Of course she did. I don’t remember what; the Holy Spirit maybe. If you spit on the ground she’d probably see the parting of the Red Sea, or Jesus healing a blind man, or global warming.

Charisse and I get to the restaurant across the road. It’s a small restaurant that serves good rice and pasta dishes. We sit in the corner, near the fan. There’s a painting on the wall with one of those farm scene idylls: a man, a woman, a carabao. The man and woman smile, which probably doesn’t happen much on farms in the middle of the day. The story we read yesterday had those three ingredients, and it was boring as hell. Miss Maya pointed out that the story lays out a scene of heat and drowsiness, yet love blooms between the man eating his simple lunch in the shade and the woman carrying water from the well. I couldn’t get into it, especially when the man draws water for her, and she watches him from behind and stares at the muscles in his back—what a ludicrous scene. Then Gina Wijangco asked if the carabao was a phallic symbol. Gina isn’t shy about asking questions, which, combined with the fact that she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, results in much-needed moments of hilarity. The discussion went downhill from there. Charisse leaned over and said, sure, why not? It’s big, it has horns, it swats flies away, and when it’s happy, it just lies back and sleeps. I have to admit, that was a riot. The back half of the room laughed, then Jenny Dolor turned from her perch in front and gave us The Stare. One day she will found her own order of contemplative nuns—The Frigid Sisters.

I look at the spoon and fork. The fork has four tines.

Thin and pointy. Phallic symbols? And this big fat round spoon?

Mel’s was long, even pointy, with a tiny tip. More like the fork tines.

Kenny’s was more like the spoon, fat but a bit short. Couldn’t go all the way in, which caused the funny feeling of being filled up but not, and feeling you were supposed to be satisfied but you weren’t, no matter how hard he pumped and pumped, and he could keep pumping a long time. Ian’s was nice, long and a bit thick, curving to the right. And he used it well, moving it slowly, slowly, no rush baby yeah. Except when he finally got going he finished too fast. He’d say

86

sorry with his naughty grin. He wasn’t really sorry, he’d gotten what he wanted—not caring if I did too.

Our orders arrive, fried chicken and buttered garlic rice. The leg on my plate looks fat and juicy, and I take it with my fingers and bring it to my mouth. I have to drive away a memory of Mom slapping my hand when I ate food with my fingers at the dinner table. It’s as yummy as it looks, and I have to remind myself not to eat so fast.

Charisse is daintier, splitting the thigh from the drumstick with her knife and fork.

It’s way past noon, and the lone waiter has disappeared into the kitchen. No one else is in the room. I take the leg, pretend it’s Mikael, then play with it with my lips, my tongue. Charisse grins and says, “This is what I do with Dennis,” then takes her drumstick with her long fingers (God I envy her pale, clear skin) and puts it almost entirely in her mouth. Lipstick is wasted on such good Catholic girls.

“What a delicious phallic symbol!” she says, then laughs that bruha laugh she gets scolded for, and it’s too late to slow down and eat the way proper girls are supposed to. * Miss Maya got a little tearful today. She confessed that she and her hubby had been trying to have a baby, and finally, five years into their marriage, she was pregnant. Then she had a miscarriage. The poor thing wasn’t even two months old. I went up to her after to say how sorry I was, but Jenny Dolor was already there making these bleating noises about how terrible it was but how she was sure Miss Maya and her hubby would be blessed by God who is infinite in his goodness.

I didn’t say anything, and Charisse took me by the elbow and we went to the bathroom.

A few months later Jenny herself was seen throwing up in a bathroom (not the one beside our classroom, but one floor up, as if no one would spot her there), and she said it was nothing, just something she ate. Except she was doing it every few days. Charisse said, don’t ask what she’s been eating, ask who. I thought, Jenny will take

87

a few pills, grit her teeth against whatever it was in her tummy, then work her way to her rightful place as class valedictorian. And if there was a bun in the oven, well, surely her doctor dad could find a way to get it removed, no problem.

Jenny misses class for a week, and we’re sure we know why.

The only question is who, but it’s not hard to make a guess. For more than a year now she’d been going out with Hans, a football player from Ateneo. He’s a bit short, handsome in a dorky way, but at least he’s built like a wrestler. I wouldn’t date him, but I’d pay him to beat people up. They were at junior prom together, and every now and then, I see them at a coffee shop across from school or lined up at the mall cinemas. Charisse told me they probably spend their dates reading the Bible. Yes, I said, then have wild, raunchy sex with their guardian angels grinning invisibly beside them. Now she’s been gone for a week.

