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Burning

The evening comes, I turn to you, a burning building. The fire sways before me, a dancing spectacle. Outside the people have gathered, Their mouths wide open, Are they screaming? It becomes impossible to tell As the fire grows hungry, Consumes you, and you let it. The children are crying, Their mothers hush them, amber eyes glinting in the dark. I look at you, burning and burning, For what might be the last time I ever will. From afar, The ashes look so much like dandelion seeds Released to the wind, As if to say, here, take them, remember me. The fire does not flinch, I walk away, all soaked in sweat and smoke. A name escapes the burning window, Softly dissolves in the sky. When the morning comes, All that will be left is a charred photograph of home, And only I will remember what it meant. — Vanessa T.

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“Telephone Call from 2030”

— Short story: 04 My cat died earlier that day. I live alone in a remote town along the outskirts of Metro Cebu far from my family and I’m not the friendliest person in the neighborhood so technically, my cat was my one and only companion. I found him by the sidewalk on my way home from work when he was still small. He was abandoned in a garbage dump. I nursed him all by myself throughout the years, made monthly appointments with a local veterinarian, and fed him well even when I was on a tight budget at times. I was confident that he would somehow live long. Unfortunately, he didn’t. He died peacefully on the lawn in my front yard after three years. I found him lying there one morning, stiff and cold under the blue sky, when I was about to fill his bowl with his favorite meal – big chunks of salmon that I bought from the grocery store the night before. He wasn’t very healthy for a cat, so I admit that I felt kind of relieved that he didn’t die a painful death; he simply returned to the cycle of nature like everything else. But then again he was my only friend in this world, and I’d have fought for him to stay alive if I had known that he was about to die. Strangely enough, he hadn’t really shown any signs that he was terribly ill for the past few days.   It terrifies me sometimes – to love something that death can touch.  

I decided to bury him in the same spot where he died and went to handpick flowers from my neighbor’s garden, which I kindly asked for, of course, to put on top of the mound of dirt. I’m extremely meticulous when it comes to arrangements so I spent the entire morning tidying up the front yard and making the lawn look presentable at the very least now that a patch of grass had been dug up and removed from the terrain.  

I never liked the idea of going to the gym, and the local park was too far away, so I made sure to choose an apartment with a spacious front yard to run around. Both former options weren’t practical in the first place. I thought it was a waste of time and money to apply for a gym membership or walk to the park every single day. At home, I don’t have to worry about anyone or anything else. Every day my cat would quietly watch me from the front porch as I began my early morning workout sessions in my front yard with a portable FM radio that my father gave me before I moved out. Most of the time my cat would fall back asleep, but on some days, when he wasn’t feeling too weak, he would walk around the lawn as well halfway through the session. A terrible sadness washed over me as I realized that starting tomorrow it would not be the same anymore. I was truly and completely alone. 

It was already past three in the afternoon when I went back inside to change into clean clothes and make lunch. My cat wasn’t particularly loud or stubborn, but for some reason his absence came into being and filled every corner of my house. The entity was shapeless, nothing more than a knot of air, but it was pulsing with life. I chopped some vegetables to make soup, and the entire time I felt as if something was lodged in my windpipe. Lying down on the floor to catch my breath while I waited for the water to boil, I reached for the telephone. I called my parents and told them about everything that had happened to clear my mind.  A warm pool of afternoon light draped over my body and spilled onto the floor. Naturally my mother wanted me to go back home but I insisted that I couldn’t simply leave this apartment, and for me to move forward, I needed to face my problems, not run away from them. There was a long uncomfortable silence at the other end of the line, and my mother breathed out a heavy sigh, as if she had been holding her breath the entire time, perhaps waiting for me to change my mind. I knew better though. Suit yourself, she said. 

“When things are tough, you know you can always come home, right?”   

“I love you,” I said, staring blankly at the ceiling. I could hear the sound of the boiling pot of vegetable soup rattling in the kitchen. I grabbed the cord and pulled on it lightly just to make sure that the telephone was still intact, and that whatever my mother just said was not something that my mind merely made up. “I always love you,” she replied. I asked her to hang up first, and the disconnect tone – a series of short repetitive beeps – echoed in my ears for some time. The moment I placed it back, the phone rang. At first the ringing sounded strange, like it came from someplace else, or my house was submerged underwater. The sound grew louder, becoming one with the amorphous entity that my cat left in his wake. I waited until my ears hurt before I picked up the call. 

“Did you find him?” It was a woman, probably in her mid-thirties, who sounded like she was out of breath. 

“I’m sorry, who?” I asked, glancing at the telephone cord once again to see if it was still connected to the base. 

