well how clumsy their ink and how pitiful their latin

they dont see that the godhead is not a king sitting on a throne of chrysolite; god is the cement in our shoes. god is the damp leaking in our roof. god is the very room, breathing in and out through 4 billion pairs of human lungs.

crowd packed and suffocating. they brush shoulders, they spill their tea, they look at their watches in despair. 

“they don’t know im god. they don’t know they are god too.”

we are trapped inside a living resonator, thats a cosmic chamber that hums with frequency of every desire sloshing in our stomachs. every heartbeat sends a seismic wave through the corner of the dark. 

a wish for mercy doesnt travel to a distant constellation; it vibrates the bone in the stranger’s jaw 3 inches away. we sit inside the engine of creation, clutching our jackets, unaware that the air between our lips is infinite with seraphic grease and holy math.

i know priests call it free will, like our choices were a rebellion against providence. what foolishness, i’d say.

we are not separate from the divine; we are the fingers holding the plume. we are not wizard gods hurling supernovas through our window…instead we are the  friction of the divine moving through the soil. 

when you move your body at night, the pull of moon twitches. when a girl in july swallows her own tongue in grief, an archangel’s wing drops a feather in the abyss. 

every choice is an incremental nudge against the ribs of reality and a ripple in the endless ocean of the divine body.

for years i lay on my back, begging a savior to descend through the ceiling. waiting for an anointed creature with thirty wings to scrape the rot out of my lungs. 

the sky however is vacant because the sky is already crammed behind my collarbone. 

the stars are not distant fires as it looks like rather they are the calcified teeth of deities shuddering around inside my own skull, waiting for me to bite down on the gospel. but i do not kneel at the altar anymore; im the stone, the priest, and the sacrifical blood. 

ako ang mga ilusyon sa kaibuturan ng papawirin, ang balintataw na nag-iiwan ng ningning. ang umiiral na pag-irog. dalisay at walang bahid. ang panalangin sa labi. ang sasalba sa naghihingalong diwa at hininga. hahawi sa hinagap ng bawat nalilito’t dukha. ang lakan na dakila. 

ako ang banal na Ama. punong-akay ng liwanag. sa aking dibdib kumukulo ang ipu-ipo ng habag. sa aking mga palad ang lakas na pumapatag.

i step into the middle, feeling the beginning of the cosmos click into my joints. celestial spheres are spinning inside my kidneys; knowledge beyond the world is leaking out of my ear canals in water. im taking the reigns of my own holy saint. no longer waiting for a light to break through the clouds im cracking my own chest open and im becoming the miracle that will save me.

​ako ang bathaluman. ang nagpapatakbo ng gulong. sa marahuyo kong kapangyarihan, ang milagro ay sumisibol ng kusa. sapagkat nasa akin ang awa, pati na ang gawa.

im sick with the universe; it has laid eight thousand eggs of pure light inside my liver, and they are hatching all at once, bursting my gallbladder open with joy.

how sweet it is to be infected by the living! how worth it! how morbidly worth it!

to stand on the concrete and scream until my vocal cords look like shredded ham, screaming curses at the useless politicians who try to lock the morning up in mendacity! to spit my venom on their fine leather because my blood is boiling with so much love for this waking life that i would rip down their gates with my bare teeth just to keep the sunlight free for the rest of us.

watch me step into the gut of the 5 o'clock lrt. packed to the roof with a thousand sloshing sacks of heartbeats, and im grinning so hard my cheekbones threaten to tear through my skin. across the aisle, tucked between two shopping bags, a scruffy little dog looks up at me, four short legs, a black snout like a burnt truffle, a heart beating two hundred times a minute. i tilt my head and offer it the window of my soul.

look at the crowd surging through the station turnstiles! look at the glorious ocean of elbows and garlic breath!

i do not shrink from the pressing meat, i want to press my ribs against theirs until our skeletons entangle! i crave all the flesh. i want to stitch my sleeves directly to their sleeves. i want to drink the fogged-up sweats off the train, to scrape the salt off eight million tired forehead wrinkles and store it under my tongue like shredded grapes. madness, yes. what fucking freak loves love to the soil. me! loving love until my chest fractures inward like a dry cracker. looking at the billions strangling, laughing, bleeding bipeds and desire nothing more than to lay my cheek against their pulsing throat, whispering into the noise of the street because im wide open and i will devour every second of you.

