I Crush You

(I figure that today, I'm far removed from the gentlemen in question.  So suck it, unrequited love or something like it).

1.I'd rather dance with you (Kings of Convenience)

           First Intense Infatuation wasn't a genius wünderkind.
           You hardly talked to him during training. He stumbled through a class report, clearly hungover. It's surprising how quickly you fell—the too-cool party animal was never your type. Most of the time his fratboy behavior made that niggling crush go away.
           But your cheeks flushed anyway, when he'd rest his shoulders against the wall two inches from your face. You wrote a story that will never see the light of day. And despite yourself, as you saw him glide through the hall four years later, you thought about the warmth of his arms.

 2.Everything you want (Vertical Horizon)

          In college, you and your friend fell in like with the same guy.
          She got to him first, however, and pretty and vivacious (and thin) that she was, you stood no chance of wandering beyond Friend Zone. And so, you spent lunches with him talking of inconsequentially important things, quipping from musicals and reveling in geekery. For the first time in your life, a man actually got you, cresting on the same lonely wavelength.
           You could have been the one for him too...if he actually had noticed you.

3.Curbside Prophet (Jason Mraz)

          The man was shorter than you, and to be honest, wasn't quite as good-looking as another colleague. But there was something intrinsically charming about him, a magnetism that relied on wit and earnestness. This was a guy who could conquer mountains with his words and passion. You never let on about your attraction, convinced you were alone in finding him attractive.
          Years later, you and he have a chance encounter, and all your girl friends who knew him sigh in admiration.
           Go figure.

 4.You're So Damn Hot (Ok Go) 

           By now, you thought, you really should have learned your lesson.
           Alas, Cupid Lite strikes again, this time in the form of a twinkly-eyed senior attending your sophomore class. Contact is minimal, blushing at the optimum, and your awkward sleuthing leaves much to be desired.
           It's a hollow re-realization when you stare at the mirror and take in your appearance.
           You've got no game, and the man's a top athlete.

5.You're So Vain (Carly Simon)

          Your interactions with the objects of your almost-affection always follow a pattern, and the latest, brief one was no different.
           First comes that sudden awareness, blindsided by the wideness of his grin, the twinkle in his eyes, his general hygiene. Then comes the ludicrous fantasies that you eventually blurt out, as a grievous tactical error, to your friends. Finally, the One Incident that puts all your daydreaming to a screeching halt.
           Forever alone.

So, I'm still fucking depressed.

Suicide

There are three completely different conversations with three completely different people within the span of one week, and all mention the s-word in passing. The other participants laugh and shake their heads.
Someone is trying to send a message to you, but you're not fucking laughing.

Drinking Fails

Screw you, world, you decide, and plan to spend your nights in dissolute, wretched-glorious inebriation. After all, you've stayed squeaky clean for a goddamned quarter of a century—hell, one vice might add character.
That night, you could barely finish the bottle.

Surfing

You are soothed, alternatively, by pictures of squishy animals, and tales of blood and gore. It makes for a strange browsing history, but hey, bitch, they all think you're a fucking loon anyway.

Profanity

MOTHERFUCKING SHITHEAD JACKASS DOUCHEBAG CUMGUZZLER SLUTWHORE BITCHES.
Nope. Screaming all the curses in the sanctity of your apartment doesn't help. You've checked.

Glue

Your holidays were spent in isolation, and honestly, half of you preferred it that way. For the rest of the time, you focused your latest “work of art,” slowly stroking the acrylic into the canvas, cutting other people's trash into itty bitty triangles, contorting your body into easel-like positions.
If tears mixed in with the glue, no one should be able to tell.

Women of Fiction I Really Shouldn't Emulate

Elaine, Lady of Shalott

     You're still only half-sick of shadows.
     Half-sick is not nearly enough to venture out of your tower (a.k.a. Fortress of Solitude, despite your never really being a fan of Superman). It is not enough to put down your brush and your pen, to cease weaving wonders of worlds of your own making.
     You're terrified of lying in your metaphorical funeral bower, unknown and unloved, while the future object of your affections goes tirra-fucking-lirra.
     Ass.

Scheherezade

     

     A hundred and one nights, and several years later, her story still fascinates you – woman using her imagination and her guile to stay her execution and win their salvation.