“Your husband. He’s been gone for days.”

“I don’t have a husband. You probably have the wrong num—“

“What year is it?” For some reason my mind went blank so I looked briefly at my wall calendar. “It’s 2020. Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to say but I’m going through a lot right now and I don’t have the energy to deal with a prank call.”

“But you will lose him, in the year 2030.” I was speechless from the exhaustion and felt like I was standing on a tightrope – one wrong move and I will slip. I was simply too tired to wrap my head around what was happening. “You should understand though. There are far greater tragedies in this world than yours,” the woman said before hanging up. 

I let the handset dangle from the telephone base on the wall. How much time had passed I couldn’t tell. I rolled over and pulled my frail body into a fetal position. I imagined that my cat was sitting on the front porch. Are there truly far greater tragedies in this world than mine? I couldn’t help but wonder. Somewhere, a mother may have lost her only child. Someone else’s wife may have crossed the intersection too soon and died in the car crash. But I lost my one and only companion, the glue that held me together for the past three years. There is no lesser or greater tragedy.  

Each time I close my eyes my cat is always there in the thick blanket of darkness, watching every move that I make. If I had received a call three years ago, maybe I would have known that he was supposed to die this year, and I could have done something about it. Still, how can I tell? The world is a strange place. Sometimes there is no answer to our question, and even if we do find the answer, it’s not always what we were looking for in the first place.  — Vanessa T.

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Generational Trauma: On Why My Hands Tremble

At lunch When I was asked to pour water into my father’s glass, He says, your hands tremble so much And they do. I thought it must be the trauma That my ancestors had to endure for centuries Every life spent cowering in fear Trembling hands the least of all their worries Tomorrow, whose tongue will the white bearded man cut off? Whose eyes will they feed to the dogs? Whose home will dissolve into ashes, never to be seen again? At night the children’s bodies float in dreams of a utopia My name is a living evidence Of this relentless tremor A leash around my neck We claim the names of the people who stole our motherland We wear the faces of our enemies and absolve them of their sins I thought It must be possible for grief to be handed down Generation after generation

Today, at lunch, My father says, your hands tremble so much I do not say a word about the nameless grief That sits at the bottom of my stomach.

A dead weight Even now, the fear lingers. — Vanessa T.

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”Quizás, Quizás, Quizás” 

— Short story: 03 Some of you may have gone through a similar situation like this, or have met someone who made such a huge impact in your life that whatever past you had long before meeting them felt more like a hazy dream seen through a dusty window than an actual lived experience. Sometimes we wish things could have been different, but our memories are just what they are – photographs of the past that we can only see but never touch.  

She moved into the same women’s dormitory as me on the second week of classes, one reserved for the students in the higher brackets whose parents earn more than a few hundred thousand dollars every month. This was how I met her. We happened to run into each other in the hallway when it was late in the afternoon, and it seemed to me that she was lost and couldn’t speak. She stopped me, blocking my way with her luggage, and typed what she ought to say on her phone. Her sentences came out as broken fragments that made no sense if I hadn’t been patient enough to ask her what she meant. She revised her sentences a number of times, each one coming out grammatically inaccurate. The words were merely rearranged, and it looked like she was genuinely having a hard time articulating her thoughts.  I asked a couple of questions, and it was strange that she did understand what I was trying to say because at times she would nod and her eyes would light up. How did she not know how to construct sentences right? I wondered idly. After some time I finally understood what she was trying to tell me: she couldn’t find her room. She felt relieved, exhaling slowly as if it was the first time that someone cared enough to help her. Her keys indicated that it should be on the fifth floor, but the room numbers seemingly jumped from 507 to 509. Room 508 was missing. That or she didn’t bother to look around one more time to check if it was really there or not, so I accompanied her to the fifth floor.

Coincidentally, my room happened to be in the same floor. She was right, though. Room 508 was indeed missing, but oddly, I noticed that there was a space between 507 and 509 where the room should have been situated. Instead there was nothing but a blank wall before us that gave away no hint that a room or a door had been there in the first place. We both went back to the school’s main office to ask for help about the missing room. Because she could not express her thoughts very well, I stood by her side the whole time, explained the whole situation, and asked for them to reassign her to another room instead. She was given a new room, which happened to be next to mine, and she seemed happy about it. Thank you, she wrote on her phone. “You’re welcome,” I responded quietly. She smiled, went ahead, and locked the door behind her.  