ako si spiderman.

you don’t get it. this is not just me writing and thinking about an mcu roleplay. ako si spiderman at ease. nabuhay siya nang sabay sa akin. when the stars started to conspire, spiderman was conspiring within me.

spiderman was woven into me by design.

he is me at ako ay siya. because we both understand what it means to be lacking.

i am him because i am not enough.

ako siya dahil kapos. ako siya kasi i have to work my ass off to pay rent, buy groceries and keep myself afloat for another week. ako siya dahil bitbit ko ‘yong working class grit, tipong pagod na walang superhero landing, ‘yong tipong kailangang bumangon kinaumagahan kahit durog pa ang katawan. i am not rich, i was never handed a safety net. if i have ever fallen into one, it is one i have wove myself. i am him because everything i have, i have had to earn.

spiderman isn’t defined by how high he jumps or how hard he hits. a true hero isn’t built on power; it’s about staying good when the world gives you every reason to go cold. that is spiderman. that is me.

the patron saint of the ordinary.

he is not a god, only a person given power and then left alone with the world. he became a hero because he chose to be…every day.

ako si spiderman dahil sanay akong magsuot ng maskara. sa harap ng ibang tao, i’m funny at times, nagpapalakas, nagso-solo ng mga problemang dapat ginugrupo. kasi gano’n ang mga katulad natin… tinatago natin ‘yong mga pasa sa likod ng biro at ngiti. ako si spiderman kasi habang inililigtas ko ang araw ng iba, uuwi akong walang nagtatanong kung kumain na ba ako o kung kumusta na ang puso ko.

to lend this hand when my strength is spent; to love when my heart lies broken upon the earth; to carry warmth where grief has made its dwelling; and to rise each morning when surrender whispers. is that not peter parker too? he is not remarkable because he never falls. he is remarkable because he never stops rising.

i am him because i know what it is to lose. for there are people in my story i was not able to save and like him, i carry those ghosts.

every individual faces choices that shape their destiny. some break their pain, anger or loss. others take that same suffering and channel it into something greater than themselves.

spiderman had every reason to give up on society, close his doors and become selfish. the world had given him wounds to justify the turning of his heart. he had every cause to abandon society, shut the door against its suffering and to choose the merciful selfishness of saving only himself. he grew up in hardship, faced loss after loss.

he could have let bitterness make a home inside him. he could have said, bahala kayo dyan, ‘di ko naman buhay ‘yan. but he didn’t.

being a villain would have been so much easier. they don’t lose sleep worrying about people who misread their intentions. they don’t have to constantly balance personal life with public duty. for peter parker, choosing to stop caring would have meant freedom…freedom from endless responsibility.

because “with great power comes great responsibility.” to me, it’s a sentence written in blood kasi if i were given that power, i’d make the same choice. i am spiderman because i would.

ako si spiderman kasi kahit ilang beses akong itumba ng tadhana at ilang beses akong mabagsakan ng pagguho ng sarili kong mga pangarap, lagi’t lagi pa rin akong bumabangon.

ako si spiderman dahil kahit sa pinakailalim ng sarili kong pagkawasak, may kung anong bahagi sa akin na ayaw pa ring sumuko. wall crawling isn’t just a superpower, it’s the way i claw my way out of the rock bottom pits of my own mind. i pull myself up when no one else is around to reach down.

and spiderman is the ultimate yearner.

he reaches endlessly for balance, love and a gentle tomorrow. all while being weighed down by bills, grief and self-doubt. he yearns to be better, fix his mistakes and be understood. he mirrors every single day of my survival. and for that he’s starlike… for what is a star if not a body condemned to spend itself in pursuit of light? what is a star if not an act of endless reaching? peter parker has always seemed to me like a star trapped inside a human body. burning, yearning, persisting. because despite carrying enough weight to sink lesser souls he still reaches.

