this is what my christmas wishlist looks like

honeycomb

TW: Death, grief

I want to arrive at the New Year’s party of grief and kill it, to slice it open, hands deftly ripping apart

the confetti of flesh until I find the memories of my youth buried deep inside the body. I remember my first gift

was a book about dinosaurs who disappeared after the Big Bang, a story that fails to mention what happens to those who continue living.

When you died, they warned me about the gargantuan task of mourning my loved ones on holidays, when the shining lights

would remind me of the glint from the doctor’s spectacles when they said you had gone to sleep. I imagine that everyone eventually dies, even grief itself.

28 Tinta 2020

LITRATO ni wisdom tooth

On the last day on Earth, it will be Christmas and snowing for the first time in the Philippines, everyone running outside to taste the air, oblivious to their impending doom. Now, I finally understand them.

I will be there making snow angels out of the ashes of everything that lingers still. Mother, when the pepper gray fluff settles on the windowpane,

I can finally write you my first holiday greeting to heaven, your place at the dining table still there as always.

Lirip 29

happy pills

baga

30 Tinta 2020 I measure months with each box of antidepressants I finish. Yet after every 30 pills. I still feel the same: lethargic and drained, albeit not moving a muscle.

517 days ago, I thought taking them would instantly make me happier-- a minuscule 10 milligram tablet wondrously brightening the strong bleak colors I’ve known for so long.

And so I counted down the weeks. Week 1, the monochromatic colors were coupled with constant spinning. Week 2, less spinning, but everything still a shade darker. Week 3, week 4, week 73, I still hoped for that magic.

But as change doesn’t happen overnight, there are no miracles that can make the chemicals in my brain do a complete 180.

They weren’t my answer to everything. They aren’t supposed to be.

They are not my happy pills, but rather things I gulp down with water to keep me alive.

With that, I measure seconds-- each tick a reminder to inhale through my nose and each movement a countdown for my next dose.

Lirip 31