She seemed normal like any other girl you’d meet on your freshman year in college, I thought. There was nothing extraordinary about her at first glance. Strange as our first encounter had been, I felt safe and happy for some reason that it did happen. I often wondered about how she was able to communicate with other people in the past though or if she had always lived like that, but I was never able to work up the courage to ask her. Sometimes the thoughts would be so loud and relentless that I couldn’t sleep. Whenever our eyes meet, I would get the feeling that I knew her for a very long time but just couldn’t seem to remember her at all. She sensed my unease at some point and asked me about it, with her usual broken sentences written on her phone, or on her notebook if she didn’t have her phone with her. I couldn’t find the right words to say so I brushed it off. My head had been foggy for days. Whenever I searched and tried to grasp the right words they would lose shape and fall right through the spaces between my fingers like sand, lost in a nameless void. She never asked me again about that. She might have thought she offended me or something.

She had a strange habit, one that went on for years. At the far end of the hallway in our dormitory was a small balcony, overlooking the courtyard and another dormitory reserved for students belonging to the lower brackets. The building looked inexpensive and dull, which stood in stark contrast to ours. A lone Philippine flag stuck out of a window to the farthest right. Beyond that was the beautiful sight of the sea. Some days I’d find her leaning against the railing of the balcony as she stared at the scenery for a long time until the sun set. One afternoon, after my last class, I asked her why she kept doing that. I wasn’t sure if my words had gotten through. She pulled out her phone and only expressed that she never understood why the students had to be divided according to their socioeconomic status, or why they had to be separated from us. It felt wrong, she wrote right after. She didn’t answer my question but I didn’t press on for answers. Perhaps it didn’t matter. Basked in the mellow afternoon light, she looked beautiful, almost ethereal. Her lips were slightly parted, like she was about to say something, and I felt my heart well up at the thought of hearing her speak for the first time. I had refused to believe that her condition was real; she’d just gotten too good at pretending it was.

“Maybe one day they won’t have to be,” I said after quite some time. For a moment she was lost in thought. That was how I knew that perhaps she’d been thinking about something else. Then, like an afterthought, she stretched her hand out and wrote the word “maybe” in the empty wind. I couldn’t smile. Something about that gesture filled me with so much grief that I, too, felt hopeless. I realized that the word could mean anything, and the uncertainty weighed heavier than anything else in that moment.  

A tear rolled down her cheek. Wordlessly, I took her in my arms and we stayed like that until the night chased away what was left of the late afternoon glow as the sun sank below the horizon.  

— ✼ —

The habit never stopped. She did this two to three times a week for two years. When I wasn’t busy with school activities and had a few hours to spare, I’d bring some snacks with me to share with her as we stared at the same scenery until it got dark. Occasionally, there would be students playing volleyball in the courtyard, but I noticed that she would rather stare at the same old building below us than watch the game. I didn’t mind. She probably had her own reasons. When she was in a bright mood, I’d teach her how to construct sentences properly to help her with some of her classes that required reading and writing essays. Over time her sentences improved and became more coherent. I learned more about her, too. I asked her to write her own autobiography as a form of writing practice. I had long forgotten most of the details that she had written there, but a few resonated with me and stayed at the back of my mind. Her parents had moved to London just days after she graduated from high school. She also mentioned about her plans to move out after college. Money wasn’t a problem, of course. She could have moved to London and studied there long ago, but she chose to stay here for some sort of social responsibility that she wanted to take on.

I wanted to make a difference in here, no matter how little – these were the last words in her written account.  

“What does that mean?” I asked politely, grabbing another apple from the plastic bag between us filled with snacks that I bought from the school cafeteria. She paused for a moment as if collecting her thoughts. I just want things to change, she wrote, that’s all. As young as I was I had not known what she meant by that just yet.

The day after that, we were warned about an incoming storm that forced the school administrators to call off classes for the next few days. After all, some of the students couldn’t afford to stay in the dormitory and had to go home every single day. The news was so sudden that we didn’t have enough time to prepare nor were we able to foresee the consequences. Communication lines were cut off and the electricity had been temporarily shut down.

When the storm came seemingly sweeping up from the depths of the sea nearby, the winds blew so strong and howled along with the sound of heavy rain splashing against the concrete – like nature was in deep anguish and had decided to ravage everything in its path as soon as it set foot on earth. Soon enough, rainwater mixed with seawater flooded the school grounds. Everyone else staying in the first three floors had to clamber up to our floor where it was safest. This wasn’t the same case for the students in the lower brackets as their building was only two floors high. The windows that were probably built with sub-standard materials could no longer hold out against the current of the floodwater, which made everything worse, and the water soon flooded the entire building. We watched in absolute horror from the balcony, unable to do anything. Some were shouting and crying while the others stood there frozen, their expressions hinted that of fear and a mixture of emotions. Maybe this is all just a dream, I insisted to believe, but the longer I stood there, the more it dawned upon me that this was the reality that we had built, and I was gripped with such terrible sadness and hopelessness once again. She however acted on her emotions and ran downstairs to help everyone else stranded in that building whose lives were now in danger.  

