pasado alas dos, madaling araw.
at ayaw akong dalawin ng antok.
ano nga ba ang aking iniisip?
minsan ay ganito, madalas siguro, na nagiisip ng wala. at sa tuwing ganito, na wala nga, sa dulo lamang ng mga daliri mapagtatanto ang nilalaman ng isip. kaya ngayon, sa mga sandaling ito na wala naman talaga akong iniisip ngunit di makatulog,
ay nagsusulat, at iniisp ka
sa dulo ng mga daliri...
katulad ng dati?, tanong niya... oo, bibilisan natin ngayon...bumitaw ako sa titig niya, may kulay ng ulap doon, at habang nagnginginit ang imahinasyon ko sa mga susunod na mangyayari, siya ay naroon, ang titig sa akin ay tila pagmamasid nang malayo sa nagsasalubong na dagat at ulap, sa kinatatayuan niyang iyon sa harap ko, sa mga sandaling akala niya ay may pangakong pag-ibig, nagpapaniwala sa wala... at ako... sabi ko... dadalian natin... batid ko na malungkot siya, ako man ay malungkot din.. nagkadenahan ang aming mga bisig at nilasap ang kaniya kaniyang pinagpapaniwalaan...
When I was in fourth grade, one day I was on the street from school alone, without my mother walking by my side. It was the first day I went without her and I could not talk, because there was just me on a familiar path home that seemed suddenly motionless and bare. She was lying in the hospital bed, and I kept thinking of the empty eyes that looked at me. She had lost the ability to recognize me and something in me had withered, like the bits of a biscuit on the metal table beside her bed. I thought that day on that path that led to our house about my father, and my two big brothers, and my little sisters that came after me, and realized that our mother had left us. The jeepneys and tricycles zoomed past me, faces of strangers that seemed to look in my direction and look at me with big deep eyes that I could not understand. I felt tiny, and our house seemed to be so far away. I wished for someone familiar, an aunt, or maybe a fellow teacher of my mother from the school she and I both went to, to stop by the side and give me a ride home. But I was alone. And I was walking home. And I did not want to get there. There was a crumb of cookie in my pocket and I fiddled with it for as long as I could remember.
It was the one moment from my past that would remain with me forever.
You flee like a shadow across the vast plains
of insomnia.
You last like the color of beautiful song
beneath an eclipse.
I hear you in the gaps of my sleep.
I want to walk the shadow of your love,
to wrestle a weightlesness,
to ride,
to travel you with the great first thoughts
that
Come
before a journey.
I want to imagine you with an ending.
I will want.
I will want
forever through the night
of your love.