Monthly Archives: December 2015

Mi Corazon No Entiende (A fiction)

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The raindrops kept tap-tapping on the rooftops outside my window, in a rhythmic pattern in sync with my heart—the heart that has been pounding with such force that i was afraid my veins would just burst.

After a few seconds this lump of muscle broke into a canter and it slowed down to a cadence an old man could follow.

Then it exploded and tore into a million pieces.

I wonder if I should pick them up from the floor. Should I try to put it back together? I stared at the ceiling above me. The fat raindrops outside morphed into a deafening downpour. The raindrops somehow found their way into my eyes and cascaded down at the sides of my temple. The flow just wouldn’t stop, much to my annoyance.

“I got it! I got it! I am finally moving to Switzerland!” I remembered him telling me at lunch break. We had just finished a really difficult training session that morning.

“Oh my gossssssssshhhhh! Finally! I’m so happy for you!” I gushed over my spaghetti alfredo.

I was really happy for him, that’s the truth. But sad for myself. The words echoed within the hollow depths between my ears. The words were like an ice pick that lodged itself somewhere between my heart and lungs. I couldn’t breathe.

Brandon finally got the promotion. The parent company is moving him to the headquarters.

I guess this was God’s reply to my prayers. I’ve asked Him to take away whatever I was feeling towards my friend and colleague because it was killing me.

I broke off an engagement that was going nowhere because of Brandon. Because I thought–just a hopeful thought–that he will see me. Really see me.

Of course he doesn’t know. No one knows. He will never know. Only I know.

And I will take this fact with me to my grave.

“So when will the move be?” I almost choked on my pasta. I pretended to squeak in delight instead.

“December. Boy, am I so excited by this!” Brandon squeezed my shoulders. It was painful, the squeeze. I just couldn’t decide whether the pain emanated from his over-enthusiastic arm or from the ice pick that stabbed my gut.

“Good for you!” I said. “As for me, I am finally making my way to Davao with my new assignment.”

I lied. I was just making it up. But I guess it will become a reality after today. I will raise this to my boss.

“Yeah. Probably it’s for the best, after you’ve been through,” Brandon said, pertaining to my sham of an engagement. Sham of a relationship that was just floating along in the Dead Sea of relationship hell.

Maybe, just maybe, I should’ve let my engagement go on as planned? Maybe I should have…

No. I was flogging a dead horse.

I stopped staring at the ceiling and flicked open my mobile phone. I read and reread all my past Viber exchanges with Brandon.

I resolved never to read them again. Never. Even though these made me happy, even though these became my raison d’etre, I had to stop this illusion.

The gray matter inside my head should take over. It has saved me a million times from disaster in the past. It will keep me alive still.

What about my heart? Shall i pick up the pieces on the floor? Probably I should leave it where it lay.

Because my heart does not understand. Mi corazon no entiende.

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COLD HANDS (A fiction)

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Stuffy. So stuffy.

I had to get out of the windowless hotel room that was to be home for 8 days. A craving for cold milk tea pushed me out of the room and into the humid night.

My search for a convenience store brought me to Chinatown Food Street. It was 10 pm and the nearest kiosk selling a variety of drinks, from Coke to Tsing Tao Beer, has just put up a sign saying it was closed. But the street was still teeming with mostly tourists dining al fresco.

I sat by a vacant table with a bottle of empty Tiger Beer on it after buying my 2.70-dollar milk tea from the nearby 7-11 and took photos of the food street. I was a non-tourist tourist after all.

“Excuse me, this is my table,” a guy with a thick European accent spoke behind me.

“Ooh sorry,” I turned around and saw the guy with ash-brown colored hair smiling at me. Scandinavian probably.

“It’s ok. You’re Filipino, right?”

“How did you know? I always get mistaken for Chinese or something else.”

“I always know. I work with a lot of Filipinos in our ship. They’re a jolly good lot. I’ve always liked Filipinos.”

The writer in me was curious. “Oh yeah, there are a lot of Filipino seafarers. So how long are you staying here?”

“I have a couple of hours before we leave. Thought I spend it outside my cabin and take a break from dealing with all the numbers,” he said. Definitely Scandinavian. Norwegian probably.

He was a first-engineer, whatever that was. Told me he was working on the German ship’s engines, for a German boss who was so gruff and stiff. Oh, the British are also stiff, I countered. No, the Germans are more stiff and are scowling a lot, he said. “That’s why my Filipino crew loves me, I am more relaxed than our German boss.”

Christien. His name was Christien. He had prodded me to give him my name. Lisa. Took me a while before I responded. Because I just wanted us to be nameless. Anonymous. But he managed to get it out of me.

I lit a cigarette. “Sorry, I should kick this habit but I still hold on to this vice to keep stress from eating me alive.”