I tried to stop her but she shoved me away, tears staining her beautiful, pale, reddening cheeks. I wanted to go and help but some greater force was pulling me back, telling me something terrible awaited all of us, so I watched as she disappeared into the flooded hallways. I didn’t realize I was already crying, begging for her to stay, for the rain to stop, for everyone else separated from us to make it across. Maybe one day they won’t have to be, my own words echoed back to me. One day it wouldn’t be any different; they wouldn’t have to be apart from everyone else.

A few students made it across. The others were unfortunate – and eventually drowned, carried away by the rainwater. The storm finally stopped about five hours later. She never returned, and for some reason her body was never found. 

— ✼ —

The school was filed with serious charges after that disaster that my parents decided that it was best to enroll me to another school. I left for good, and not once did I look back. I transferred to a decent university far from my hometown, moved into an apartment located in a high-rise building by myself, worked a part-time job during my senior year at a pastry shop nearby, and dated a few men and women to try and forget about the past. None of them stayed for long. I understood though and accepted life as it came. It wasn’t like I had any intention of keeping them around. It was too much of a burden. 

One morning, as I was washing the dishes after I had a good bowl of yakisoba and orange juice for breakfast, my phone rang, which to me was unusual. My parents would never call at eight in the morning, and every single one of my friends knew that I dreaded answering phone calls. I put it off for some time, focusing my attention on removing the leftovers and carefully washing the dishes, but the ringing never stopped. I closed the faucet and checked to see who was calling. It was an unknown number. I picked up the call, leaned against the window, and watched the busy road far below me absentmindedly. I intended to let the other person speak first. For a moment, there was silence. I pressed the phone against my ear for some time until I could hear the faint sound of music playing in the background, but I had no way of knowing if it was real or if it was all in my head. Quizás, quizás, quizás.

“I want you to know that I loved you. Maybe if we meet again in another time and another place I will be able to tell you this. But what’s past is past, and I am far, far away from you.” I had never once heard her speak before, but I recognized her voice in an instant and felt my heart sank farther and farther into the bottomless void. Before I could say anything in response, the call was cut off. Parts of me were already slipping away. Feeling nauseous, I sat down and stared at the thick clouds in the horizon.

My train of thoughts made their way back to the day when we first met – where we stood before a blank wall trying to make out the outline of a door in that vacant space or any hint that a room had been there before. I wondered if I looked harder this time I would find her there, suspended in another space, a million light years away from my reach.

Needless to say, I had so many questions, but that was the first and the last time I heard her voice.

— ✼ —

This may sound ridiculous to you, but there is no way that I am making this up. My memories are often vague and foggy, like a distant dream with no definite form, but I can’t seem to forget about her. Even now, five years later, I remember her voice very clearly. I have revisited my memories of her quite often, and each time I do, I feel that a part of me dissipates quietly into the night, never to be seen again.  — Vanessa T.

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We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears.

Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea (via quotespile)

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”The Woman, the Changing Painting, and the Missing Person” 

— Short story: 02

“The extreme sensitivity to initial conditions meant that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings over the Amazon could influence the weather in China.” 

The painting changes each time you look at it, the local residents often said, but I had lived in the city for far too long to believe in the myth of the changing painting hanging in the bus station. I stood on the same spot every day, right across me was the mysterious painting of a woman dressed in all white, looking back at the viewer with a solemn look on her face, or turning away, no one knew, in an ominous background filled with patches of green and yellow paint unevenly laid out, which appeared to be a forest from a distance.

I would stare at this picture for long stretches of time every morning before I took the bus to my workplace, sometimes for at least ten minutes, and on some days, for an astounding thirty minutes, if the bus took longer than normal to arrive, yet nothing changed at that time. As a keen observer of many things and with no one to talk to, I spent most of my time just staring at random objects in the bus station. In my head I imagined there was a whole other world inside them, one invisible to the human eye but it is there, and in that place, everyone is quiet. Here, in my world, there are always people talking, and it irks me that most of their words hold no weight, like a packet of ketchup that comes with buying a burger at a store just casually being passed on to another person. Some days I would listen to the radio blaring inside a small store that served meals for commuters who didn’t have much time to spare to prepare their own food. The news was always about the same missing person – a man in his mid-thirties – whose identity was too vague for people to care, but I listened to the monotonous voice of the reporter anyway, simply because I had no choice.

