Tinta is the official literary folio of the Union of Journalists of the Philippines - UP Batch 2021-2022. All parts of this literary folio are highly encouraged to be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording or photocopying as long as they are credited to the respective writers and to the Union.
M
1 3
H
11
antidote
15
4 5 7 9
13
H
20
1
2
My pet rat’s missing eye fluffy moth
I never found it. Or more truthfully, it was my stuffed animal’s. I remember the soft, bubbly surface of the basin where I was giving it a bath, and I plunged my hand to to look for its little black orb, but it was gone. I remember weeping as I cradled my one-eyed fat rat, bubbles of detergent prickling my cheek. It was soft and it hurt. I’m sorry for this. I never wept the same way after I watched my guinea pig get swept by a raging flood at 13. You never love anything alive after that. I watched as his chocolatey head bobbed down muddy water, floating down some unnamed street, and I never forgot how sorry I was and I’m sorry I scrubbed too hard and you lost your eye and I’m sorry if I only love soft, inanimate versions of you now. I’m sure you understand, right? You would understand.
You are wherever birds go when it rains. Litrato ni bandaid
fire emergency from a matchbox Euphoria
I haven’t cried for months now, but last night, while sitting on my desk, trying not to think about it, about my having experienced it, it dragged me to the basement, tied me to the chair, doused the room with gasoline and lit a match. How can I forgive myself. How can I live tomorrow. Is this aggrandizement, an act of inflating my hurting into some sort of requiem? Trauma is a lot more common, I remind myself. Anyone may leave it as it is. Yet I feel like it is the real thing, the only real thing. We’re only given as much as the heart can endure but pain is much more painful than we expect. When it comes by, everything you’ve built around it, worked against it even in front of it, tends to seem futile. If I could only drench this poem under the ocean. If I could just cast the storm inside my room. Throw all the self-help books and bible verses in the bathtub. I have no time for it. I am asking for a thing that does not feel like fire.
Sa may kalayaan Litrato ni bandaid
3
4
Nelumbo nucifera
5
6
Litrato ni charcoal
Peak Existence bandaid
I have only felt it a number of times. Once, as I wake up in the grace of a silent morning light; during the first few moments that I open my eyes. I felt it that one time when I was floating. Chest light; and face transfixed in a starless night sky. Adrift in the cold current of the vast still sea. I also felt it once, when I locked eyes with a passing stranger. Or that brief moment when I caught myself engrossed in a painting by the wall.
Maybe there are things that can make you insanely mad yet stupidly happy. Litrato ni Psyche
But of all times, I’ve felt it the most that time I stood with an enraged crowd. I felt it the second my voice melted with theirs; fist clenched- in a loud, fervent and assured call. It’s the rarest of feeling; a singular and inimitable calm. When you’re aware of every sensation, of every breath you draw. It’s transient and almost surreal. As if the soul suddenly becomes more tangible than the body. It’s peak existence.
9
10
Ang pamumukadkad ng panibagong pag-asa. Litrato ni sigalot
the night is a sonata sol
Night doesn’t fall. Night rises. Not merely descends to repose, but a melodic phrase. How could it? If the stars themselves are a staccato of notes—the constellations, a legato. From the melancholic silence, a splendor of harmonies unfold—calm at first, testing the waters, waiting for the right moment to progress into exposition. It cradles you in its waves, washing the dissonance away. Clearing the noise of the neverending bicker at the breakfast table, the shots of insult, the lies of an egoist, of all deafening sounds. The night paints a veil of calmness, blue meeting blue in darker shades, almost black. The measures are filled with rests, waiting for a piece about to begin—waiting for me to fill in the spaces with my own notes. With my own voice. I could feel in my mind all the crescendos and decrescendos springing into life, long suppressed by the daily bustle. I could whisper my secrets into the wind, in hope that it will send them up to the sky and coffin them within the clouds. Perhaps, it could whisper back: This will all come to pass. Like the end of an overused pop song.
tutti /toodē/ —all together; connected deeply like parts of a whole; to sing not for yourself, but with and for others Litrato ni sol
Perhaps the stars could keep my thoughts and play them in different keys to remind me not to forget the lines. And when I long to forget, perhaps they could stay quiet and cast the notes farther into the heavens where I could not reach. I drift off to another musing, but in my wandering, I thought of how similar we are to stars—scattered, distanced. Are they longing for harmony too? In this night, with more warmth than morn. Whereas the sun is loud, dissonant, taking up space in every corner, uncaring, all out fortissimo. The vast horizon casts a peaceful hue as I savor all of the lines. Word by word, note by note, I fill in the measures of my incomplete sonata. Tomorrow, I wish to let the dark sky hear it with me. How could I not yearn for the night? All the sun ever does is glare.