     Then you realize the sultan was a freaking serial killer, and the vizier's daughter a classic victim of Stockholm's Syndrome.

     There goes another one of your fantasies.

Miss Haversham

     You can easily imagine yourself stranded at the altar, the erstwhile groom a schuckster hankering for your parents' money.

     But then again, launching a decades-long scheme of revenge and bitterness seems far too involved. Besides, all that lace would drive you mad.

     Oh.

Ophelia

     Sometimes you think you are turning slowly, inexorably insane. Memories bite at you, tear at you, crash into you like that motorcycle nearly a decade ago. From all outward appearances you have no mouth, but inside, you are screaming. Screaming. SCREAMING.

     There will be a sweet freedom in madness, you think, as you run on the inside of your skull.

Buttercup

     Life is pain. Anybody who tells you different is selling something.

     It should worry you that that line is becoming your mantra.

I want to die.

There.  I said it.

And since no one reads this -- no one who will give a shit, anyway, enough that they'll demand answers they want and think I have, or impose makeshift solutions so that I will continue with that pasted-on braces-less smile -- I think I'm safe.

Talentless Hack

1.Ballet

There's a home video of a brightly lit stage, filled with rows of little girls in sparkly, shiny tutus. The camera shifts its focus to an adorable dumpling, a roll of white encased in leotards. The recital goes well for a while. Suddenly, there's a loud crash, and a similar creampuff girl is seen stumbling at the edge of the frame.

The clumsy girl is you, and the one behind the camera, your dad.

Go figure.

2.Voice
All your cousins have been in choirs. Your friends do theatre, and glee club, and intermissions in school programs.

Like them, you love to sing. You have an entire repertoire that ranges from Broadway to Backstreet to Beastie Boys. You automatically sprinkle your conversation with lyrics. Alas, you are tone deaf, and people wince when you open your mouth.

In this, as in other things, you blame your mother.

3.Horseback riding
Some of your fondest childhood memories were going up north, and riding ponies (nags) while your parents followed in cars. Visions of wielding lances or befriending unicorns pranced in your head.

A few years later, as your father's face turned alarmingly red and he started gasping for breath, you found out why they needed cars.

And there went your equestrienne dreams.

4.Theater

Despite your (absolute)(deplorable) lack of singing talent, you have a streak of melodrama and flair for the fabulous. Sometimes, it comes in handy—you're a far better actor (LIAR) than anyone knows. But it's a sneaky skill that comes and goes, as you found out the one and only time you joined a drama club.

Under the hot lights, in front of your Mean Girls peers, you employ nothing but a deer-in-the-headlights gaze.

5.Painting
Of all the lessons, every summer, the ones that stuck with you the most involved pigment and paper.

Now, ink often stains your fingers, and the smell of acrylic has replaced bygone turpentine and coffee grounds. Every chance you get—which is now, once in every blue moon—you sketch and glue on makeshift canvasses.

Centering your soul on the brushstrokes.

She comes in colors

Purple rain

There was a cool shower outside, the kind that makes you crawl into your blankets and dream the afternoon away. In an effort to remain (semi-) productive, you power up your laptop and start reading your old stories.

Almost immediately you wince, and your fingers twitch, longing to delete the lurid manifestations of your younger self's fantasies.

The prose is so purple, you expect eggplants to start shooting out of the screen.

Yellow fever

Shivery hot, hot, hot.

Against your better judgment (lies–you have no better judgment), you watched “Ninja Assassin,” a film about a Japanese nin out for vengeance, played by a Korean popstar.

It was as you expected–stilted dialogues, wooden chemistry, and decent fight scenes. Still, you enjoyed it, if only for the Korean's pretty, pretty face and dynamite abs.

Damn, son.

Green Mile

As you drive home from school, you sing along with the radio. You giggle, snort, and yell out profanities. You snicker aloud at unknown Freudian slips, but when you tell the joke next day, you receive blank faces.

It's not easy being green.

White Horses

It's almost Valentine's Day, and you brace yourself for the Mushy. All around you, your she-friends giggle over their boyfriends, guys A-B-C, random encounters with the other kind, and the “sexy-eyes” technique, while man-pals talk of reservations, pretty girls on a Saturday night, sans the sexy-eyes technique.

You fail at love life.

Still, you console yourself.

Of them all, you're the only one who can still touch a unicorn.