There was something else that bothered me for months: the strange sight of a woman dressed in a black pencil skirt, brown jacket and a plain cream blouse tucked in underneath. Like me, she stood on the same spot every morning at the bus station, leaning against the wall, watching people come and go, and I had never once seen her leave that place. I doubt anyone else ever noticed her. Her hand bag sat on the floor like a child left ignored by the mother. She held a can of beer in one hand, her finger gently tapping the aluminum surface as beads of water ran across it. Head tilted to the side so she was looking at the spot where buses load and unload, there was a serene look in her eyes, as if she was waiting for something or someone, and she had grown to accept the fact that whatever or whoever that was, they will never come. I imagined she has lived in this world for a hundred years, cursed to wait for eternity. Some days the urge to walk up to her and start a conversation was too overwhelming that I'd often get dizzy. Every morning, for ten months, I would walk past her when my bus arrived. Ten inches away from each other – that was how close we had only ever been. Even as one day I found the courage to talk to her, I kept my distance.

“Do you ever go to work?” was my first question. For a moment, she was silent. It was the first time that I felt uncomfortable with silence. She threw me a sidelong glance then gazed outside once again.

“There’s no point,” she responded.

Her voice was softer than I expected. Standing next to her whilst keeping a safe distance, I calculated that I was at least two inches taller than her. She looked pale in the morning light. 

“So,” she sighed, “does the painting ever change?”

“Not to me.”

Again, silence fell upon us. All I could hear was the ambient noise swirling around the station and the faint sound of the radio reporting the missing person.

“Does beer taste good this early in the morning?” I shuffled on my feet.

She laughed quietly. “It’s the only drink that I like.”

“Why don’t we grab something to eat then?” I knew that my bus was coming in five minutes, but for the first time, I didn’t mind. She nodded, the gesture was so small that it was almost unnoticeable, but my peripheral vision was sharp enough to tell.

This happened three years ago. Every day I would be late to work so I could spend time with this woman, a complete stranger. Suddenly, after a couple of breakfast dates and stories shared over a plate of pasta or grilled cheese sandwiches, she vanished into thin air.

I never saw her again. 

— ✼ —

I’m a firm believer that everything in this world is interconnected, at least in one way or another. Threads bind every living and nonliving thing, and so when one of these is cut off, everything and everyone else connected to this within a certain radius will most likely feel that something has changed. People tell me that this is how the butterfly effect works – a single flap at the right timing can trigger a chain of events to happen.  

Because we were working closely with forests and the natural environment in general, this was how I trained myself to think. My team specializes in field work so every now and then we would be sent off to a certain place to observe how a local community manages a protected area for a specific purpose, which was often for ecotourism. One day we were sent to a mangrove forest to read about a community-based management project. 

I was already 23 years old, living alone, and working there was the first time I had felt the butterfly effect – one that changed my life forever.

— ✼ —

It was a fine Tuesday afternoon when we arrived at the site. The area covered for the main ecotourism activity, which was in the form of a paddleboat tour, was not exceptionally large, but it was enough to give you a good glimpse of the wonder of nature. Over the years, the government had reported an increase in the number of tourists visiting the place that had caused negative changes in the natural environment. After quickly looking around, we proceeded to the main office where the meeting was supposed to be conducted. We sat in a small compact room with a round table in the middle, papers piled up on top of it, and a team of local residents standing around dressed in a casual manner that seeing us, all clad in synthetic leather jackets, boots and expensive jeans, raised an unnecessary tension in the room. There were five of us and three local residents who appeared to be the ones managing the place. The walls were overly decorated with creative symbols and slogans that call for the preservation of nature. A cool breeze from the river blew in through the partly opened window.  

I was mostly quiet during the meeting as I scanned the papers and read about the project. Our team leader was the one who spoke with the managers. As a linguistic expert, she understood them better than the rest of us did. She and I had an affair at some point when we first met, but things simply did not work out between us. She was outspoken and lively, and I was the complete opposite, but I genuinely did like her. We decided to break it off after a month of being together. Since then, an invisible wall had risen between us, and neither of us had the courage to move past it to mend our friendship. We unknowingly carried it everywhere we go like a stubborn ghost clinging to our backs.

The meeting went on for an hour or two. I had simply exhausted all my words for that day that talking to anyone after that seemed like an unbearable task.

Every Wednesday of the week we would return to the site to fetch the reports and observe the situation. One late afternoon, as I was resting on a bench overlooking the river, a group of fireflies flew around a certain spot in the forest. There were so many of them that from afar, one might mistake them for a giant floating lamp, and then it happened: for one blistering moment, they formed the unmistakable shape of a human being running in the forest. The sight was blinding. I sucked in a deep breath. The fireflies dispersed at the sound of one of my team members calling my name, but I remained frozen in place.

