DEFINITION OF TERMS

DEFINITION OF TERMS prepared by Ryan A. Rodriguez inspired by the poetry, stories, and themes found in this folio

apocalypse, n. - Here lies the bones of the universe—wrapped in its coffin of endless nothing underneath a graveyard of dead suns. No lungs to breathe the murderous air nor stomach to be filled with charred remains. All that’s allowed to devour is the void, a spherical spinning shape protruding against the dark space. The resulting magnum opus of eons of science, mathematics, and hubris, writes all the universe’s answers on the black ocean, where everything sinks. The bottomless pit remains stagnant—until something once dead claws through the silence. ash, n. - “From ashes, we come, to ashes, we return.” You don’t know if that’s something you’d wholeheartedly believe in for you didn’t bother with things outside your fists and the punching sack in front of it. All you knew is how to break every bone of your body, clench the pickaxe till your grip showed nerves to strike the gold of the Earth, all the while carrying each boulder of dynamite that no passing bug accidentally explodes on your feet. You’re quite charming really, but it’s as if you lived no life for yourself at all, and that this spherical world isn’t this biomass of scattered Jurassic fossils, stretches of blue ocean, and filters of tectonic plates. But this outline of a Roman-chiseled nose, stubbly chin, and a set of handsome white teeth that likes to call you “dear”. Certainly, you’re not the brightest, and you’d sooner learn that even that didn’t prevent you from knowing. Knowing that even in your godly arms of Atlas, the world has gone to a pile of ash. awake, v. - Eyes melt open on some flare of dandelions up in the sky. The split second before our consciousness settles in the real world is a painting so beautiful—a rose gown floating down a wedding aisle, and sunshine sparkling in my lungs, all bouncing in falsettos and melodies till the petals drip, down to the ashtray. I would have given more than miniature parachutes out of my beating heart then. I would’ve stitched makeshift locks around the words, “Will you be my beloved?” Because it doesn’t hurt to eternalize a dream, but staying awake all night, staring at everything you could’ve done differently, does. black, adj. - Would it be so weird to say my parents like a color? I theorize they have a thing for formality, like how they like to look dignified in three layers of button-up shirts, sweat sticking against flesh, and polyester all for someone they don’t even know. Or some kind of tradition, with how adults form lines of black suits and sounds of wailing on green cemeteries. Or how their eyes sink to an empty bleakness when they look at me. I’ve known this blankness for as long as I was born, for as long as I’ve known—them—that it became all too familiar for me. Like a home that I really want to scrape out of, but the dry paint is too thick to escape away from. wreckage, n. - The smell of dried flowers sings along the rocky coastline, and the grainy foam tugs my legs to reach for the remains. Whatever remnants live and scream for the shore, the dead weight muffles me tighter with the sand. And here is my messiah, the bearer of truth—the cold grasp on my limping limbs. Yet I’d

