fright with all its might

DIBUHO ni baga

14 Tinta 2020

baga

I see the ruins

of collapsed coliseums, of tainted dreams, of pained pictures, of cracked concrete, of dead-end roads, imprinted by the mark of brimstone.

I see fire in the distance, engulfing the blue hues with harsh tones of red, the shades of doomsday mixing with the sun’s rays.

I see monstrous shadows,

creeping up in every corner, watching my every step, waiting for the perfect strike, hearing my heartbeat spike. I see the mass of smoke

approaching me gradually, a darkness wanting to devour me and be its unfortunate inhabitant, a dark grey entity awaiting to blind me, suffocate me, to see me suffer under its control.

I see no light-voiceless screams

as I await the fight.

I see how my worst fears pervade in this version of hell I made.

Lirip 15

living with ourselves

soul

A somber realization dawned on Eliza the instant the clock struck at 6 p.m. She was made aware of the painful fact that in no time, it will be evening again, and then morning and then evening all over again.

It seems that in the past few days, she’s felt the excruciating length of a minute, even that of a moment.

What made this fact much clearer now is that day by day, she and the rest of the world are forced to look within for company;stripped of her stash of distractions, making it more and more difficult to pass every second.

So with each uneventful day passing, and no other warm body in the room to be the unfortunate subject of her scrutiny, her body presented itself as a vulnerable target.

Eliza looks in the mirror and sighs at the parts of her body she disapproves of. Then she walks away, limping her legs behind, fully aware of every step as she lurches forward. At night, she goes to bed hearing herself thinking, noting as each thought comes and goes.

In no time, idleness grew into insufferable boredom.

At past 1 in the morning, out of the blue or perhaps not really-- she grabbed a pair of scissors and went to the bathroom.

What transpired in the next few minutes was, safe to say, catalyzed by overlong solitude.

Without blinking, Eliza chopped off her elbow-length ebony hair down to her chin. She made sure the cut was even and then she looked in the mirror, waiting.

She waited for that consuming rush of regret to come over what she did. She felt unusually confident that she thought she’s ready for whatever it is you’re supposed to realize just right after you’ve done something irreversible.

But surprisingly, nothing came. Actually, she felt quite proud of her decisive action. She thinks the hair looks edgy.

16 Tinta 2020

But, she spoke too soon. Regret greeted her in the sobering light of the day and it swallowed her whole. Over a hot cup of coffee, what was thought of as a firm action turned to be the worst overnight impulse.

Understandably, she frets for hours over her short-cropped hair asking, “What was I thinking exposing my fat neck?” Over the course of the day, she was overpowered by self-reproach to accomplish anything except assail herself for acting so harshly.

The thing is she used to be so thankful to have so much unaccounted time in her hands but now, she curses it. It deprives her of badly needed agreeable company to draw her attention away from her own unruly mind.

That morning, Eliza was compelled by regret to make several trips to the bathroom just to look repeatedly at the mirror. She will then assault herself over the barbarity she thought she committed to her hair.

Regret, as it turns out, mercilessly demands to be felt, to be acknowledged.

In this tiring refrain of action, hours easily went down the drain. And having exhausted all the words to scold herself, Eliza eventually felt sick of hearing her voice. She managed to calm down.

She realized she was being too hard on herself. Maybe at times even hardest on herself than anyone else.

It’s fairly hard to determine what caused this epiphany, but it probably has something to do at the sight of the sun setting so gorgeously in the sky that Eliza happened to catch by her window.

So, she tried to console her terribly bruised ego.

From the beginning, she never really understood why she felt so uncomfortable under her own skin or why she never felt at ease. For one thing, she knew perfectly well how hard she can be to deal with. She knows how unsure she is of herself and just how unpredictable she can be.

But she thinks it would be alright.

You see, in no time it will be evening again and then morning all over again.

She will try a little harder to be kind to herself tomorrow.

So that maybe one day, when the time came that she had to live with someone or --heavens forbid, raise a child, she will know full well how to live with herself.

LITRATO ni sol

LITRATO ni hippocampus

18 Tinta 2020

Lirip 19