“Are you alright?” he asked, gently tapping my shoulder. I blinked, tearing my eyes away from the swarm of fireflies in the distance, now lesser in number. I nodded, paused for a moment to collect myself, and then went ahead to catch the ride back to the main office.

It was as if the sight was just a passing dream. It was the same day I knew something had changed, like a nail keeping me intact had been pulled out of place and only I could hear the sharp ringing sound it made as it fell to the ground.

— ✼ —

At some point in our lives, things always had to change. In mine, I believe the butterfly finally took off at the perfect time. 

The next morning, I headed straight to the bus station to tell her the story of the swarm of fireflies taking the shape of a human being, but she wasn’t there. I looked around the entire station, one store after another, and even went as far as asking the maintenance workers if they had ever seen her but received no response. It seemed like no one else ever saw her or believed that she had even existed.

For the first time, in ten months, the woman with the can of beer so early in the morning and a hand bag, dressed in a black pencil skirt, brown jacket and a plain cream top underneath, was nowhere to be found.

I already missed the first bus so I went back to the same spot where I used to stand across the large painting and leaned against the wall, catching my breath. It was eerily quiet. I noticed the radio from the small store beside me had been switched off. Everything around me turned into blocks of ice submerged underwater when I realized the painting had indeed changed. No longer was the woman looking back at the viewer but had completely turned away. Patches of bright yellow-orange paint were splattered all over her dress, like fireflies.

What a strange dream, I whispered to myself and smiled, closing my eyes.

In that dream, there was no missing person, the woman had disappeared, and the painting has changed.

I never believed in a god but if fireflies happened to exist in this world, I thought there must be one, so I found myself praying that wherever she was, she was safe, with her can of beer, and laughing in a warm pool of afternoon light, that the thing she had been waiting for all her life had finally come to meet her. — Vanessa T.

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“Blond”

— Short story: 01 

The bar is mostly empty on weekdays. Other than the lone bartender himself and an old man sitting outside with a pack of cigarettes and cold beer, no one else seems to be fond of the place. It’s as if the place was made out of some sort of black magic and only a few people could see it. Maybe it’s the bartender’s choice of music, or the odd smell of wood lingering inside the place despite the fact that most of the furniture is made out of steel – no one knows for sure why the bar never attracts visitors. There are days when people would come by and stay for a while, but they never come back, except for the old man who spends his nights outside wasting away on a bottle of beer and smoking, and Blond.

Blond, as he calls himself, spends most of his nights in there as well. His eyes hold the color of the sunlight filtered through a burgundy leaf during autumn. Hence, people would call him “Blond” not for his hair, but for the bright color of his eyes. Blond sits in front of the bartender with a bottle of Chardonnay wine every night and usually broods, staring blankly into space. The two have never actually had a proper conversation. Blond never liked talking. To him it was a waste of energy. Meanwhile, the bartender across the counter sulks in a corner beside a shelf lined with jazz records at the top and ballad music at the bottom. With not too many customers to keep him busy, he spends most of his time just simply listening to the faint sound of music coming in through the record player, often humming the songs to himself, as he wipes the bottles and utensils clean.

Blond didn’t particularly admire his taste in music but at least it was there to keep them company. Blond never liked the deafening silence, too. In fact, there wasn’t much that Blond liked in that bar, except for the sweet taste of Chardonnay wine.

One Thursday night, when Blond entered the bar, he noticed a drastic change in the atmosphere, which put him off for a while as he scanned the room to figure out what caused it. Eventually his eyes landed upon a woman in a black fur coat sitting in front of the bartender. They seemed to have been talking to each other for some time, but when Blond entered, their words evaporated into thin air. The bartender glanced at him for a split second then walked away from the woman to finish cleaning the bottles and wineglasses. The woman didn’t seem to care. It was the first time that a customer other than Blond sat by the counter. It must have surprised the bartender just as much as it did Blond.

Blond went ahead to order a bottle of Chardonnay wine and sat two stools away from the woman. He threw her a sidelong glance. The woman was probably in her mid-twenties, rich and unmarried. Her long black hair glistens even under the dull orange lights. She had a bottle of Consigna Shiraz right in front of her. There was something about her that somehow made it difficult for Blond to breathe or even move. It wasn’t a certain type of fear. It was simply the impression that if he was careless, the woman would disintegrate into ashes. To Blond, she was fragile, but she looked as if she wasn’t terrified of the fact that she could be gone at any given moment.