15
I stayed with them until I was old enough to go to school and since then, we visited them frequently. During our visits, the two of them will not say much except occasionally ask us if we ate. A question, that I now realize, is their own discreet invitation for a conversation, asking us “How have you been? I hope the world treats you alright.” When it is already time for us to leave, I remember my Lola Letty would always cry smiling. Her welling eyes would conspicuously betray the smile on her lips. It was by looking at her during these parting moments that I learned a person could both be genuinely happy and sad at the same time. I remember thinking maybe she cries smiling knowing that her children have now lives of their own, and she is both proud and sad that they no longer need her. I thought, perhaps love is rich and complex like that.
on one’s own.
Oh how we attempt to embrace the ocean. Litrato ni Scar
16
Every time I think of the past now, I wonder how death brings some memories back to life. Maybe it is the universe’s act of grace, taking mercy on our loss. I think of my Lola Feling and I remember walking into her house and being offered a cup of coffee. She would look at me with her warm eyes and raise her own cup as if inviting me to take a sip. I never got to meet my late paternal grandfather but Lola Feling in the eyes of her many “apo” was more than enough. She stood as a second mother for all her grandchildren whose parents were either dead or absent. You see, she was just happy to take everyone under her wing. She never minded the mess, the noise, and the ruckus from a bunch of children. As I write all these now, my heart feels an immense sense of gratitude- for having the opportunity to be a recipient of a kind and sweet love for merely being their son’s or daughter’s daughter. Being now orphaned of grandparents, I learned that grief is a whole new kind of sadness. You see it the way people smoke a cigarette after a funeral or when they meet your eyes with a blank stare.
because we miss them but mostly, I came to know, is because we do not know what to do with all the love, we still have for all of them. Love and loss, I discovered, are in fact two ends of the same thread. We ache as deep and as profound as we love. As I am sure you all now know, not every day comes by easy. It is not every day that we see it is a glass-half-full rather than a glass-half-empty. Not all mornings bring solace. When you are nursing a hole in your heart, some days fly by, but others stubbornly linger. After all, all of us know how easy it is to feel alone these days. So, I let it hurt. I cry when the pain feels too unbearable. Every now and then, I remind myself that nothing could have been any more human than feeling grief. We grieve knowing that everything may look the same way tomorrow and the day after that, but the truth is, the world is lesser every day for losing a great soul, many great souls. Maybe we will all heal from this one day or maybe we will never be again completely whole. But right now, I think none of it really matters because either way we are already stronger and kinder for it.
When we lowered my grandparents’ bodies to the ground, my parents wailed. I expected to see them weeping but I was not prepared to see them like that. They wailed as if there is just too much pain and there is no other way for it to exit their body. Some nights, I can still hear them crying. I, still find myself crying; partly
Here, I see, love doesn’t die. Litrato ni Scar
18
19 Gawa ni Sedated
She/Her
20
charcoal charcoal
Everything I’ve written so far sounds like a clue left behind by a murderer showing off and I guess I am—showing off I mean. It took guts to finally kill her. I guess I am proud. I didn’t always dislike her. We started, not as friends, but we co-existed. Indifference to keep the peace. But then I began to resent her. She was a nuisance. She annoyed me at every turn. She felt like a fog around me that wouldn’t lift. If only she had let me go. We could’ve gone our separate ways and avoided all this. Although I feel bad for her too. I don’t think anyone has realized she’s dead. I keep trying to tell people but they ignore me. I just want someone, anyone to take her away from me. I guess that’s why I’m writing this. Yes, this is a confession but I also want to start getting rid of her for good. Although I don’t know how quite yet. If I had more respect for her I’d bury her, but I don’t. I don’t think she deserves even that much. Can you even dissolve a human body with acid? And if you could, where would I do it? I don’t have a bathtub or anything like that. I don’t think I have anything that could contain her. I could cut her up and slowly dispose of the pieces. Like a leftover meat. That’s what she is to me now, just flesh and blood and bones. Maybe that’s all she was to me this entire time. Now I think I should keep something as a memento, you know. Maybe a fingernail. That was one thing I liked about her. She kept them long and sharp, painted with colors and patterns and glitter. She loved glitter. I tried to do my nails like hers but I just can’t. I guess what I am saying is this: there is no room in my life for her. So yes, I had no choice but to kill her.
~
