soon I will
realize the truth about myself
the fragile flame
that unclasps her soul
and strips her fears
down to the last button
and dances in the rain
precarious like
always teetering on the edge of things
the periwinkle at twilight
that lasts only eleven minutes
before rushing into
the cerulean arms of evening
can masquerade all I want
that I am only half of who I am
without really having
the man that I need:
I need a man who can dream
and be gentle with me
and kiss me slowly enough
to read between the lines
of my heartbeat

but I’ll play the role till the end
scribble a message on stationery
leave it at the front desk
like I suddenly just
have somewhere important to be
push the revolving door
out into the rush hour
obliterated by smog and graffiti
and fight unscrupulously for a cab
and drive away in style
he’ll think everything’s all right with us
until he realizes
I’ll never pick up my phone again
when he calls

.

that’s what a pastor once told me

that the pains of our lives
are always proportional
to who we are, but

Father, I really don’t think
I am as strong as You think
and sometimes,
please forgive me,
I envy those children of Yours
You don’t believe in
as much as You believe in me

.

and when you walk into the room
the walls turn into ice
and my blood runs cold
creating snowflake patterns on my lungs
and I just want to flee from here
except gravity won’t let me

always thinking
today could be the day
you’d finally speak to me
“Happy Easter” perhaps,
or “God bless you,” or
inanities, like the weather
but every day’s silence is more final,
more unyielding than the last

and I wish you’d stay
right there: just a glacial few yards away
just so I could torment myself
by watching you
press buttons on your Blackberry
wondering what you’re telling who
something and someone
totally unknown to me

but then I wish you’d leave
because every minute I share this
approximate reality with you
I feel a little more insignificant
and fear the hour when
there’d be nothing left of me

but when you do leave
the edifice of my reason crumbles
leaving me in an identical
state of devastation
as on the day you said we couldn’t be

.

better when I can tell myself
time has forked and
you have turbo-thrust
in your Concorde
towards a horizon
so totally divided from
my causes
and personal religion,

better to feel absolutely convinced
that you are out of my reach
forever and forever,

better to be surrounded
by the dense ordinariness of every day,
by carbon copied people
with supersized egos
smothered in ketchup
and feel alone
protected from pain
by the second-hand smoke
of obscurity and being unknown,

than to be exposed
to the painfully beautiful presence
of the man who used to know me
the man who does not know me
the unboundedness of whom
I had once tried to contain
but couldn’t

the greatest failure of my life

better if I don’t remember
better not remind me

.

I am coming undone
in the wake of the loss
of something I never really had
and I am either going to
bleed dry and fall asleep
or shrivel up and cease to exist

and I used to be so powerful

.

but it wasn’t in 303 Windsor Tower
303 Windsor Tower was innocent
and the Devil was
a gaseous poison
behind my eyes

I stood in the corner
of Salcedo and VA Rufino
flailed my arm for a taxi
and told the man to bring me
to the nearest church

he deposited me somewhere
on Evangelista Street
where I stormed the chapel
and sawed off a link from the chain
bolted onto
my lacquered surface of grace
the chandelier crashing
in a random rainfall
of crystal and light
and inconsolable tears
on the polished marble floor

I broke into shards
each of whose edges
was fatally sharp
and I lay down my essence
onto the mélange

and asked God
please…
please…
please…
if I can’t be with him
take this love
out of my heart

.

because I refuse to be
one of many
no matter how well
you’d treat me

because she and I spoke together
like it’s the most natural thing
but it’s the most surreal thing
and she sounded happy
but God, I’ve been there, baby
and it was anything but
I want to slap her a few times
or embrace her
but I’m jealous of her
so I just sat there politely
listening to her exultant tales
of how well she knows you
the way I used to know you

and I truly hope she’s happy

because I can’t be happy
with what she has
which you had offered to me

because I know I deserve better
because in case you haven’t noticed
I’m all that

but

I miss you terribly
but I won’t I won’t I won’t
I swear
do it again
because I’m better off

and I truly hope you’re happy

.

stimulating my mind
with his talks of
politics and society
religion
abstract thoughts
about human nature
tickling my senses with
his command of
movies and music
arts and children
trees and the full moon
making me crave and swoon
internally
over his conversation
about passion

he does not even touch me
except perhaps
for the occasional
gallant gesture
making me feel like
I’m a prize for princes

while he undresses me with his eyes
penetrating me with his gaze
impaling me through the heart
his voice and laughter
much like
gentle caresses
my pores are almost
ready to ooze out honey
and brilliance

he twirls me around
in a dance of thoughts
and makes me dizzy
just sitting here wondering
what he’s really thinking
he picks up my heart
like plucking a delicate orchid
opening my petals
one by one
as I reveal myself to his
tactfully probing
questions
like he really wants to know me

and his sincere and precise
compliments
always perfectly timed
make me feel like
he is slowly entering my soul

hitting that spot
making me quiver
and blush
in anticipation

this man is a pro
on mind sex
man, does he work it
and does he work me
until I am sweaty and wet
and ready and willing
for the next step

.