sooner remember how easy it is to twist the will of weak and creaking wind sails. Something far from what I am, I was who breathed through the wind and tamed it with my bare hands. But I am even farther from those things, for I lay here, a corpse with little life. But in my breathing, I am met with two fates. To be drifted like log into blue deserts or create a firepit of broken planks to spite the messiahs. dawn, n. - They say that after every rain is a new beginning. That something beautiful begins anew from the rubble of an empty disaster. Yet sometimes the broken ground is just so difficult to appease, no life tries to crawl out of the wasteland that’s been hurt by things you can’t ever hope to control. It’s difficult, being that grain of seed growing itself through the cement, not until you fall from the sky. A pair of trailblazers burning through the teardrops of the gray rain. The catalyst that sweeps all the soot and cement off my feet, carrying me along as the flowers sprout from the deathbed flooded with the sky’s tears. The storms I once cried fall into a drizzle, and the skies open a new light; a new type of warmth submerges the solid flood. deathbed, n. - The castles I built spoke to me in my sleep, towering their golden and obsidian heads across the heavens. An ornament to the gods’ palace in the dusting clouds, that they caressed their divine touch among the walls. I would know, as it pleased them enough to grant it to me, a creation of the earth that they chose for perfection. Deservedly so, for nothing stood against me, may it be the sifting sands, paper cards, or the breadth of oceans, all were mine to grasp and shape. And so I dug through the soil, fists through steel, and fingers through glass, and all that there was till my glory became erected upon the Earth. Glory at the expense of something borrowed. And for playing god, I’ve been abandoned. On this bed, truly did the crumbling castles speak to me—of my ignorance, of my greed, of my mortality. destruction, n. - On frigid nights, the wallpaper peels out the walls. The observers of our rapture blink their eyes to our burning clothes. Do you think that our nakedness is our absolution? Where we are made empty of fear, and all that is left is our sweet ending extinction. The apostles await our answers. And for this, we choose to spit on the graves they’ll bury us in. For there is no sweeter destruction than flaring the eyes that watch over our every kiss. eschaton, n. - We play hide-and-seek behind the shadows of the grand curtain. Prancing about the slippery glass floor where the dark cosmos is visible below, and in this hollow void, I thank the demiurge that the brightest stars are somewhere easier to see. Located in your sullen eyes where I press closer. And so here we lay, quiet behind red curtains, searching for the final unfolding—our big bang— in waiting. extinction, n. - They say that beauty is a curse as much as long life in this world is a blessing. But in the pupils of a human to a fly who lived five seconds longer than an ant neither vanity nor longevity matters. For all that is true is that they dissipated into nothingness. Even you, bipedal monarch of the world, all silver pearls and steel machinery to think you’re gods of the world—are nothing but bugs floating on a hunter’s net. Look at your cows, chickens, and goats, do you not smell the stench hidden beneath your perfume? The toxic cloud of skeleton bugs you breathe? How long do you think that will last? fear, v. - “To fear is to survive,” would chant those who erected monuments out of their pride. Yet as full of words are their statues, their wisdom will sooner crumble and unearth a human truth. That fear exists out of our incapacity—to stare into the eyes of what dead men see. flashes, n. - The ceiling begins its peeling, my dear, the ground crumbling like how our lips part after every bitter goodbye. So take my hand that no thing in this dying world shall ever be bitter. That for every crumble of the Earth, I’ll have your 71

arms carry me across the bruising crevices of the crust. That for every spewage of lava, I’ll have your soft kiss bring chills down my spine and up my neck. That for every crack of human bone, let us make them instruments of dance to accompany our buggy waltz. For the apocalypse is something we can’t dance away, but it is something we can rock together with. Shall we give them our farewell dance, my dear? goodbye, n. - Where we end, and I begin. green, n. - Is the color of death, of smooth vegetables that sustain life through pirouetting on markets like a fountain of plucked flowers. And like trimmed trees that line across the yards of every housing unit—all made of plastic fiber and styrofoam. A texture that feels so familiar and so suffocating, much like the air that slides through our lungs like solid objects. All hail man’s new Eden these creations have professed. And all hail humanity’s progress towards their depletion. All hail the papers we tinted green to consume taste like rust. grief, n. - Every cup of coffee in the morning burns your throat; every Saturday night of DVD tapes sting your ears like static; every crystalline memory is your nightly dose of insomnia. You feel the sun rays, bolts of crossbows ready to plunge so you don’t walk outside. You don’t tug the blanket closer to warm yourself to sleep nor switch the record off the buzzing sound. You don’t do all these things to let the sun through the curtains again because doing will hurt. More than you’re already squirming through. And because doing something about it will truly mean you will let go of your pain. Of her. healing, n - They say the plummeting is all that there is in these cliffs. That in this dark frozen crater, all that I can see is everything that I once was, all buried and forgotten in the depths. Perhaps descension is punishment for those fallen from grace, those who thought they could soar and beat their wings to the sky indefinitely—not until their feathers burn from the flare. But I know I’ve never been an angel, I have no wings to beat the mountain’s height. All that ever beats with all my being is my heart that scales the rocks through my limbs. And these same hands know that if ever I shall fall, my blood surges no way else, but up towards the heights. heaven, n. - Your eyes. hell, n. - What becomes of us, those cast by our breathing of air—thrown stones for an existence we didn’t wish for? We, in the ignorance and innocence of hoping for a kinder world, have it fall apart with every step we take. They’ve branded the clouds unclean, wind, and ground, defiled in our wake. They say that we should turn to the sun, and leap into the air below the pit of darkness so we can fly and become human. But they’ve clipped our wings, and castrated our voices to reach for help. Then, we have nowhere left to run but our own grave. And with everything abandoned, we dig deeper. kiss, n. - A scar left by someone you still hope returns. life, n. - I’ve loathed and loved this existence as many times as there are people among the walking crowd, perhaps an unending wheel of irony is my life’s goal. Like a wildness of jigsaw pieces scattered across renaissance paintings, I try to piece the universe into what I can and make sense of what comes before me, but there’s no hope in trying when you’ve already got me figured out. And the answer lies close in your hands trailing in my cheeks like tears. For this sheltered, quiet thing that I am will come bursting with words and things I’d rather anyone not hear. But until the train tracks end at our destination, it’s a mystery. midnight, n. - The hour where the ceiling thunders through the chandeliers and the rusting bolts quake against the wooden planks tethered on the windows. Here, 72