We talked about my life as a writer and the adventures I had that were later shaped by my words, read by an unknown audience. I was in the city for training for my newish job. He talked about the 10 weeks circling Asia and 10 weeks going around the Mediterranean Sea, hopping from Genoa, to Barcelona, to Valencia, to some North African ports–places I could only pinpoint on the map. He talked about the absurdity of piracy in the 21st century, of having British body guards to keep them safe, of being locked up inside their ship for days or weeks at a time to protect them from those pesky pirates.

Of things in-between our struggles to keep our sanity intact: I in a landlocked concrete hell, he in an endless blue stretch of nothingness.

I painted a rather touristy picture of Cebu and gave him reasons why he should skip Manila, where I spend hours just driving to and from work. That particular dreadful, drizzling night that I was stuck in traffic for four hours. Why a tenth of our population endure months or years away from family. How they kept our economy afloat during the worst and best times.

He said that in his present company, he can be at sea for 2.5 months and 2.5 months off and anything longer than that would drive him crazy. But the Filipino crew, oh it was a different story. The guys told him they’re ok even if they’re 9 months at sea. They needed the money. They can endure, his crew said. That’s why he loved Filipinos.

Christien said it’s hard to keep a relationship when one is often away at sea. Yeah, I could only imagine the hardships my compatriots were going through. He was looking at me with sad smiling eyes. Guessed that he was 35 years old, pegging it on my age; no crinkles yet at the corner of his eyes. He felt flattered so I adjusted it to 40. He was crestfallen. Ok, I said, it was somewhere between. Let’s settle it at that.

“You are very beautiful. Who would’ve known that I would get back to my table to see a beautiful woman sitting there?” has said as he slowly slipped his hand into mine. “Why is your hand cold?”

“It’s from my milk tea bottle,” I said. I bought it two hours earlier.

“So it’s 12 midnight, what now?” Christien asked.

“I have to go back to my hotel. I have to go to our office to work tomorrow,” I gingerly took my black bag from the table.

“Can I come with you to your hotel?” His eyes were still smiling.

But mine felt like huge saucers at that moment. “Umm, no, I don’t do that. Besides, I’m already committed.” I offered him my hand for a handshake.

“OK I understand,” he took my clammy hand and kissed it. “You really are beautiful.”

“Are you sure you’re OK? How will you get to your port? Cab?”

“No, I can walk. It’s just 20 minutes from here.”

“OK bye then. Really nice talking to you. Had a nice time.”

He embraced me. Can’t remember if he planted a kiss on my cheek or on my forehead.

“When are you going back here?” he asked after he released me.

“I don’t know. It depends on when my bosses will ask me again to come back.”

“Will I see you again? Is there a chance that I will see you again?”

“No. Probably not.”

“Are you OK, just walking by yourself?” he called out as I took a few steps to the direction of my windowless hotel room.

“Yeah, it’s just two blocks away,” I said. “Bye, Christien.”

My head was whirling. What was that all about?

I tapped my hotel room key card on my door knob and flopped on my white sheets five minutes later.

I smelled sweet masculine perfume on my cold, clammy hands.

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OF THE THINGS LEFT UNSAID (A fiction)

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She has always loved the sea.

Staring at it makes her feel like the world is finite…but there’s something that lies beyond what her eyes can see. Something massive and unreachable. Making her restless.

Yearning for something indescribable.

Adrienne continued to stare at the lights winking at her just past the Flyer. Skyscrapers, like sentinels guarding the city’s wealth, were beautifully lighting up the hot, humid night.

There were several teenagers awkwardly doing skateboard tricks on the pavement while cyclists whizzed past her. She then looked at the footbridge wrapped with purple fairy lights, leading pedestrians from Gardens by the Bay towards the Esplanade.

It’s a long walk. But then I have the whole night, Adrienne thought. She just didn’t want to go back to her hotel. Not just yet.

Four hours ago she was frantically typing on her phone, chatting with Rhodora as she sweltered under a canopy next to the domed building, which was one of the government initiatives to make up for the city’s lack of natural attraction.

“He said he would be late. He was just finishing up something in the office,” Adrienne remembered typing on her phone.

“Ok. You’ve been there for 30 mins already. If he doesn’t come it’s either: 1) He’s too chicken to show his face because he still feels something or 2) He has moved on,” Rho replied.

An hour went by and Adrienne sweated profusely. Something important might really have come up, she argued to herself.

Ping. Ping. She looked at her phone.

“Sorry I can’t come. Still fighting this nasty flu. Have to stay in the office.”

There, it was final. Nail on the coffin.

She can recall tasting her salty tears behind her sunglasses. Then came the bitter aftertaste.

She copy-pasted Matt’s text message to Rho.

Ping.