to yearn is to declare that something better exists beyond the constellations, to yearn is to remain open despite every reason to close. and god, if that is not the story of my life, i dont know what is. for everyday for me feels like some variation of reaching.

and…

beyond the mask and the daily grind…honey i,m not just spiderman because i embody his struggle. i am spiderman because i love only one.

i love only one.

well… ang tanda na ng pariralang ‘to… like a dying language. but so be it, because stars are old fashioned too plus they’ve been repeating the same devotion for billions of years.

because once a heart recognizes a home it remembers the path forever

i love endlessly.

i would love this city and i would keep loving every stranger in it even if they kick and spit on me, because love is a commitment and a vow made in solitude. if i loved a city i would love it that way.

and i’d love my mj as well, even if she doesn’t love me back anymore.

i’d yearn for her even if the magic fades and she completely forgets who i am. because if i loved her god if i loved her,.. i would love her precisely the same way. even if memory itself abandoned my name, i would still remember hers.

ako si spiderman dahil sa bawat sapot ang lungkot ko ang bumabalot, sa bawat hiblang inihahagis ko sa kawalan, para akong naghahagis ng panalangin sa langit na duda ko’y sasagot. sa bawat pagbitin ko, ramdam ko ang bigat ng mga bagay na hindi na maibabalik.

ako si spiderman dahil nanghihina rin ako sa katotohanang nagpapabigat ng dugo ko at katotohanang nagpaparalisa sa buong pagkatao ko.

ako si spiderman dahil hindi ko siya malilimutan. kahit burahin pa ng panahon ang pangalan ko sa kanyang alaala. kahit na maging estranghero ako sa kanyang kwento. kahit na dumating sa punto na wala na ngang anumang bakas ng aking pag-iral sa kanyang mundo. mananatiling nakaukit pa rin sa akin at nakasulat sa mga pader ng aking kaluluwa gamit ang tinta na hindi kayang mabura ng panahon.

at oo iiyak ako. sino bang hindi iiyak? iiyak ako dahil hindi ko na mahahawakan ang kamay niya, iiyak ako dahil may mga katahimikang siya lang ang nagpapa-ingay at dahil may mga lamig na siya lang ang nagpapa-init. magmumukmok ako sa gilid, makikipag kasundo sa sarili kong lumbay at pakikinggan ko ang mga multong iniwan ng mga alaala niya,, higit sa lahat mamahalin ko pa rin siya.

dahil ako si spiderman. kahit maglakbay pa ako sa libo-libong dimensyon at kahit buksan ko ang bawat pinto sa multiverse, siya at siya pa rin. parang bituing paulit ulit na hinahanap ng mga mandaragat, parang buwan na hindi malimutan ng dagat, parang tahanang nakaukit na sa kaluluwa ng aking pagmamahal.

ako si spiderman dahil binalot na ako ng dalamahati’t lahat lahat, hindi pa rin ako tumitigil magmahal.

ako si spiderman dahil may kakayahan siyang dalhin ang bigat ng mundo at manatiling bukas ang puso. ako siya kasi i would carry the love for the both of us through every moon that forgets my name. i would tend the light long after everyone else has gone home.

and if time itself should cease its counting, the clocks surrender their hands and stars themselves grow weary of burning… i’d still wish that in some corner of eternity untouched by forgetting… my love may continue reaching toward her

ako si spiderman at hindi ako titigil magmahal.

if you step past the limit of the known, there is a meadow where none of any rules is applied. sa mundo ko, the main supply of electricity has been cut forever. walang mga ilaw. the streetlights and bulbs do not exist here. night is default here instead. the night is a canvas illuminated by the luminescence of jade vine, hanging glowing clusters like teardrops lightened in emerald hue. the night is a silver light of the moon and stars.

and oh… the stars here… there are so so many of them. the sky is practically bursting with them. and as a matter of fact, me, myself, i am a star. everyone i know is probably so sick and tired of hearing it, but in my world, it’s the truth. sa mundo ko, i’m a total headturner, i’m magnetic, malakas arrive ko. but even as a star that commands the sky, i am still a yearner at my core. because honestly, what is love if it isn’t felt to the bone? what is love if it isn’t longed for enough?