Melody Almeda asks if she’ll actually have the baby, and Charisse says of course, it won’t be a problem, the Frigid Sisters will have a whole nursery of them anyway, those frisky nuns. Melody doesn’t laugh. She asks Charisse if she got pregnant, would she have the baby? Of course.

“How about you, Felise?” Melody is looking at me with her Madame Principal glare. This is a pass–fail exam.

“I won’t get pregnant because I’m on the pill. And because I tell every guy I go out with, if I get pregnant, I’ll slice his thing off with my balisong.” I have one, courtesy of Mikael, but the pepper spray is my idea.

Melody looks shocked and impressed. Flying colors.

“Then cook it. And eat it.”

“Have it over pasta,” Charisse says. “Sarap!” Then she laughs like an overcaffeinated hyena. “Sliced thinly over angel hair pasta, cooked in olive oil and garlic, then sprinkled with a little parmesan, haha!”

I add, “Don’t forget the lemon zest!”

Melody stomps off, a hyena chasing after her. * 88

In homeroom the week after—we get thirty minutes of it first thing Monday mornings, and Miss Maya is our class adviser as well as our English teacher—she tells us what doesn’t surprise us: Jenny has gone on leave of absence and won’t graduate with us.

Sheila Navarrete looks like she’s about to stand and clap; with three months left in the school year, she’s now the leading candidate to top the class.

“So is Hans Catapang the father?” Charisse asks. My classmates glare at her, but not too long. They want to know too. With any other teacher it would have been rude, but we know we can talk to Miss Maya about these things. At the start of this school year I confided in her about wanting to leave the house, I couldn’t stand my parents anymore, and Miss Maya calmed me down and helped me think clearly, so I’m still at home with my philandering father and enabling mother. But at least my ob/gyn mom put me on the pill and makes me take tests every now and then. When she handed me the first packet, she said, “If you’re going to do it, at least be safe.” I’ll put that on her tombstone with eternal gratitude.

“I don’t really know,” says Miss Maya, her face crimped. For the first time I think she’s lying to us. I go to see her at the faculty office after class. She says yes, Jenny’s pregnant, but insists she really doesn’t know by who, no one does. Charisse has a cousin who’s a teammate of Hans, and he denies the baby is his. Is he lying? Is there a new boyfriend we don’t know about? No news arrives in the next weeks, so the rumors thicken and the theories (alien abduction, immaculate conception, asexual self-reproduction) get silly. * Then it’s senior prom. I’m in a short black dress that doesn’t make me look like a latik-slathered suman, and I’m inside a hotel ballroom with Mikael by my side. He calls his outfit “punk glam chic,” and I have no idea what it means, but I love his shiny leather jacket, bloodred t-shirt, torn jeans, and boots. Every teacher we pass glares at me.

Irma the Imp tries to dissolve my innards with a glance. It’s my fault

89

I have such terrible taste in boys, they say with their arched brows, and you will burn in the fires of hell. I can’t get to college soon enough.

Hans is there with Twinkle Pantaleon, who looks like a toothpick next to him. A tall toothpick in pink satin next to a dapper squid ball.

I leave Mikael with his schoolmates and walk across the ballroom to him.

“So who got Jenny pregnant, Hans?” I can actually look down at him, he’s that short and I’m in heels. He turns away, as if he didn’t hear me, and tries to walk to the buffet table. I grab the lapel of his shimmery silver jacket.

“Is it your baby?”

“Hey!” He swats my hand away.

“You fucked her and got her pregnant, then you dump her?”

The music, generic, thumpy techno, is loud and I’m shouting down at him. “What kind of asshole does that?”

He straightens up and faces me. So this is what he looks like angry.

He’s shorter than me, but he looks like he can throw me across the room with one arm.

“That family is messed up,” he says, pausing after each word.

Then he shoves his face into mine and hisses, “Messed up.”

Mikael arrives and pulls me away and I’m glad to lean on him.

Charisse is right behind in a flaming orange sheath with Dennis, in pinstriped navy, on her arm.