When she finally acknowledged his presence though, Blond suddenly wished she hadn’t. For some reason, everything around him turned into pillars of ice except for her. Her eyes hinted no emotion but a small smile tugged at her lips as she lifted her wineglass to his direction, patiently waiting for him to clink glasses with her. Her movements were swift, elegant and calculated. She wore the familiar expression of an old friend Blond had when he was in high school. A strange emotion washed over him as he studied her features. He felt something like a stone was lodged in his throat. For a moment he had the strong urge to rip his skin apart and remove whatever it was. The emotion was too foreign.

I’m talking to you, Blond heard a voice say. He blinked and realized the woman was trying to initiate a conversation with him. She was no longer wearing the strange expression she had just a few seconds ago. It was replaced with the aura of a sweet, innocent lady, now tipsy from the wine. Maybe it was all in my head, Blond thought. It was possible though. Blond had way too many instances in his life where he was sure he must have seen something but then it turned out to be just his imagination or something else entirely different.

Pardon me, Blond replied.

Your eyes are strange, the woman said after a short while. I have never seen anything like that before. What are you?

The question echoed in Blond’s head. What am I, really? Throughout his life, no one has ever told him the truth about what he is. He felt sad, at first, that he was not normal. As he grew older though, he started to feel nothing about it. He simply accepted the fact that there wasn’t anything that he could do about his condition. It must be the reason why he felt distant from everyone else, like a wall has stood between him and the world. Blond grew up without his parents. He was told that they died in a car crash when he was only three. Of course, there was no way for him to know the truth. He felt some type of resentment towards his parents though, for leaving him like this. His grandmother passed away just days after he graduated from college, and he grieved alone for weeks with no one to console him. Over time, he learned to shut these emotions off and went on to live his life quietly, away from everyone else. Blond was alone in this world.

I have no idea, Blond muttered. The woman now seemed uninterested as she poured the last of her Shiraz wine to her glass and downed all of it in one gulp.

You know, sometimes what we see isn’t really what it is, the woman said in a low voice, her words now losing shape, but it was as if she was simply talking to herself. Blond turned to her once again. She was laying her head on the counter top. Maybe he hadn’t really kissed someone else, she whispered. A single tear escaped her left eye. Blond knew her gaze wasn’t directed at him. It was empty and weightless. He knew from the way she looked at him that she was reliving a moment she wished she didn’t have to. Soon the tears came one after another. Her sobs were quiet, drowned out by the soft jazz music playing in the background. Blond couldn’t seem to grasp what was happening but he tried, not that he knew the woman well enough to console her. After some time he gave up and simply let her cry while he drank the rest of his Chardonnay wine. The bartender noticed but was nonchalant. Blond thought this kind of scene must be pretty common when the night is deep and the bar is quiet.

It was already close to midnight and the woman had not stopped crying. I’ll be closing soon, the bartender reminded them. Blond asked the bartender if he could rent the place for the night. The woman had no intention of leaving. Name the price. I’ll pay, Blond said. Eventually they agreed to settle it at a ridiculously high price, but Blond didn’t mind. To him, money wasn’t a question. Blond promised to look after the place while the bartender was away.

As soon as the bartender left and they were all alone, the woman leaned in closer to Blond. She smelled of cherries, cigarettes and red wine. The scent was overwhelming, but for some reason, it became impossible for Blond to pull away. The strange, soulless expression had returned to the woman’s face, except this time her face glistened wet with her tears and her eyes were swollen, and there was a desperate plea in them that Blond couldn’t possibly put into words. Sometimes, what we see isn’t really what it is, Blond remembered her words. That night they made love quietly behind the counter. He caressed her gently, terrified that she might crumble in an instant if he held her any tighter. She whispered a stranger’s name and cried once again in Blond’s arms, her tears felt cold as they pelted on his skin, like they were drawn from the deep wells of her heart that had long been abandoned.

Maybe it wasn’t what it was, Blond said quietly as he caressed her long black hair, hoping to console her. She didn’t respond. Her breathing fell heavy moments after that. She had finally fallen asleep. Blond had never been this close to a woman, and he knew with perfect certainty that she would be gone the next morning, but he held her close. For a moment, Blond found comfort in someone else’s company. He remembered his grandmother, his parents whose faces he could no longer recall, and his friends that had turned their backs on him. It was impossible to forget such warmth.

The woman left one of her earrings and a note on the counter top. There was certainly nothing special about it for you and me. For Blond, though, the note was unlike anything he had ever read so he resigned himself to his fate and chose to keep it a secret. Sometimes, what we see isn’t really what it is. — Vanessa T. 