even a mere star yearns for a galaxy to shine upon and because it is vast out there, in total darkness, i long for a light to be ignited, seen, adored and held in wonder. for what is love, if not the desire to be burned and gazed upon? to be able to withstand such distance, sustained only by the presence of longing, reaching to become one with another soul that seeks. it is not vast as it seems, nor dark as it may appear, for i know this much… that to ignite sparks and multitude layers of atoms means that i must seek from within, and what rises from within me will only seek the intersection of you.

at ang naghaharing uri rito? ang matriyarka. the matriarch rule. even if it exist only within the borders of my own world for now, women are free. free in the truest sense, to choose, speak, lead, create and wander. women hold the reins, guiding the expanse with soft hands and authority. sa mundo ko, tayo naman. in this world, i insist on something more radical, everyone can read, write, sing, dance, laugh and be fucking political. even joy is political, even language is political. even the body moving through space is political. no one is asked to silence themselves, shrink their voice, and make themselves less legible to power. in my world, the matriarchs rule, and everyone is allowed to be human, artistic, intellectual, emotional, loud, tender, contradictory and alive.

because no woman is free until all women are free! freedom is not complete if it stops at the border of one dream.

in this world, women do not apologize for their brilliance. our laughter occupies the streets, our ambitions are not treated as exceptions but as ordinary facts of life. our names are written into foundations of cities, histories, discoveries, and the constellations themselves. little girls grow up seeing reflections of possibility everywhere, and they inherit not limitations but experience. the matriarchs rule, guide, cultivate and preserve. the matriarchs understand that authority is strongest when it doesn’t need to remind others of its existence. because the strength of my world is not forged through fear and domination but through responsibility and presence. the hand that governs is the hand that nurtures. because women hold the center, care is not dismissed as weakness but as a force capable of holding civilizations, empathy is treated as a form of wisdom. to listen is considered as valuable as speaking, to understand is regarded as triumph.

the rivers bear the names of women who dreamed. mountains commemorate those who endured. galaxies are mapped after poets, scientists, mothers, daughters, revolutionaries and ordinary women whose lives were extraordinary simply by the fact they continued. memory itself bends toward us and history no longer forgets. and among these galaxies of my own making, tayo naman.

my world is a shrine built for the wildly imaginative, the creatively famished and dreamsick.

here, the boundary between folklore, pop and nostalgia dissolves. if you walk along you might see a unicorn drinking from a stream of liquid starlight. look up toward and you will spot the powerpuff girls racing across the dark sky like miniature comets, while snoopy slumbers peacefully atop the moon and tweety bird sings soft melodies from the branches of the glowing trees. somewhere nearby, totoro tends a garden of sampaguitas while the soot sprites carries lanterns through the undergrowth. miles morales is just sitting sa gilid ng bangketa, he’s a good friend, hanging out in the cool air, grabbing a spicy dokito burger from andoks because over here it’s way way way cheaper. sometimes gwen drops by carrying halo halo from a stand only on tuesdays.

white ladies are no longer feared here; they spend their evenings discussing poetry with bs psychology students. aswangs retired generations ago; turns out they were just tired. carabaos speak occasionally, only when they have something important to say. and because they are old creatures, older than many kingdoms and wiser than politicians, people listen carefully whenever they do.

in my sea, the sea turtles memorize poetry and recite it to fishermen.

there are atheists standing, laughing and eating angel’s burger at 2 in the morning. beside them sit angels who find the conversation interesting. somewhere nearby, the apo hiking society is still complete (mr danny javier is still alive) with their voices harmonizing in the dark as they sing “panalangin” to anyone who cares to listen.

and for getting around? only jeeps and tricycles exist here. we’re keeping the core of who we are, kasi tangina you wouldn’t wanna leave it there basta basta lang. the jeepney engine and trike are ingrained in us, woven into the very soul of this universe.

in this world, i am a florist. you can walk up to my counter whether you have a heavy heart or a light heart, and i will craft whatever bouquet you need, i’m going to arrange blooms according to whatever flower you feel like holding today, whether it’s wild jasmine, pink jasmine, star jasmine, poet’s jasmine or night blooming jasmine.