“You actually asked him?” she says. I nod. “My God, Felise, your balls are bigger than mine.” * Final exams arrive, then we have a few weeks of nothing to do—a blessed, blessed time—that is, aside from attending masses and going to confession (Charisse and I compete to see whose sins are the most elaborate) while waiting for graduation. The undergrads have a few more weeks of torture to endure. Miss Maya reminds us that we shouldn’t do anything to jeopardize our standing, since we’re

90

technically still Sagrada Familia students. We all promise to be good girls. Then some news: Jenny has had a miscarriage. She spends a day in the hospital for a D&C then goes home. We pray for her, and I actually do.

Then it’s the last weekend of March, and we graduate on a hot, humid afternoon. A Japanese restaurant, Charisse’s house, and home as the sun comes up. I wake up late in the afternoon, my head achy.

I turn on my phone, and the messages pour in. Jenny nearly overdosed on sedatives, just as I was stuffing my face with raw fish and tempura.

Her older brother found her in time and got her to a hospital. I text Charisse: we should go visit.

On the fourth day the doctor finally allows visitors. The neuropsych ward is in the basement, and it is cold. Charisse and I get through three sets of double doors, one with a sleepy guard, before we get to her. A nurse brings Jenny to the last door’s glass panels. She smiles at us and nods.

When we get in she gives each of us a big hug. “Felise! Charisse!

I miss the Eeezzy Girls!” Her voice is a little raspy, and she looks genuinely happy to see us. I can feel her frail wrists on my shoulders when she embraces me. We sit with her at a small round table. She seems weak and pale, but she keeps smiling. “Kumusta?” That’s the best I can do. How are you after you tried, you know, to kill yourself.

“I’m okay now.” Pause. “It was bad for a while.” Pause. “But I’m okay now.” Then her mom enters with a red box of ensaymadas.

She’s taller than Jenny and stands rigid and straight. She joins us at the small round table and hands each of us a bun wrapped in cellophane.

“I can’t stop eating,” Jenny says between big bites. “I’m getting really fat.” She looks skinnier than ever, and her skin is white as paper.

“This tastes so much better than the charcoal,” she says.

Charcoal?

“They pump liquified charcoal into you when you overdose.

Part of the detox process. The first time I was here I was unconscious when they did it. This time I was awake. The taste makes you wish you’d died.”

91

“Jenny, please,” her mom says without looking away from her food.

“So you’ve done this before,” Charisse says. Mrs. Dolor is not amused. I crinkle my cellophane.

Then Jenny asks about me and Mikael. “We’re good,” I say.

She never liked him. Then Charisse and Dennis.

“I need to find a boyfriend who doesn’t mind that I’m fat. Are there boys like that?”

“Of course there are,” Charisse says quickly.

“You’re not fat,” I say.

“You’re always making fun of me. Now you’re lying to me.” She is still smiling. “Daddy said if I got fat, no boy would like me. Buti pa si Angela, my younger sister, she doesn’t eat too much. That’s why she’s thin. That’s why Daddy... he doesn’t like me anymore.” The smile disappears.

“That’s enough, Jen,” her mom says, finally looking at her.

“Hans left me because I was too fat.”

“Hans is a stupid fucking idiot.” I let it go before I can stop myself.

Her mom looks at her with stern eyes and grips her forearm.

“Besides,” Charisse adds, “he’s short and mayabang. You can do better.”

I steer the conversation to safe ground. I ask what she’ll do this summer, what she’s been reading, who else has come to visit. She says the school will give her tutorials in the summer so she can get her credits and finish in time for college.

Just a little later we say our goodbyes, and Jenny walks us to the door.

“I’m sorry about Hans,” I say. “About everything.” I really am.

I want her to know this.

“Do you want us to beat him up?” Charisse can’t stop chirping, and for the first time in my life I want her to please shut up. “We can hire someone.”

“No, but thank you.”

Charisse goes through the double doors, but I stop and look at Jenny. “Really? He can’t just walk away after getting you pregnant.”

92

“He didn’t.”

I’m confused.

“It’s not Hans.”

“Then who?” The words come out too fast.

For the first time that day she gives me her coldest look, the one she uses when she turns in her seat to face us, to let us know what kind of morally deficient people we are.

“Thanks for coming,” says her mother, who is suddenly standing behind Jenny, her withering look shutting the doors to my prying.

Charisse is back and looks at me funny, and Jenny and her mom turn away. I say goodbye in my head and wish Jenny all the luck in the world then shoot past the doors.