Red Head

Election season is upon you.

Two years ago, you viewed the circus with a mixture of dread and exhilaration. With friends Left and Right (and those politically directionless), there were always clashes of colors and principles, with you splattered with the remnant pigments. On your part, you were steadfastly orange, slightly tinged with more vermillion.

Now, you look around and see blue. Blue alumni, blue parties, BlueSkies. And you are content.

But sometimes, secretly, your heart beats red.

Alter-Egos/ The Words I used to write

1. Tuathanidana (Lj)

As a kid, you had a borderline obsession with all things make-believe—primarily, the gods and goddesses of ancient past, and the soap-opera madness of their lives

Because of a sugar-induced script written with friends, a stuffed toy named Fero, and crazy prepubescent hijinks, you also had a fascination with purple cows.

And then you discovered your Celtic namesake, she of the bovine emblem, flamboyant following, and virgin status.

Kismet.

2. My Spazzy Girl (Xanga)

Everyone who has watched the movie said they saw you. When your coach handed you a copy of it, you decided to take a look. Promptly, (a whiter, prettier, thinner version of) you show up on screen, drunk and demented in a subway station.

Since then, you’ve watched her every movie. Since then, you’ve cried at her every movie. Still, that first film stuck, of a lonely misfit driving people crazy.

Just as silly, you’re keenly aware you’d do just the same thing.

3. Silverfoil (Tastyword)

At the height of your delusions, you imagined yourself winning competitions, getting plaudits from people worldwide. But even as you imagined that Olympic medal, your fantasies were satisfied with second place.

You also started a private, utterly secret account, wanting to be known for your rapier wit and brilliant insights into love, and life, and beyond, rather than open only to the usual family and friend.

The blog didn’t last long.

Neither did your dreams.

4. Summer Fling (Blogdrive)

There are movies wherein a girl goes on vacation, falls deeply in love in some exotic locale with some exotic local (preferably rich, tall, dark and handsome), and the local reciprocates in kind.

Alas, that has never happened to you.

But hope springs eternal.

5. Drabble Diary (Blogger)

Latest, greatest, most pretentious.

Searching for Ever After (or, why Disney has ruined my life)

Sleeping Beauty

There is one blinding instant of pain, so unlike the prick of a needle, which then dulls, bit by bit, to a pale shade of agony. The wound never shows through your skin, and so no one ever kisses it to make it better.

And so instead, the morning comes. The world itself is an endless dream, and the thorns are covering you, bit by bit.

The voice begs you to wake up.

Cinderella

It’s a frequent daydream, that masked ball. All conversation stops, and their eyes as one rest upon you. A path is made, and he walks toward you; you feel the heat of his hands through the silk. In perfect silence, you dance.

But the scene changes, to just you and him, and as the clock strikes thirteen the gown vanishes, leaves you as you are, in jeans and a wrinkled blouse and with panicked, forlorn eyes. The world falls down, and eternity shines in his hand. Then he pulls you into a silent, perfect dance.

Long live the Labyrinth.

Snow White

Growing up a kid with a paler complexion than most, it’s no wonder they started calling you that nickname. It did strange things to your sense of beauty, especially when you found out that one incarnation had a sister.

Princess fair, white as a sheet, flight over fight, passive and menial, blood and lips, sleep and death.

You would have preferred to be Rose Red.

Beauty and the Beast

Upon seeing a picture, your mind goes several ways.

You can rail at the blatant typecasting (the ignorant villager as the villain) and bemoan the evils of the bourgeoisie while sipping at your Starbucks and typing at your Mac, and this is why you can never have a boy with like passions or background.

You can sigh at the golden dress, the pretty ballroom, and plan the dream proposal, and this is why you’ll never click with a man that isn’t gay.

You can hold the supposed intellectual standard to you heart, and this is why—

OMG FURRIES.

The Little Mermaid

If you should turn to sea foam, so be it.

As long as the right person kisses the girl.

Couldn’t have said it better myself

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate (Dante)
You are just itching to use this line.
You imagine, perhaps, a dark, dank cave, or maybe a seemingly innocuous door. And then a slight turn to your fellow spelunkers, or fellow lawyer-hopefuls, and that muttered, ominous phrase.
Most will ignore you, some will roll their eyes, and maybe one or two kindred souls will recognize your wit and reply in kind.
Your sister laughs when you voice this wish, and calls you pretentious.
You can’t help agreeing.