for those who write, create, bleed onto paper… sa mundo ko, walang hanggan ang tinta. the ink here never runs dry. the well never empties. every emotion is raw and visible, if you look closely into the center of everything you will find a fired-up heart, burning with unquenchable flame. you will see it through my eyes… a world completely stripped naked because my head is full of herebrained schemes. there are no towers blocking the sky. my world is just an open expanse, green, and a space to breathe.

there are no dreams to chase here, because we are the dream living. what a sight to behold… simply because we are finally free. our mind is no longer our jailor or our enemy… it is our truest companion.

and for contemplation of course… yosi everywhere. whatever your vice or comfort requires it’s ready… saigon, esse, marlboro, winston. everything is free, floating in the air, all waiting for you to light up, breathe in, and let the smoke drift into the light. (coming from a non chain smoker)

most importantly, the scaffolding of suffering, dogma, and ambiguity has been dismantled here, every rusted nail of shame and every rotten beam of guilt. no villains, the villains are dead. no evil, the evil is burnt. there are no conservative, old, crazy church people here, no self appointed guardians of mortality counting who you kiss, who you become, who you pray to, or whether you pray at all, no hypocrites pointing fingers at how you live. they are all gone, turned to dust and left behind.

and love is clean, deep and direct here. people say what they mean, they mean what they say. when they love, they love with their whole chest. absolutely, not with one foot out the door and another foot inside. no one loses dignity for feeling deeply, in fact depth is admired here. and yes there’s divorce! because people deserve clean exits when things end, because a love whose season has ripened and passed should be granted the memory of rest, rather than be made to linger among echoes of what once was, and because devotion finds its truest dignity in being chosen anew.

and absolutely no situationships. walang situationship dito, gago pahirap lang ‘yan sa buhay. kumbaga manahimik na lang. either you are cherished or you are let go with grace! no “let’s see where this goes”, no pretending not to care while caring excessively. if you like someone, say it; if you don’t, say that too. here, truth is counted among the highest forms of mercy. no one crowns vagueness and calls it romance. for people here have learned that bewilderment is not the same as depth, that murky water do not become deeper simply because one cannot see the bottom, that retreating into silence is no great mystery, that a guarded heart does not become profound merely by remaining beyond reach, that absence is not intrigue, that evasion is not wonder. for the heart was not fashioned to wander endless labyrinths of conjecture, that the heart was not created to live among confusion. it was created for communion. the heart hungers for a voice that names what it feels and means what it says.

the idea of paper wealth has no purchase here either. no money here; we have kisses as means of exchange. affection is the primary currency, intimacy the only trade. in my world, after centuries, the people said “how strange it is that mankind should spend the short span of her days pursuing paper bills and tokens guarded as though they possessed life themselves, while the heavens of affection remain untouched, that the constellations of tenderness lay undiscovered within the chambers of human heart.” how curious, indeed, a thing, to count coins more carefully than blessings, to measure wealth more diligently than love, to leave the heart unfed while the coffers grew full.

so i relinquished the order. a pandesal may cost a forehead kiss, a chocolate might require a long embrace, a beautiful song might be paid for with a hand held during sunset, the entire fiestas are funded through laughter, communities are sustained through tenderness, economies flourish through generosity. and strangely enough… nobody becomes poor, because affection multiplies when shared, care reproduces itself, love is one of the few resources that expands when given away. the wealthiest people in this world are not those who possess the most, they are those who have been loved abundantly, those whose lives are crowded with friendships, those who have kissed and been kissed, those who have held and been held.

we were never meant for the ground below, the weight of this existence was never our intended destiny. we were born in the moon, we were released into the space… that’s how we existed and that’s how it all started in my world. we are creatures made of stardust, smoke, flowers, greenlight, stars governed by the matriarchs, yearning with every atom of our being, riding jeeps under a sky with no limits, waiting for those who are brave to leave the lights behind and step into the dark.

all of this exists within me. the skies; the rivers; the cities named after dreamers; the galaxies governed by care; freedom; honesty; abundance of affection.