That night it takes me a while to sleep. I keep thinking of Jenny in her bedroom, just like mine, a man entering, pulling the blanket off her. That part repeats in my head: the man whose face I can’t see pulling off the blanket, the one her mother would have put on her when she was a child. He pulls it off, he is too strong for her. What if she had my knife under her pillow? I see her pull it out just as he descends, putting his weight on her. She will not take it this time, not anymore. She unfurls it and plunges it into his neck. Then I’m the one in bed, I’m the one trying to push him off me, and it’s my hand plunging the knife into his neck. He bleeds but he won’t die. My body burns and I stab him in the neck, shoulders, chest, but he won’t die.

Then I finally fall asleep all curled up. * “When did you know?” I ask Miss Maya, who is in the Faculty Room with stacks of undergraduate exams in front of her. She looks glad for the interruption.

“Some time ago.”

“But why didn’t you tell us?”

“Jenny’s mother asked the school not to reveal any details.

And we wanted to save the family from any embarrassment.” Save the family from embarrassment, sure. But don’t save Jenny from her own depraved father.

93

“What kind of man would do that to his own daughter?”

“The world is full of bad people, Felise.” She looks like she is tired of knowing this.

“I feel so helpless. I want to do something but I don’t know what.”

“Me too.”

“I want to kill him.”

She smiles a small, wicked smile, one I didn’t know she is capable of producing. “Me too.”

I wonder if she can do something like that. Miss Maya, short and pale and sweet-faced, a bloody knife in her hand, an evil, evil man at her feet bleeding to death. Miss Maya smiling like a horror-movie heroine.

“The school has talked to its lawyers, but the problem is, no one will press charges. So there’s nothing we can do.”

“There must be some way. He can’t get away with this.”

“Our hands our tied, Felise.”

My hands are tied, and I sit here in this cubicle, in the corner.

Then I struggle mightily, I try to pull my hands free. My lungs feel like they will burst, my skin burns. Then the rope breaks. The walls of the cubicle collapse, I stand and clench my fists, I look up at the ceiling and howl, the windows shatter, the bulbs explode, and the people stand staring at me, unable to move, awed by my power.

“He won’t.” Miss Maya puts her hand on my arm. “We have to have faith that justice will have its day. If not soon, if not in this life, then eventually.” She looks me in the eye.

I don’t want to be like her anymore.

I leave the room. It’s quiet on the school grounds, finally. No kids scampering down the corridors, clambering up the staircases.

At the playground, with the monkey bars and swings, the grass worn down in many places, I look up at the overcast sky. I half expect to see a bomb with a man riding it as he waves a cowboy hat and shrieks like a madman falling onto this spot, nuking everything to kingdom come. Jenny’s father standing right there, where the bomb hits, the first to get killed. Obliterated. Then rain, glorious rain, washing it all away.

94

A bird flits across a gray cloud.

My feet carry me slowly past dark classrooms, places where time stretched into forever, my life excruciatingly on hold. Silly me, it had never stopped. I could have turned for a final look just before the gates. A part of me had died and was buried there. I didn’t mourn it then.

Once past the gates I have never gone through again I whip out my cigarettes. I look up and down the street for Charisse’s car, but it isn’t here yet. Tomorrow morning we’re off to Batangas, for our last fling in Bettina Galang’s seaside bungalow, and I suddenly miss the swimming practice. Not the thrashing around, just being in the water. And it finally happened: Charisse’s parents found out this morning that she had confirmed with UP Fine Arts and threatened to kick her out of the house if she didn’t shift into Business once school started. So she insisted on going drinking tonight, and I need it too.

As I puff away under the awning where the drivers and fishball vendors would wait for the children to be unleashed, I grip the knife through the leatherette of my handbag, making sure this weapon, like many others I would come to need, is furled but ready for use.

95

Ja Cabato. Mother and Child. Tissue on wood. 100 x 100 cm.

96

Dominic Alfonso. Uniformity. Digital photography.

97

Marco T. Torrijos. Children’s Story. Ink on paper. 270 x 380 mm.

98

Kristelle Ramos. Delfin. Cigarettes and steel wire. 10 x 10 x 8 in.

99

Marco T. Torrijos. Cold Food (series). Ink on paper, digital layout.

100

101

Arin Mukhi. from neglect/delight (series). Photomanipulation.

102

Ellice Acayan. Perspective (series). Digital photography.

103

104

105

Ida de Jesus. Apollo—. Digital photography.