Come to my woman’s breasts, and unsex me here! (Shakespeare)
Once, you were shoved into your friend’s ample bosom for a class recitation.
It is not an experience you care to repeat.

O pagsintang labis ng kapangyarihan, sampung mag-ama’y iyong nasasaklaw! (Balagtas)
Of the four national texts you were mandated to study, you can only remember one stanza of the second.
(Because the one with the bird features a hero that gets it on with three sisters, the one with your name has absolutely no likeable heroine, and the sequel gets the rest killed).
It’s ironic that’s the stanza you remember; the idea of anyone shouting about “the power of love” makes your hackles raise.

I know ever so many people, and until one of them dies, I couldn’t possibly be friends with anyone else. (Charades)
You’re not the type to utter flirtatious rejoinders to straight, attractive men (the non-threatening homosexuals, though, you’re free to tease). Despite all outward appearances, you’re still that shy overweight girl who thought Prince Charmings were real, and is afraid of them morphing into misogynistic bastards.
But your stories and writings are littered with characters who whisper sweet nothings to each other under the guise of urbane wordplay.
Maybe when you’re older, and away, you can slip on a little black dress and slip into a dark crowded bar, sip on some bubbly and raise your eyes to a beautiful stranger.

Though we cannot make our sun stand still, we can yet make him run. (Marvell)
Your soul cries for adventure, for wide, open spaces. For your life to be something more than a circumscribed path to mediocrity.
And so, you do things, from time to time. Silly things. Stupid things. Once-in-a-lifetime, wow-you’re-insane, dear-lord-you’re-amazing things. Anything to alleviate the mundane.
You sometimes think, if your reckless immolation results in the utter ruin of what makes you you, you think it worth the sacrifice.

Fail, or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation

1. Laptop
As if sensing there was no more need for frantic thesis typings, it died a day after graduation, and only resumed life two days ago.
The isolation has been good, you think. Detoxifying, even.

2. Dye Job
You casually mentioned to your mother that you wanted a change. Maybe Barney purple. Screaming red. Not quite taking the drastic-cry-for-help-hint, Ma opted for "golden brown." Despite this, however, the herbal mixture didn't take, and it's only in direct sunlight that you can see a reddish tinge.
Go figure.

3. Maturity
The fist slide of your hand on smooth, silk-flesh makes you cringe, and it takes you back, back to that awful moment when you were thirteen that you've never told an adult (that you subsequently spilled to your cousins and closest friends), and that less traumatizing but still mortifying moment when you were twenty (two years ago).
You cringe, you stammer, you rock back and forth, and the come to your rescue, saying you're still a minor.
In essence, you probably are.

4. In sickness and in health
You vomited, had irregular bowel movements, and the aches and the pressure seemed as saturated as your sweat. Then you got better, as you do every month.
*
Four years ago, you underwent this very same exam, with hardly any changes. Well, you think in retrospect, at least there aren't any leering frat boys.
*
A week later, you vomit and egest again.

5. Knowledge
Is power.
Not that it's apparent, aimlessly channel-surfing documentaries and science programs with your body lying supine on the bed, slowly melting from the summer heat.

Friendships

1. You guys missed a spot in my back. Grind the knife hard and deep, okay? I enjoy the pain.
2. After all these years, I guess I don't merit even one sorry.
3. I really, really, really miss you.
4. My God, you are shallow.
5. In retrospect, you did a real number on my psyche. No wonder I have commitment issues.
   
6. One of these days, I'm probably going to irritate you too.
7. For all the defending I do, I wish someone would for once stand up and stick up for me. Which is an entirely wrong mindset, because hey, independence and courage and inner strength and all that jazz, but Lord, I wish someone would say I'm worth fighting for, and worth being a true friend to.
8. Stop making me cry, dammit. I get the worst case of sniffles.
   

T.I.I.S.

(There's supposed to be a picture with this, but hell, I'm far too lazy. And my sister has my Tablet. Oh well. Let the neurotic bitterness commence!)

Wedding dress

Because your sister had her prom night, your mother placed a bridal magazine on the dinner table. Because it was there, you read it. And because you read it, you now find yourself obsessed with the topic, scrutinizing brightly-colored saris, frantically searching for the Labyrinth gown in the dream sequence, sighing over Grace Kelly’s lacy profile as she wed her literal prince.
This is rapidly becoming alarming.