veiled mothers glance their welling eyes to crying cradles, for as much as the blazing fireplace prickles their skin, outside their doors is a world drowning in flames. So, they crawl into their fur coats and venture outside the crumbling house—it’s better to be destroyed by things you think you didn’t create—and lock the door to their homes. In their folly, the children are left to dust, but the fireplace only rages brighter. panaog, v. - Sa kung diin gahulat siya para sa imo, kung sino man na. Kay ara siya sa babaw gatiid saimo. Waay may nakahibalo saiya ngalan kay ang kinahanglan ta lang makilala nga ang pasensiya ya lip ot pa sa duha ka pikit sang mata. Amo na nga hindi ka gid maglumpat sa punta ka bundok nga daw kabalo ka gid maglupad, o kung magsalom sa itom nga buho sa dalom ka suba, o magsilinggit sang bulig sa sulod sang mahipos nga gubat. Kay ikaw nga tinuga, hindi na da imo lugar. Panaog ka dira, indi ka Diyos. perfect, adj. - What does it take to be the most impeccable thing in this world? You would know the answer. You, in your polished violin and shining bow. Oh, how you would echo your seamless melodies in the way your fingers struck every note of the string to sing. You would go on for minutes and hours and whole orchestras, all in perfect harmony and astounding applause. But eventually, your human hands will go discordant. A golden child is still a stumbling little child after all. Your heartstrings will stop, and you will fall—hard on some passerby who won’t even bat an eye to all this grandeur. When it comes to love, you’re not so perfect, aren’t you? rebirth, n. - But what if what comes after the end is a home? That as you fall beneath the depths, with your last aspirations and dreams escaping to a tiny bubble, hands numbing of coral particles and regrets, will come in touch with soft sandy ground. Where in your failing senses, wakes the bioluminescent creatures alive. They then dance in their soft bodies, and warm lights on the void’s dead ground, to whisk your bruised body above ground again. And give life in yet another time, and a warmer place. What if the sun doesn’t fade into the mountains forever? But rises again? smoke, n. - Black. The dust forms across the air. And I breathe its bold tint through the mouth, throat flaring and nose scrunched up for the particles. In the sky, no picturesque horizon comes to keep our sunset reveries warm. The cold kiss of rain on my cheeks stings it all away. But perhaps, there is consolation in the empty space beside me, that you’re not here to see me, struggling to cough you out of my system. time, n. - She comes, a god perched on her shoulders, with no power to be vanquished and no power to wield. For as though you could defeat and live through every tick of the clock, the battlefield you claim victory over is her hands, the gears of every motion you force comes from her mouth, and her eyes see a million steps ahead, to your slow inevitable decay. Yet all the while she is not your ally, she is not your enemy. For your victories are her doing, and your resurrections, her wish. It would seem a farce, but the laws of our existence have it that our small human hands follow the trail the universe is carved upon. So we tread her maze and rejoice whenever we can, for our unending struggle against destruction is simply their homeostasis.