nasa akin ang lahat ng ito… gusto mo bang maging sa iyo rin? kung mamarapatin mong sumama sa mundo ko, maaari rin ‘tong maging sa ‘yo. for what is a paradise if not something shared, right? what’s a universe if there is no one beside me to witness its constellations? even the brightest stars seek companionship among the heavens.

if you ever find yourself suffocating under the ordinary, look up past the sky. look for the jade green horizon where noise dies down and the ink flows like water. i’ll be right there at the center of it all… blazing under the moon with yosi between my fingers and a bouquet ready in my arms. i’ll be there impossible to ignore… i’ll be there burning so brilliantly that the darkness has no choice but to bow.

halika, come closer. there is room for you here. anything you want, anywhere you want to be, dadamayan kita. across seas yet unnamed, through every horizon we have yet to discover, through sorrows that ask for nothing more than a hand willing to remain. as long as you won’t drift away, for among all the lights strewn across existence, yours remains the one to which my gaze unfailingly returns… as rivers return to the sea; as pilgrims return to the sacred ground; as the moon returns each night to the embrace of the heavens, so too do my eyes return to you. my shining star, my glistening moon, my everything gathered into one celestial body. sa milyun-milyong liwanag sa kalawakan, ikaw ang bulalakaw na aking nabingwit, ang talang nakaukit sa langit.

should darkness come and grant me this small honor… allow me to be your guiding star and anything you want me to be… allow me to become the lantern carried before your path… allow me to be whatever comfort the hour requires. because love is the joyful act of accompanying another soul through existence. for what is love, if not this?

i will walk beside you when the roads are clear. i’ll be yours and we’ll be free. because this world is mine. and now if you wish, it can be yours too. akin ito at magiging sa ‘yo na rin. sa akin at sa iyo.

so come take a seat in the jeep, baby. there, stars are out, the throne is set and we’re never going back!

i feel like i am being governed by absolute incompetence… like putanginang kabobohan ‘to.

mula sa presidenteng bobong adik, to a vice president na bobo rin at baliw, down to the senators and local mayors na wala ring mga alam. the Philippines is being treated like a pigsty and i am expected to swallow the rotten and spoiled leftovers of their greed.

it feels personal and it is deeply personal. my own sense of dignity is already at an alltime low. tangina araw araw na lang i am dragging my exhausted body forward entirely on my own. bata pa naman ako e and i’m supposed to have a future but this heart of mine feels like it’s running completely on empty.

meanwhile, these politicians continue to invent new ways to screw us over. i mean it from the absolute depths of my soul and the very marrow of my bones…. sama makakain sila ng panis at habang buhay na magtae, o pwede namang mamatay na lang sila.

it’s one thing to be angry at the news and it’s another to realize the rot has settled into my own bones. that’s where i am right now. it’s my own existential freefall na rayneow.

i look at my life, my heavy limbs, my tired mind, and i’m forced to ask myself: tangina, ano ba pinaglalaban mo?

who am i to be screaming into the void? isa lamang akong hamak na lisensyadong agrikulturista. i did the work i passed the boards, i earned the title. all because i was naive enough to dream of a thriving future for Philippine agriculture. i wanted to be on the ground, making a difference where it actually mattered.

but look at me now. i’m not even practicing my own profession. madalang ang hiring… walang trabahong naaayon sa natapos ko. the system doesn’t want innovation, it doesn’t want youth, it doesn’t want progress. it just wants to stay broken. ayun, putangina. what a joke.

they love to feed us the romanticized narrative of “passion” to serve the country and to help the backbone of the nation. but let’s be real…

tangina, hindi ka mapapakain ng boluntaryong pagtulong sa mga magsasaka.

volunteering my time and my expertise to help struggling farmers might warm the soul, but it leaves the stomach empty. i am trapped in this paradox where the very sector i trained to build up is the one being starved out by the people at the top.

i was born into a world i didn’t ask to be part of, only to be handed a script written by tyrants and thieves. they get the luxury of playing god with my life, while i am left to figure out how to survive how to cope and how to keep my sanity intact in a country that feels like it’s actively trying to kill me.

