Running Away

I will have to catch the train

and leave you. For I am

a wanderer in search

of a destiny. Only here

squeezing in time,

making  a sidetrip

for memory’s sake.

Holiday is sweet

in these short hours.

 

Recollecting the good

old-natured yesterday

becoming vague now.

And in your eyes

there are outlines

of the life you wish

you had with me.

How could it be

so beautiful? Still

I cannot stay, if only

I exist in a fairytale.

 

There is a real world

outside your nutshell.

Breaking away beyond

here- that I must go.

I need to exist

day after day

among other strangers

flocking the city streets.

How can you keep

a dream from going on?

I am not so sure, while

 

I catch train after train

hoping not to return.

Ignoring the illusions

fulfilling your fantasy.

I found you, still,

a girl and a child.

With the same old

story to tell. And you

do not see that I have

become so different.

So far away, a distance

far too wide to belong.

 

Love is not possible

between you and me.

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Keys to Some Secrets

We have cried together, seeing

the pages of our lives torn into pieces.

And how we knitted to rebuild it,

and washed them like dirty linens

in the laundry. Just like a potter

we build and sculpt in us

a new mold of the world

we never knew existed.

 

We exchanged our boxes

of secrets and a set of keys.

 

We swore by the heart. And

made a vow that we would keep

them locked and tightly sealed.

That we would be keeping each

other’s stories, only to ourselves

and no one else. And for the longest

possible time, it  has come to a point,

a reckoning. The seal of promise

had been broken.

 

Unlocking my box and spilling

the foam of words into little teardrops-

they fall like brimstones and fire

from the night sky, now. And the moon

must have hidden its face turning

into red, in anger and in shame. Bleeding

in the agony of a broken promise.

An impending death to a friendship.

 

Still, I am keeping my silence, thinking deeply

if it is worth to hide your keys in my pocket?

If keeping your box tightly sealed, or at once,

let them out in the open, will exact revenge?

While my flesh quivered at the thought

of why would you dare crossing the line,

betraying my trust. While my bones splintered

at the thought that I would dearly want you

squirm in your own bloodbath, redeeming self.

 

But I decided not to. 

 

Letting the ghost of your betrayal haunt you down

into your grave. A tormented soul, wandering

the dark halls searching for some kind of atonement.

Asking forgiveness.

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Pasig River And The Warrior Child

I once had the chance to swim the Pasig River when I was just about five or six, I guess.  An uncle, who was a robust teenager that time, invited by his friends, tagged me along with him one afternoon.  We walked across J.P Rizal street and descended some flight of steps going to the not-so-murky water.

Uncle led my hand and told me not to be afraid. And when we dipped ourselves into the water, I felt the river current slowly pushing its force against my fragile frame. Suddenly uncle let go of his hand, and I was left wading by myself. He just laughed and laughed, along with his friends to see me panicking and gasping for breath. When I was just about to submerge into the water, he just snatched my hand in time and landed me safely back to the steps.

I was panting heavily as I watched amazingly to uncle and his friends vigorously swimming against the river current. Hoping that I could grow instantly  and have the strength to swim as long as I wish. 

But when aunt, uncle’s big sister, learned of our little river escapade, she scolded uncle for taking me down to the river, saying that the polluted water could make me more sick.  And aunt blares her disappointment at the two of us and told  me that it is too dangerous to swim in Pasig River, and I could get myself drowned.  My mother has allowed me to stay at aunt’s home for the summer to have my routinary medical EENT checkups. 

I just kept on listening to my aunt’s endless rant to uncle and heard her say that she was really disappointed with me and could send me right away back home. But I just  smiled  and throw a toothy grin to uncle, silently thanking him for taking me down the river.

I am thanking him for expanding the fragiled radius of my being. A new-found freedom, to allay fear of not sizing up to what other boys of my age can do. I don’t want my being sickly hamper the extent of what I can do. To belong and be accepted to a fraternal brotherhood like uncle’s.  And it is a feat that begins my tearing down of the walls of my sheltered existence.  A youthful independence. 

I am thanking him, because that’s when I have learned to stand up and defend myself when I am being wronged. To keep up heading on even when the circumstances are getting against me like a fierce river current drowning all the strength I could muster.  To exceed the limitations of what my mind tells me that I can only achieve that much.

As a child then, I believe, most of us, have become warriors against our own. When we have learned how to be brave even when we were afraid and often get discouraged.  When we  are walking out there in the world,  somewhere, winning our inner battles and living uncertainly day by day, and never giving up. 

Pasig River is my Rubicon,  where a warrior child in me has been borne out of the mighty rush of the river current while bailing myself out for survival. An invisible force pushing me to edge out and discover frontiers I have never been to before, now possible and within reach.    

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