106

Dominic Alfonso. Church of Gesu. Digital photography.

107

Little Light of Mine. Digital photography.

108

Celline Marge Mercado. Meat from (I AM NOT A) Feast (series).

Collage. 7 x 7 in.

109

Alex Tuico. Confetti and Happy Endings. Acrylic on canvas. 3 x 4 ft.

110

Exie Abola (Department of English) Exie Abola is a prizewinning writer of stories and essays. His first book, a collection of essays titled Trafficking in Nostalgia: Essays from Memory, was published by Ateneo University Press in 2012. His work has been published in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies.

He obtained a masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of the Philippines–Diliman and teaches with the Department of English and Fine Arts Program of Ateneo de Manila University as assistant professor. He is at work on his first collection of short stories.

Ellice Acayan (4 BS Management) Ellice Acayan is an amateur photographer whose first discovery of photography was in 2015. She was selected as one of the participants of the Behance Portfolio Reviews Manila 2015. Her current interests lie in black-and-white photography.

Dominic Alfonso (5 BS Biology) I am Dominic Alfonso, and photography is my passion. In line with my love for music, philosophy, and the medical sciences, photography has shown me how to express and reflect who I am and what I am thinking and feeling at the moment. Street photography is my favourite type of photography for, if done beautifully, it conjures a story out of the mundaneness of everyday life.

Paulo E. Asuncion (AB Political Science 2011) For the place that sparked this kid's imagination.

Wilfrido Luis Atienza (5 BS Biology, Minor in Creative Writing) [various Bon Jovi lyrics here] Thank you. Thank you, as well. You too. The most thanks will have to go to Bon Jovi. Second place is still up for grabs. Now or never.

Christian Jil Benitez (4 AB Literature-Filipino, Minor in Creative Writing) Ikaw kasi. Ikaw, kasi.

Ja Cabato (BFA Art Management 1999) Ja is currently into curatorial and art education work. She’s the proud sister of Regine.

Regine Cabato (4 AB Communication, Minor in Creative Writing) “Who we are in the end is who we were in the beginning, only more so.”

—Fr. Roque Ferriols, S.J. Regine Cabato is a journalism student pursuing a minor in Creative Writing. Her poetry has been published in Under the Storm: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Poetry, Philippines Free Press, Kritika Kultura, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Asian Cha Literary Journal, and heights. She hails from Zamboanga City. She is still learning how to drive.

Tiffany Corinne Conde (4 BFA Creative Writing) I just really wanted to go hiking.

Sending my love and thanks to Shawna, who was my mentor away from home and an early reader of this essay. And to Nikay, who has given me courage in life and art many times over.

Catherina Garcia Dario (4 BFA Creative Writing) Cathy is currently finishing her undergraduate degree in creative writing. Her literary work has been published in Reader’s Digest Asia, PLURAL, and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. She has been awarded writing fellowships to the 19th Ateneo heights Writers Workshop, and the 10th Virgin Labfest Fellowship Program of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. She is the Associate Editor of heights.

Ida de Jesus (3 BFA Information Design) Thank you. Have a listen: 1. For the Kids ­– M83 2. Is There Anybody Out There – Swim Deep 3. New Person, Same Old Mistakes – Tame Impala 4. So Long, See You Tomorrow – Bombay Bicycle Club 5. Just Wanna Be Loved By U – The Royal Concept Christine Imperial (4 BFA Creative Writing) Christine Imperial is finishing up her degree in Creative Writing.

She was a fellow for poetry at the 21st Ateneo heights Writers Workshop. She is always thankful for the people in her life.

Gian Lao (BS Communications Technology Management 2010) Gian Lao was a finalist in the 2013 Maningning Miclat Poetry Awards and a recipient of the Loyola Schools Award for the Arts for Creative Writing.

He occasionally posts his poems at giancantdance.wordpress.com.

Patricia Laudencia (1 AB Communication/AB Social Sciences) People think I take drugs but I actually don’t. Jah bless.

“Here am I floating round my tin can Far above the Moon Planet Earth is blue And there’s nothing I can do.”

—David Bowie Joseph Ledesma (AB Communication/BFA Creative Writing 2010–2014) For Audrey, and the pets. Thank you for being such positive entities in the world!

Gabrielle Leung (2 BS Physics, Minor in Creative Writing) B is composed completely of secrets, promises (mostly halfremembered), and gratitude. She is still looking for the right words.