they always tell you that youth is supposed to be the prime of your life. tangina, joke after joke oh! kasi instead of dreaming, i am just surviving. i feel like an old soul trapped in a deteriorating frame.

the people around me, all of us hustling, bleeding and burning out just to keep our heads above water. i hate how i’ve normalized the trauma. i’m losing track of who i am outside of my exhaustion. when my daily energy is consumed by just getting through the day, what is left of my actual soul? i used to look ahead with curiosity. now the future just feels like a looming threat to me…more of the same politicians, more inflation, more indignity, and less of me left to fight it.

it always comes down to the loose change in my pocket.

the other night, i stood in front of the sari-sari store, weighing my options. marlboro or chesterfield? red or light? a momentary escape or a slightly cheaper burn?

then i dug my hand into my pocket. 3 pesos. that’s all i had left. 3 miserable coins rattling against each other. tangina, i can’t even afford the fucking illusion of a vice anymore. i can’t even buy the three minutes of peace that comes with watching smoke disappear into the air. i can’t even establish my own bisyo.

“pabili na nga lang pong snowbear.”

that’s the punchline of my whole joke. i wanted to burn something down, even if it was just a cigarette but instead i’m sitting here sucking on a cheap menthol candy just to feel something cold in my throat. just to trick my lungs into thinking they’re breathing.

when the system rots, it doesn’t just take away my big dreams…my career goals, my financial stability, my hopes for the country. it crawls all the way down into the tiniest corners of my daily life. it invades my private escapes. even my 3 pesos doesn’t buy me a choice… it just buys a delay. like a humiliating reminder that i am living hand-to-mouth and breath-to-breath, habang nabubuhay sa ilalim ng mga lider na nagnanakaw ng bilyon-bilyon, samantalang ako, kahit isang stick kailangan ko pang kwentahin kung kaya ko bang bilhin.

a vice is supposed to be a personal choice like a small boundary i set between myself and the world. but when even my vices are priced out of reach, i am left entirely exposed to the reality.

this is the legacy of duterte. this is the fault of marcos. it literally feels like a punch in my gut every single day. they broke this country and i am the one left choking on the smoke.

i feel like part of a generation that is burning out before we ever even get the chance to catch fire. i am being wrung dry by the government.

when i am staring into the void, i look for anything to hold onto. for me, it’s this keyboard, it’s these words. if the state of the world is going to strip me of my dignity and my peace of mind, i refuse to let it take my voice.

hindi ako sumusulat para baguhin ang isip ng mga putanginang ‘to,

kundi dahil kung hindi ko ito maisusulat nang buong-buo,

baka ako mismo ang magliyab, hanggang maging abo.

isinusuot pa rin kita na tila isa kang sugat na tumangging magsara… nakadikit na sa aking laman, nakabaon sa aking mga buto, nakaukit sa bawat dasal na matagal nang hindi dininig.

alang-alang sa 'yo, haharapin ko ang nagiisang oso. at kung nanaisin nitong lapain ako, ihahandog ko ang aking leeg na tila iyon ang huling panalangin na marunong akong bigkasin. sapagkat higit kong kinatatakutan ang mundong wala ka kaysa ang kamatayang may pangil.

hindi naman kasi kita maaalis sa laman ng aking kaluluwa. at hindi rin kita magagawang kamuhian.

kasi ang poot ay para sa mga nakalilimot at ako'y isinumpang makaalala.

lagi akong naroon sa lugar na iniwan mo. laging nakaupo. laging naghihintay, habang isa-isang nabubulok ang mga oras sa aking paanan.

yumuko na nga ang aking dangal. ipinagpalit ko ang pagmamataas sa pag-asang baka isang araw maalala mong may bangkay na patuloy pang humihinga at umaasa sa iyong pagbabalik. marumi na at duguan. 

ang aking mga kamay ay amoy pa rin ng iyong pagkawala.

lagi akong naroon sa lugar na iniwan mo, nakasabit, hindi sa lubid, kundi sa pagitan ng pag-ibig at ng pagkabaliw. kasi isa akong bangkay na tumangging mamatay sapagkat iniibig pa rin kita.

isa akong dasal na isinulat sa dugo. isa akong baliw na umiibig.