Text message

You’re happy for her, of course. After roughly two years of declaiming and cursing lovelives—lack thereof—you’re glad at least one of you will finally no longer be TIIS.
Then again…

Bitter

Upon reflection, you conclude. Mr. Darcy is an elitist ass, Heathcliff an obsessive sociopath, and Crisostomo Ibarra (cough, cough) a misogynistic playboy who is obviously a vehicle for the desires of his creator. You blame Byron—the cad—for your weakness to pretty antisocial bastards in books and television and movies, and rightfully scorn true love as nothing more than a construct devised by Western, he-man-as-hero-woman-as-weaker-vessel, hegemony on society.
The conspicuous stack of curly-scripted books below your bed says otherwise.

Virgin goddess

Sometimes, in your (not so) brief moments of delusion, you wonder if you’ll stay in this state forever. Constrained by your chaste upbringing and paranoia of anything remotely approaching commitment, you’d like to run forever, like Artemis illuminated by the moon, or as Athenaeternally wrap yourself up in books and justice.
Your namesake, you also note, is the Maiden of Celtic mythology, the proclaimed queen of the fairies.
Since high school, your friends have been calling you Immaculate Mother, for reasons best left unexplained.
It appears you’re stuck in the tower.

Dream

When all is said and done, however, you still fall to pieces upon waking.
Your lips still tingle from the imaginary kiss.

Text message

You stare at the glowing screen in shock.

A ear-piercing scream echoes through the house a nano-second later.

Hours later, all your back-up plans have gone to hell, and you're not quite sure how to feel about that (there goes the job abroad, the skills laboriously honed in four painstaking years, the sheer freedom from academia).

Still, seeing your name in that list, you can almost see your future writ large.

You've made your father quite proud.

Twilight: A Review

(A post rather, rather tardy.)

Poster
His pale, lives-in-a-basement skin. His sinister leer, topped with sanguine lips. Her frightened, deer-in-headlights eyes. their unnatural postures.
Your first impression upon seeing the giant billboard is that it is a PSA on child predators. It does not bode well for giggling prepubescents the world over.

Baseball
So far, your quiet quips and your friend’s heckling has gone unnoticed in the hushed, reverent crowd. The giggling of the schoolboys beside you makes your skin crawl, but you refrain from reaching over and socking them with your soda can. You keep mostly to yourself.
Then they bring out the baseballs, and a familiar song oozes out of the movie speakers.
Your scream of indignation echoes in the moviehouse.

Alphabet
The two protagonists—appropriately cardboard and/or smarmy beyond belief—attempt to talk, or what passes for it. You watch in puzzlement as their conversation, composed of hackneyed phrases and hard-sell flirtations, go from Point A to point W and back again to Point J.
“I’m dangerous.”
Seriously. Who talks like that?

Blood
Enter the lamb, see the pussycat.
That first meeting, as the supposed hero (or rather, two-century-something who routinely stalks delicious-smelling girls in their bedrooms) flairs his nostrils and tries his hardest not to prevent an orgasm in the classroom (you call ‘em as you see ‘em), you have a stray thought about menstruation.
Suddenly the direction of your mind takes a turn for the gutter.

Credits
It is the best part of the movie.
The cinematography is wholly different, and the music coolly seductive. No acting is required, therefore the actors posing like 50’s Hollywood stars actually look the part.
It is the best part, however, because it is over.

Because Jam is Racing Against Sunbeams

French-kiss the morning
It is your favorite time of the day.
In those few minutes between slumber and the shower, you feel a faint embrace of the warm dawn air. It lingers as you try to hold on to remnants of your dream, and suddenly bursts as the phone utters a shrill reminder.
As the hours plod forward, your dream wisps into the haziness of your recollection, and you are left with a warm, brilliant smile and eyes aching to protect.

Pray to the god of sex and drums and rock n’ roll
The heavy bass line thrums through your system, undulates and uncoils like a sweet summer wind. It takes a moment for the beat to pick up, and soon you see yourself in a roomful of people, slick sweat and lust redolent in the air. It is not merely a dance; it is the clash and the kismet of a hundred souls, gyrating for lost wishes and unfulfilled dreams and aching, bursting rebirth.
With upraised arms and a shuttered gaze, you join in the fervent ritual.
As the last guitar solo twangs into a yearning silence, you open your eyes and see your bedroom once more.
Few think you’d be the type to bump and grind.