They’re on the tip of her tongue.

Arin Mukhi (2 BFA Information Design) Arin Mukhi is unkillable and invulnerable. Find more of their work on gh0stsinc.tumblr.com.

Jeivi Nicdao (4 AB Psychology/AB Literature-Filipino) Hindi marunong mag-agiw.

Michael Orlina (BS Electronics and Communications Engineering 2012) Si Michael Rey S. Orlino ay nagtapos ng BS Electronics and Communications Engineering sa Ateneo de Manila University at kasalukuyang tinatapos ang kanyang Master of Engineering sa University of South Australia. Ilan sa mga tula niya ay lumabas sa heights, Matanglawin, at KATAGA. Ang tulang “Isda” ay para kina Gilianne at Pan.

Allan Popa (Kagawaran ng Filipino) Si Allan Popa ay nagtuturo ng Panitikan at Malikhaing Pagsulat sa Ateneo de Manila University. Autor ng sampung aklat ng mga tula kabilang na ang Drone (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2013), Laan (De La Salle University Publishing House, 2013) at Maaari: Mga Bago at Piling Tula (UP Press, 2004). Editor din siya ng antolohiyang Latay sa Isipan: Mga Bagong Tulang Filipino (ust Press, 2007).

Nagwagi na siya ng Philippines Fress Literary Award at Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Poetry. Nagtapos siya ng mfa in Writing sa Washington University in Saint Louis kung saan siya nagwagi ng Academy of American Poets Prize at Norma Lowry Memorial Prize. Kumukuha siya ng Ph.D. in Literature sa De La Salle University-Manila. Ilalathala ngayong taon ng Ateneo de Naga University Press ang bagong edisyon ng una niyang aklat na Hunos at ng University of Santo Tomas Publishing House ang Incision, ang bago niyang koleksiyon ng mga tula sa Ingles at Filipino.

Kristelle Ramos (4 BFA Information Design) Telle likes sleep and sandwiches. She’s in a constant battle with her impulse and desire for structure.

Marco T. Torrijos (2 BS Management) If you’re reading this, I’ve made it.

Alex Tuico (2 BFA Art Management) Romans 5:20-21 Joshua Uyheng (4 BS Psychology/BS Mathematics) For want of kindness.

Errata

In heights vol. 63 no. 1, Cheska Mallillin and Marco T. Torrijos should have been included in the list of design staffers, and Ryan Molen should have been included in the list of english staffers.

In Habi, the full title of Celline Marge Mercado’s piece is “Lord Pounce, Visionary.”

Additionally, her piece “Meat” from “(I AM NOT A) Feast” (series) should have been published instead of “Fruit.” “Meat” has been included in this folio. In Ateneo de Manila’s introduction, the Ateneo heights Artists Workshop was mistakenly labeled as the seventh, but it is only on its sixth year. The 22nd and 28th line of Jam Pascual’s poem “Shelter” should have been indented. Victor Dennis T. Nierva did not translate “Transcultural Battlefield: Recent Japanese Translations of Philippine History.” Joan Eunice Lao’s bionote was not included. A part of Reina Krizel J. Adriano’s bionote was placed in Alex Tuico’s bionote. Marion Guerrero is the Moderator of Marejada, not the heights Online moderator. All errors have been rectified in the online version of the folio.

The heights editorial board would like to apologize for the aforementioned mistakes.

Statement from the organizers of Habi

It has come to our attention that Abraham L. Katoh’s painting “Scarred,” published in Habi, bears striking similarity to “Just One in a Thousand” by Silvia Pelissero and is potentially plagiarized. This concern has been brought to the attention of the appropriate organizations and offices. Online circulation of this folio will also no longer contain the work in question and an apology has been sent to the original artist.

The artist and Marejada of the Ateneo de Zamboanga University have issued public apologies at bit.ly/HabiApology. heights, alongside Banaag Diwa, Marejada, The Knight, and Veritas stand for artistic and literary excellence and integrity. We apologize for this oversight. Rest assured that efforts will be put in place so as to avoid any future instance of plagiarism, both accidental and intended.