[seventhpage]

“Letter to the Wanderer” It is difficult to not miss you when the night sky hangs heavy over my weary heart,

How it holds the memory of your voice

The way it holds the stars and my heart listens in wonder, in quiet waiting,

Hoping for some miracle that comes in the shape of your origami hands, to take it and whisper good night.

My heart is a child searching for so many answers, a misguided ghost desperate to understand the world around it with hands that only know how to forgive;

It believes in the smallest of things: wishing upon a comet, or the red string of fate, or you coming home.

I have traced your name across the blanket of stars, hung my heart in place of the moon now.

So I say to the sky, the night is long and we are alone,

But please stay while I wait.

He will come home.

[seventhpage]

Journal entry from December 9, 2018

You do not have a reason to feel this way,

They say. See,

Four walls, a roof above your head,

The people you love cook you your favorite meals –

What is there to be sad about, they ask.

As if I know the answer, or if there ever was an answer;

See, I am still learning to tame my mind without pouring gasoline over my body, lighting a matchstick, and wait for the flames to swallow me whole.

My body, the Armageddon;

My mind, a house haunted by its own shadows.

Here, it is never quiet – flickering candles, weeping ghosts, a broken music box.

Sometimes, I cannot hear my father’s voice even when he is speaking right in front of me.

Why is my sister laughing?

The question hangs in the air, a hook through my throat,

A swinging noose only I can see.

[seventhpage]

Adrift

You asked me how my day was. It was two hours before midnight. My hands reached for an answer but there was nothing in this room but white noise, nothing to grasp, or there was no word for a heart that has grown weary of fighting against the pull of gravity for so long, or the unbearable weight of feeling displaced out of my own body – this relentless storm I cannot save myself from. I continued sifting for clues behind the curtain and under my bed; sprawled across this vacant desk are only my long sighs where I imagined my words would have been. Forgive me then, if I could only say, “I’m doing okay.” Sometimes they are the only words I have left tucked in my clenched fists, or I want to believe I am. I think I’m doing okay. I think I am.

[seventhpage]

words by blythe baird

[seventhpage]

Journal entry from July 6, 2018

Perhaps there is something bizarre

About the silence – where our eyes meet

And no word comes out of our mouths.

Though they beg to escape,

Though they crawl their way out of our chests,

Our words have come to hate this silence –

This silence that has grown fond of our bodies,

Of the distance that stretches between us –

The cry of our voices left only as an echo,

And even though we hear them, we do not turn back –

Our words bury themselves underneath our tongues

To become ash, or a ghost, or a dream.

[seventhpage]

march 30, 2018 another quiet, miserable day

[seventhpage]

Journal entry from January 8, 2018

Today / I sit on the edge of my bed / soaked in my solitude / I think about how / a thousand glorious suns can not / compare with the smile which / you decorate your mornings with / your hands / an ever quiet instrument / clutching a pink / cotton blanket / pulled up to your chin / your body is made of / soft edges my hands will never touch / as you roll on your back / a sigh escapes from your mouth / here / the sheets do not cling to the outline of your body / so there is only silence / only this beautiful / tragic longing / pulling on my hair / I think / I should have been doing something else instead / perhaps / praying that this body / will learn your absence / and for my heart / to hurt less / and less / and less.  

[seventhpage]

The Laundry Woman

I was sure / I did not see her frail / tanned body / float through the streets / both hands clutching two young boys / their eyes so terribly bright / dirt smudged their innocent smiles / days after her husband got shot / by policemen / so a year later / she was thinner / darker than the strands of her hair / perhaps weaker / under the weight of all / that remorse / but she held her two young boys / as if one day the policemen would / come back to knock on their doors / bringing no apology / for another bullet / in the late evening / I heard she learned carpentry / in silence / four locks on the door / three more on her mouth / she grieved / in the quietest way possible / her sorrows learned / to embrace the silence / her heart never could.

[seventhpage]

Nostalgia

“Do you remember / the Norwegian Wood?/ the soft intimacy that the words held between pages / the smell of white lilies / falling from her hair / the gentleness of it all / as though waking up to the mellow sunlight / seeping through old / tattered window curtains / will the wind carry me home?”  

[seventhpage]

Cry for Revolution

A dog howls at night / the damp atmosphere swallowed by its cries / and I—with heavy-lidded eyes and hands too small / can only listen as / the cage rattles along / in the morning / the taxes have gone up / a wayward flight / like tongues of fire licking the skies / like smoke / stealing smiles off the children’s innocence / as sweat trickles down their spine / their necks a dripping faucet / the mother learns to paint / their bright faces from only her memory / she hangs it up inside a church / and leaves without a word.