Make the rocking world go round
You thought you could make a difference.
You still might. You’re young, after all. So what if you’re not slaying metaphorical, political dragons, saving damsels and the demographics from the tyranny of antediluvian laws and practices? Heck, some people made their mark past death!
Even as you rationalize, however, the years of youth—and that of hope, and change, and wrinkle-free skin—are slowly slipping away, and you squander them all in mediocrity.

Find a stairway to heaven
You’ve spoken about it a lot. Cried buckets to your unobservant best friend, mentioned Frost and snowy evenings in passing, routinely discussed the best methods.
Still, they think you won’t do it. A cry for attention, some think; spoiled little brat. Others say that your Catholic upbringing has permanently imprinted hellfire and damnation on your skull should you attempt to try. The few who knew you at the edge of seventeen know you won’t do it, if only for the memory of a bright-eyed sylph who faded far too soon.
You just want to be happy.

Fly to the moon and back
You just want to be happy.
Stocking up on impossible hopes and dreams, however, seems to preclude reality, and lead weights of guilt and reason drag you down back into the stratosphere.
Crash-landing seems inevitable.

21 sentences for a 21-year-old dreamer

(Clearly, in desperate need for an intervention)

1. Yell
On the nights when her mother shrieks and wails and she can’t do anything to help, she quietly cries in her room.
2. Roulette
It seems so easy, she thinks, to let it all slip away, and her mind allows the possibilities were she to play that game with her life; lately, she’s been gambling more and more.
3. Klaxon
In the weeks immediately following the day she nearly killed a man, and the odd day after, she wakes in terror at the sound of a horn.
4. Mirror
In her mind, inner has always trumped outer, and she searches her reflection in vain for some semblance of beauty within.
5. Vomit
As she spews the remains of the day and her stomach pulses and heaves, disjointed statistics on poverty and anecdotes on poor little girls (because needy and poor aren’t one and the same) collapse and congeal in her head.
6. Communication
She was once told she was a hard person to love by one of the people she loved most in the world, and for this reason, and many others, silence lays thick between them; the irony is made complete when she enters her course.
7. Pedal
Someday, when a souped-up motorcycle lies between salvation and a thirty-ton tyrannosaurs rex, she will end up regretting she never learned how to bike.
8. Hand
She hates incompetence, she hates stupidity, she hates the slack-jawed expression on her classmates’ faces, but most of all she hates that crestfallen look on her professor’s face; and so she raises her hand, hating they’ll now brand her a arrogant snotty know-it-all.
9. Fatalism
She believes that whatever Power-that-Is likes to toy with her for Its own sick amusement, and addresses Murphy as if he were an old friend.
10. Ate (Greek)
If she were born in another time and place, she would have made a fine Amazon, right breast notwithstanding.
11. Ate (Filipino)
Many have remarked on their similar mannerisms, some had raised eyebrows on their sibling spats, yet few know that she would murder—eviscerate, disembowel, and make a party hat out of innards—anyone who dared touch a hair on her sisters’ heads.
12. Romantic
She knows waiting for the right one would be utterly idiotic, but she can’t bring herself to pretend about the boys around her even just a little.
13. Nun
When she’s not the smartest or the most artistic or musically talented or prettiest or even the most capable, she wonders if being the most socially aware counts for something in her odd little family.
14. Picture
She doesn’t want to admit to missing them, because dammit they were the ones who hurt her, and shouldn’t they be crawling on their hands and knees after all she’s done for them, yet she still can’t delete the image of two smiling girls.
15. Funeral
In her personal life soundtrack, she had just recently crossed off “Another One Bites the Dust” from her dirge list.
16. Superhero
She prepares elaborate scenarios and backup plans for if and when her cover identity is blown, and most of them aren’t serious.
17. Maiden
A secret suspicion is that she’ll end up being the crabby old virgin with twenty cats; this pisses her off, but mostly because she’d prefer dogs.
18. Roulette (II)
In an entrance exam to another college long ago, she threw her life to the wind and devoted her essay to detailing extraterrestrial life forms in tertiary education; it utterly nonplussed her when said school recommended her for advanced placement.
19. Zephyr
She wants to run and never look back, and drink in the beauty of the world in her wake.
20. Security blanket
Sometimes, change terrifies her, so she keeps her mouth closed and her burdens heavy.
21. Change
But life still goes one, and eventually she shuts out all the clamoring inner voices and goes.