Acknowledgments Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin, sj and the Office of the Ateneo de Manila President Dr. John Paul C. Vergara and the Office of the Vice President for the Loyola Schools Dr. Roberto Conrado Guevara and the Office of the Dean for Student Formation Dr. Josefina D. HofileĂąa and the Office of the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Dr. Ma. Luz C. Vilches and the Office of the Dean, School of Humanities Mr. Danilo M. Reyes and the English Department Mr. Martin V. Villanueva and the Fine Arts Program Dr. Joseph T. Salazar at ang Kagawaran ng Filipino Mr. Allan Popa and the Ateneo Institute of the Literary Arts and Practices (ailap) Mr. Christopher Fernando F. Castillo and the Office of Student Activities Ms. Marie Joy R. Salita and the Office of the Dean for Student and Administrative Services Ms. Liberty Santos and the Central Accounting Office Mr. Regidor Macaraig and the Purchasing Office Dr. Vernon R. Totanes and the Rizal Library Ms. Carina C. Samaniego and the University Archives Ms. Ma. Victoria T. Herrera and the Ateneo Art Gallery The mvp Maintenance and Security Personnel Ms. Erin Feliciano and the Sector-Based Cluster Ms. Patty Carolino and the Ateneo Special Education Society Ms. Jara Amin and Kythe-Ateneo Ms. Celina Santos and tugon Ateneo Ms. Camille Dee and the Ateneo Mathematics Society Dr. Vincenz Serrano and Kritika Kultura Ms. Roxie Ramirez and The Guidon Mr. Ray Santiago and Matanglawin The Sanggunian ng Mag-aaral ng Ateneo de Manila, and the Council of Organizations of the Ateneo And to those who have been keeping literature and art alive in the community by continuously submitting their works and supporting the endeavors of heights

Editorial Board Editor - in - Chief Regine Miren D. Cabato [ab com 2016] Associate Editor Catherina Maria Luisa G. Dario [bfa cw 2016] Managing Editor for External Affairs Manuel Iñigo A. Angulo [ab com 2016] for Internal Affairs Luis Wilfrido J. Atienza [bs bio 2016] for Finance Selina Irene O. Ablaza [bs com tech 2016] Art Editor Lasmyr D. Edullantes [bs mgt 2017] Associate Art Editor Lorenzo T. Narciso [bs psy 2017] Design Editor Ida Nicola A. de Jesus [bfa id 2017] Associate Design Editor Renzi Martoni S. Rodriguez [bfa id 2016] English Editor Joshua Eric Romulo B. Uyheng [bs psy 2016] Associate English Editor Juan Marco S. Bartolome [ab lit (eng) 2017] Filipino Editor Christian Jil R. Benitez [ab lit (fil) 2016] Associate Filipino Editor Juleini Vivien I. Nicdao [ab psy 2016] Production Manager Micah Marie F. Naadat [ab com 2017] Associate Production Manager Angelica Bernadette P. Deslate [bs psy 2017] Heights Online Editor Anna Nicola M. Blanco [ab com 2017] Associate Heights Online Editor Ma. Fatima Danielle G. Nisperos [bs lm 2016]

Head Moderator and Moderator for Filipino Allan Alberto N. Derain Moderator for Art Yael A . Buencamino Moderator for English Martin V. Villanueva Moderator for Design Jose Fernando Go - Oco Moderator for Production Enrique Jaime S. Soriano Moderator for Heights Online Nicko Reginio Caluya

Staffers Art Arielle Acosta, A. A. Aris Amor, Francesca Ariana Asuncion,

Flo Bolivar Balane, Kitkat Barreiro, Ysabel Da Silva, Isabela de Vera,

Corrine Golez, Fernando Miguel U. Lofranco,

Marion Emmanuel P. Lopez, Anna Nieves Rosario A. Marcelo,

Arianna Mercado, Celline Marge Mercado, Veron Andrea A. Oliva,

Kimberly Que, Kristelle Adeline Ramos, Robyn Angeli Saquin,

Nicole Soriano, Krysten Alarice K. Tan, Yuri Ysabel Tan, Krizelle Te,

Alexandria Tuico, Ana Beatriz Fatima K. Venezuela, Fleurbelline Vocalan Design

Kimberly Alivia, Nina Atienza, John Lazir Caluya, Alex Chua, Juan Carlos Concepcion, Philip De La Torre, Zoe De Ocampo, Ellan Estrologo, Geraldine Fajardo, Patty Ferriol, Miguel N. Galace, Maxine Garcia, Iya Iriberri, Joan Eunice Lao, Ninna Lebrilla, Cheska Mallillin, Richard Mercado, Troy Ong, Arantxa Orig, Therese Pedro, Ianthe Pimentel, Marco T. Torrijos, Jonah Velasquez

