Vera

Graduation was when? May? April? Suddenly hurled to this they call the corporate world where I sit and escape to mp3s of poetry and Nouvelle singing about how she dances in Tokyo and London, would have invited the world to dance with her, 'there's nothing to lose, and there's nothing to prove, so I'm dancing with myself,' oh so beautiful words, and I try to look for my own reflection in the mirror, mirroring her, imagining perhaps a new pair of dancing shoes, a pair that I can use while running away from here, from this perks-laden office, away from the air conditioning and out in the sun, out in the pedestrian lane where drivers care not to stop even if I cross hastily in my black top. Is this my one year ticket? May? April? I have to wait a year, little plans for me, little plans because I have to be this or that, and what else? Oh, I have to fix myself up in every corner because that's what I'm supposed to do, comb my hair, even wear my Sunday's bes...

 The death card in a pre-Halloween party, was it called that way, did long-haired Dulce, who read my cards (my cards? something new now for wasted me with nothing I can call my own), the death card that came fourth among three other rectangles with drawings in them I can't recognize, that card which reminded me of Nanay and her skin and bones, lying there somewhere in a house I once called my house, my home. Nanay there in her sickness that ate away at her body, but not her eyes that scanned the house, or did she try to look inside of me; was she afraid, too?

Yen said, "I want to own a bed. At the top of my own roof. Under my own sky. Would your own Christ be generous enough to provide?" ...as for me, if I can't have my own room and my own bed, then I'll have them. If he'll say I'm beautiful that night, then I would be that and more... that's how much I believe in them... And if we were 17 again and were placed on separate continents, I believe we'd still meet.  

  ...are all in black. dull black on a rug left hanging, home, 2001  Last night, I went out of the house and slept inside the van for at least two hours. Ate Ivy was very much upset and angry with me (because of very much valid reasons, yes...). I felt like the house suddenly shrank like that little globe of a "lemonsito;" and, mind you, it didn't feel good inside, my senses confused whether I was the seed or the juice evaporating towards nowhere in particular. With the middle seat conveniently slapped down halfway its length, I rested my body. "I want to suffocate and die," was that cliché chant inside my head, and then out of my mouth; like those children's games with songs in them, the ones that you keep repeating, in a monotonous kind of way, the ones you absentmindedly sing in front of your breakfast plate. The fluorescent lamp of the parking area, with hazy light patterns through the tinted glass, caught my attention, and I turned to chanting, "An...

Christmas vacation has started, and I find myself restless. Last night, I had difficulty sleeping, watching shadows play on the unfinished wall in Tita Maricar's room, shifting from side to side and stubbornly refusing a blanket. Blankets at night are rare for me. Slowly breaking through the daylight -- Coldplay is literally blasting in my ears, a little piece of Jay without his selfishness in my ears, and Russ's company while he's not here, laughing and thinking with me. Songs and artists pass through me like light, something you take in without minding the science behind it. That's me. Not your typical music lover. The names and titles do not stay, just their rhythms and their stories. Yesterday, I read a book with the headphones on, an alternation of a woman's voice saying, "I will not let them ruin me," and an instrumental that sounds straight from the big screen, the soundtrack of an epic film. Lines from songs, lines from the book - they all come was...