There’s a reason I’ve never had a love life (and his name is Murphy)

(no judgment. Please.)

Artiste

You met him in class. You—young, fresh-faced, naïve (dense). He—effeminate, poetic, apparently interested in the same gender. Coming from a nearly convent-like existence, and with a nearly bone-deep wariness of testosterone, you deemed him safe.

Little did you know that your cousin and several other acquaintances fell for the same trick.

It did not go down well when you saw the pictures on his website.

Jock

Your fellow virgins (never-been-touched, never-been-kissed, never0been-out-on-a-date) have certain “types.” One, a friend with Amazon-like proportions, always falls for beautiful boys shorter than her (and the average man). Another likes a touch of “ruggedness”—for her, a leather jacket will suffice. One sister want manly footballers, another erudite pretty men with snobbish, Mr. Darcy airs.

You never thought you’d fall for an athlete. But the very first thing you noticed, about the very first boy you nearly gave your heart to, was not his wit or his poems to another girl (that came later).

His arms were iron.


Gravelly

When you first heard his deep voice in a school meeting, you thought, “Hurrah. Handsome. Intelligent, because he’s in this university. Straight, despite being in this college. Dear girl, there may be hope for you yet.”

Alas, when you shyly confessed your infatuation to your persistent friend, as the object of your affections strides past…

“___? He’s GAY!”

Your track record remains unchanged.


Boss man

In an online conversation, you and your fellow flighty friend (though she doesn’t quite look it) giggle over a man—more out of something to do, though, than any real attraction. You dissect his habits, speculate about his love-life, and cringe (or laugh heartlessly, depending on the girl) about recent events. In one sheer stroke of stupidity, you post it on your online journal.

And forget that he’s as tech-savvy as the two of you.


Asthma

It is the best and worst moment, sexually speaking, of your young life.

In moments like these, and the ones that follow, you wonder if the fates purposely mess with you for their sick amusement.

The bare expanse of flesh. The mutual friend (and his subsequent message). What the mutual friend saw the summer ago.

When you retell the story, a year after, to someone who turns out to be his second cousin, you conclude.

Murphy is a bloody rat bastard.

A Trip to Tagaytay

(All pictures are my sister's. Because.)

Rooster

There was a chicken crossing the road.

It doesn’t exactly belong to anyone. Your sister, on an earlier visit, chased it around and took pictures of its brood of chicks strutting on pavement.

While your friends made the same jokes, you thought back on the story you once wrote, and snicker a little.

Birds and revolution don’t exactly mesh, do they?

Fog

It is two hours past midnight when you point it out to your best friend, and both of you stand up and look outside.

There’s no one around, not for miles, and the sole streetlamp paints the one neighboring, empty house in a yellow haze.

The smoke makes you both stare for a few seconds. And then your best friend turns away, and leaves you contemplating the chiaroscuro.

In your fertile, overactive imagination, you imagine a stranger emerging from the gloom.


Makahiya

Whenever you see these plants—so named for their shyness—you are compelled to crush them. To see them slowly close up beneath your rubber shoes.

This may or may not be indicative of your inherent violent tendencies.


Ants

Because of the chilled bottles of vodka and mudshake, half-finished packs of chips and biscuits, the uninvited guests come crawling to the living room. Groggily, you pick up the bits and dispose of the visible crumbs, and waddle—inebriated, half-full of alcohol and junk—to your place in the sofa.

You and your friends then proceed to yodel on the microphone.

Ants, you think, are lucky that they can’t hear you.


Flowers

Your mom’s a frustrated interior designer, you tell your friends as you enter the house. They take in the immaculate walls, the artfully placed furniture, wooden curlicues and curios, and agree.

Then they see the photos, and ooh and aah over snaps of vibrant flora.

Oh, we took that, you tell them. Me and my film sister.

You’re quick to add they’re mostly from your film sister. Because honestly, you suck as a photographer.

Identity Crisis

I do not know who I am.

Jump!

I want to fall in love.