English

Rayne Aguilar, Jeremy Willis Alog, A.A. Aris Amor, Geca Arambulo, Helena Maria H. Baraquel, Bianca Ishbelle L. Bongato, Sophia Bonoan, Karl Estuart, Jamie Anne Gutierrez, Leona Lao, Bee Leung, Ryan Molen, Janelle Paris, Frances P. Sayson, Chaela Tiglao, Ayana Tolentino, Natalie Ann Isabella Unson, Erika Louise Y. Villa-Ignacio, Tim Yusingco

Filipino Reina Adriano, Rox Angelia, Katrina Bonillo, Mark Guinto,

Martina Herras, Jonnel Inojosa, Marc Lopez, Patt Lucido, Jose Medriano iii, Jose Mirabueno, King Palmea, Alija Pandapatan,

Bernard Patrick Pingol, Karla Quinita, Ray Santiago, Roanne Yap Production

Madi Calleja, Dani Celis, Dea de Guzman, Luisa dela Cruz, Lara Intong, Jonnel Inojosa, Meryl Christine Medel, Paula Molina, Betina Santos, Max Suarez, Martin Tempongko, Chao Tiausas, Robert Tiong, Alex Tuico, Pia Zulueta

Heights Online Arielle Acosta, A. A. Aris Amor, Laura Ang, Rox Angelia,

Marianne Antonio, Gaby Baizas, Celina Julianne Chung,

Axel Christopher de Lumen, Ashley Martelino,

Meryl Christine Medel, Arianna Mercado, Mikaela Pamatmat,

Kristoff Sison, Ammera Julia Tungupon, Natalie Ann Isabella Unson, Ella Villaflor

6th ateneo heights artists workshop

november 21–22, 2015 Boso Boso Highlands Resort, Antipolo Panelists Claro Ramirez Jr. Tokwa Peùaflorida Alfred Benedict C. Marasigan Aldy Aguirre Red Ognita Ian Victoriano Gary C. Devilles Meneer Marcelo Ian Carlo Jaucian

Fellows Arantxa Maccine Orig [digital painting] Meg Villena [digital manipulation] Ianthe Pimentel [digital painting] Richard Mercado [digital painting] Robyn Angeli Saquin [ink and mixed media] Corrine Golez [ink and digital painting] Mikaela San Diego [digital painting] Jill Arteche [digital painting] Joan Eunice Lao [digital painting] Sophia Demanawa [digital painting] Workshop Director Lasmyr Diwa Edullantes

Workshop Deliberation Committee Juan Victor Calanoc Ja Cabato Jamie Bauza Workshop Committee Yuri Ysabel Tan [assistant director] Celline Marge Mercado, Alexandria Tuico, Manuel IĂąigo Angulo, Krysten Tan Finance Selina Ablaza Design Ninna Lebrilla Renzi Rodriguez Moderator Yael Buencamino

21st ateneo heights writers workshop february 6 – 8, 2016 Riverview Resort, Calamba, Laguna Panelists Mark Anthony Cayanan Allan Alberto N. Derain Allan Popa Dr. Edgar Samar Dr. Vincenz Serrano Martin Villanueva Fellows Marco Bartolome [essay] Luigi de la Peña [tula] Mark Christian Guinto [tula] Martina Herras [tula] Christine Imperial [poetry] Jonnel Inojosa [sanaysay] Angela Lee [essay] Angela Natividad [poetry] Joshua Uyheng [poetry] Workshop Director Catherina Garcia Dario

Workshop Deliberation Committee english Deirdre Camba Tina del Rosario Jasmine Nikki Paredes filipino Abner Dormiendo Paolo Tiausas Julz Riddle Workshop Committee Jeremy Alog [assistant director] Reina Adriano, Chaela Tiglao, Ayana Tolentino [volunteers] Bernard Patrick Pingol, Billy Atienza, Celline Marge Mercado, Gabbie Leung, Helena Hontiveros Baraquel, Kristoff Sison, Robyn Angeli Saquin, Ryan Molen, Anna Marcelo [promotions team] Billy Atienza, Ida de Jesus [online team] Finance Selina Ablaza Design Ida de Jesus Miguel N. Galace Moderator Allan Alberto N. Derain