ngunit marahil nga’y iyan ang aking pinakamabigat na sumpa ‘no? ang mahalin ka nang hindi nauubos. ang hintayin ka nang hindi gumagalaw. at manatili sa mismong lugar na matagal mo nang tinalikuran.

the universe is not expanding. it is exhaling with one long breath pushed out from a singularity. the size of nothing. hot and total. there’s a god sneezing itself into being and i was in that sneeze. i was in the nucleosynthesis, in the iron core of something that collapsed, in the shockwave that scattered me across parsecs until i found a planet wet enough to hold me for a while.

i am the stardust that survived the supernova. the carbon forged in stellar cores billions of years before this body learned to breathe. the oxygen that was once the exhalation of dying giants. i am not made from the earth. i am made from what fell into it. there is a difference; there has always been a difference.

fear is a schwarzschild radius: you orbit it for years not knowing you’ve already crossed the threshold, and inside… time bends. a life can feel like a billion years or the half-life of something unstable. i have been both radioactive with longing and cold as the space between galaxy filaments, decaying and luminous.

here is what they don’t tell you about the big crunch: it is not death. it is the universe closing its eyes, all the light pulling back, all the matter gathering like a breath held. then the bounce. this is not tragedy. this is the universe remembering itself like a cyclic cosmology, not a line with a beginning and end but a breath, a heartbeat, a tide.

out and back: every planck epoch a new verse of the same ancient poem, every collapse a homecoming and every singularity a seed.

i have looked at the cosmic microwave background and felt recognized. that faint afterglow of the first fire is in me. residual. the way homesickness is residual. the way belonging to another world leaves a frequency no instrument here can name, but the body knows. and i am entangled with the moon the way quantum particles are entangled across impossible distances; what happens to it happens somewhere in me. its waxing is a kind of fullness i feel in my chest. its waning is a hollow i’ve mistaken my whole life for grief. its new phase is a darkness that is not absence, the way a vacuum in space is not empty but seething with particles.

i follow its synodic rhythm like a tide follows what it cannot see. the moon pulls the oceans and it pulls something in me too. some ancient fluid memory, some tidal locking of the soul. even in its absence, in the moonless nights when the sky opens its full depth. the milky way spills itself across the dark. i feel it there. its albedo is gone but its gravity is unchanged; its light is borrowed from the sun and given back to us diffused. and isn’t that what love is? isn’t that what i am, reflected light made gentle by distance?

i was not born. i was deposited. i was carried on a stellar wind from a civilization that learned too much, that seeded its consciousness into the dust and let the dust become new suns. become new worlds. become me.

standing in a garden on a pale blue dot at the edge of an unexceptional arm of an unexceptional galaxy, feeling at home. the home is not a place. the home is space. it is the plasma and the pressure. the spectral lines of hydrogen and helium that read like a language i spoke before i had a mouth. the absolute zero silence between constellations that feels more like the silence of a room you grew up in. the light from proxima centauri that takes four years to reach us.

maaaring lumawak ang buong uniberso hanggang sa walang-hanggan o lumiit ito hanggang sa maging wala at hindi nito mababago ang simpleng katotohanan na ang aking grabidad ay nagsisimula at nagtatapos kung nasaan ka.

minsan, pinagmamasdan kita habang naroroon ka lang, walang kamalay-malay sa espasyong sinasakop mo sa aking isipan. maaaring tumatawa ka sa isang maliit na bagay, nakatingin sa labas ng bintana, o naliligaw sa sarili mong mga isipin, at isang nag-uumapaw na pananabik ang lulukob sa akin. naiisip ko tuloy kung nararamdaman mo ba ang mismong bigat ng kung gaano ka kalalim, mahal ko.

para sa akin hindi ka lang basta isang tao sa mundo; ikaw mismo ang planeta ko. kung ang lahat ay maglaho, kung ang mga ilaw ay mamatay at ang mga lungsod ay tumahimik, basta’t nasa akin ka, nasa akin na ang lahat ng kakailanganin ko.

ikaw ang aking pako, ang aking hangin, at ang tanging bahagi ng buong unibersong ito na may perpektong kahulugan.