“Sorry, Rienne. I don’t know what to say,” her friend said. She could feel pity behind those black pixels.

A few days back, Matt was agog to play host after she told him she would be coming to the city for business. He told her he would fetch her from the airport. They would be going to some watering hole and catch up. After all ten years is a long time.

She was not the one who sought him out. It was Matt all along who planned her itinerary in the city. Wait, wait, don’t worry about me. I have business to attend to first, Adrienne told him. No no, I have to challenge you to a drinking contest, just as I promised before, he said.

Ding-dong. “In fifteen minutes we would be closing…” the public announcement system rambled on, bringing Adrienne back to the present, back to the steel bench she has been occupying for heaven knows how long.

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Her feet led her to the concrete steps of the footbridge with purple fairy lights. Where would I go? Ah, to the weird durian-looking thing, she decided. Might as well check out life on the other side of the Bay.

But why am I still here, Adrienne asked herself as she looked past the old man on a bike, peddling LED trinkets to tourists. Why am I torturing myself?

She rummaged through her bag for her phone. Nothing. Eerily silent. Damning silence reverberated through her consciousness.

A jogger brushed past her, almost making her lose balance. Yeah right, I haven’t eaten anything since lunch, Adrienne suddenly realized. She took the nearest seat and then she found herself sitting across the regal-looking Fullerton building. Uncannily similar to the Old Post Office back home.

With all the the strength she could muster, she fired up her phone and went to search for her Notes. Scrolled. Copy. Paste on the message field:

“Matt,

What I wanted to accomplish on this trip was supposed to be something that I should have done a long time ago. I left so many things unsaid.

I wanted to tell you over bottles of beer that you were an itch that I had to scratch. And scratch I did. The problem is it took me a decade to do that. I wanted to tell you that I fell in love with a ghost, a ghost that never went away. You were with me but you had never been with me. I didn’t know it then.

I buried you by jumping from one relationship to another, without knowing that it was you who I wanted. I thought of taking a job in this city but I could not figure why I had to abandon all that is familiar to me. I thought I was running away from something I could not fathom. But it was only much, much later that I realized I wanted to run to you. Which sucks, by the way, so I have to get you out of my system.

I do not expect to gain anything from this except maybe closure. I need to move on.

Goodbye and have a happy life. Don’t go looking for me.”

Sent. To Matt.

She remembered a few days ago Rho told her that the note was cruel. “WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT TO ACCOMPLISH WITH THAT?” she told her friend, in all caps. “YOU ARE A SELFISH LITTLE B*TCH. Now Matt will become unstable. Think of the consequence!”

“I don’t know. I just want peace. I want to move on and not hang on to somebody that was never mine and will never be,” Adrienne said with finality.

The ghostly facade of Fullerton was taunting her. Well then, I accept your challenge, old girl. I will walk up to you, she thought to herself. Adrienne was already strolling across another foot bridge to where the Merlion has reigned for so many years when suddenly the Sands’ top flashed its green laser across the bay. Oh, they were starting the lights show, Adrienne grinned to herself.

Ping. Ping.

“I don’t know what to say,” the message from Matt said. Adrienne sucked in her breath. Her world stopped.

“To be fair,” Matt continued, “Yes, I was crazy about you then. You can even ask my family about it. The letters, the exchanges we had were precious to me as well. But then one day you told me that you just got a boyfriend. I told myself, I will give you time. Plenty of time. Then life got in the way. We both went our different ways. Choices made. But there were never regrets.”

The laser multiplied and danced across the Bay.

“Haha, this is awkward. But really, I wanted to say it to your face,” she typed frantically. “I just wanted to be free of you. Close the book. Move on.” She didn’t know if she made any sense at all.

The eerie music accompanying the dancing lights made her hair stand on its end.

Adrienne heaved a sigh. “Well thanks anyway for not being weird about this and all,” she typed. “I’ll be going home tomorrow. Have to sleep now. Goodnight.”

The lights finally made their encore, with the buildings below the Sands all lit up and the green and blue laser lights beaming out across the dark water. As if they were all trying to embrace Adrienne.

Ping. “Goodnight.”

—

The streetlights dotting an already sleeping Manila were like orange poppies blooming in the black velvety meadow, which was suprisingly bereft of the smog that has constantly blanketed the city.

Adrienne has never seen Manila this beautiful and peaceful.

A few minutes later the plane landed smoothly on the runway and taxied its way to Terminal 2. She stared at her phone as the other passengers scrambled to get their stuff overhead or under their cramped seats.

Any moment now Adrienne would be stepping back to her familiar world that has changed a million times since she left three days ago.

Her fingers flicked and swiped over her phone’s screen. Matt’s number and the rest of his contact details appeared.

Delete.

She would be getting a new phone number.

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