Mariela’s eyes were red and swollen as if she’d been crying; her hair, which had always been unkempt anyway, had more loose strands than usual, framing the tired look on her face.  Her left arm felt like it was going to disconnect from her shoulder any moment, threatening to scatter the contents of her brown canvas mailman bag, which already felt as heavy as a ton.  The most logical thing to do would be to go back to her studio up in that building on Taft and take a nap, or, actually, to sleep till the next morning, when she could reassess and get back to work, but instead she made her way to the line of bars and cafés in Malate.

Like a faint star that only gets at its brightest in the evening, Malate could be seen preparing to preen it charms at that hour: everywhere you could see the employees of the establishments putting out chairs, polishing tables, spraying and wiping glass walls.  Mariela sat at a table right outside the wooden doors of Café Adriatico, ordered a roast beef sandwich and a cocktail, and stared at space.  From time to time she’d wipe a tear from her cheek, shake her head, and then continue staring at space.

She half-hoped, half-expected, the man named Rafael to just be around the vicinity.  It took him around fifteen minutes to find her and sit on a chair in front of hers, just as the waiter was serving the roast beef sandwich and cocktail.

“Long day, huh?  How are you?” he asked her, after he ordered San Miguel from the waiter.  As he always did, he was looking into her eyes.

“Still tired, and stressed,” she responded noncommittally, still staring at space.  Something about the man’s old-world ways earned him a place in Mariela’s world, which, as a rule, did not contain that many people; he does not push, but he is always there.  He is a gentleman, pulling out chairs and holding out doors for the ladies, always elegantly dressed in pressed, long-sleeved shirts and slacks and hat, wearing his age like an honorable badge.  He is forty-seven years old, dark and handsome, and respected among artistic circles of both older and younger generations in Malate.

Mariela is twenty-eight, with the fiery intelligence of a grandmother and the impetuousness of a child.

“Has your man called you yet?”  Rafael asked, still studying her listless expression.

“No, it’s been two weeks,” she said, finally looking at him and feeling the negative energy seeping out of her body through her pores and fingertips, attempting a smile.  She shrugged.  “I try not to think about it.”

“You know, sweetie, it’s his loss, and you’re better off,” he told her in a gentle, tentative tone.  If he had been anybody else, Mariela would have snapped with a sarcastic retort or two, putting him in his place with her cleverness.  But coming from Rafael, it didn’t sound like a cliché, it sounded sincere.  So she let it pass with a slight nod.

Several minutes of silence.  The roast beef sandwich and cocktail still untouched.

“Eat, woman,” he ordered in a tone which he knew she liked, and that made her smile a real smile.  She started eating.

After a few bites her expression got dark again.

“How’s the work coming along at the museum?” he inquired, drinking his beer, his eyes not leaving her face.

A spasm flitted across Mariela’s expression, which she was sure her companion had not missed, telling him this was exactly what was bothering her.  She knew that there was no hiding from him, so she started to tell him.

“Bad, really bad.  One week away from deadline and I’m little more than halfway done.  I just came from about a half hour of verbal abuse from my employers, which, I suppose I fully deserved, followed by two solid hours of crying.”  She gestured at her half-eaten roast beef sandwich.  “This is my first meal in about eighteen hours.”

“Aww, baby,” he said sympathetically.

Rafael used pet names like sweetie or baby around Mariela, and she just somewhat assumed he was the same way with the other ladies he spoke to, but she couldn’t be sure.  It was different when he said them from when the other men in her life, too many to count, had done, and instead of getting offended, she allowed herself to bask in the softness of the simple pronouncement.

“Aww baby,” he said again, radiating warmth across the table.  “Are you gonna make it?”

“It’s a mystery,” she replied.  “I can’t do anything but try, you know?”

“I know.” His eyes were looking at her hands, calloused and stained with ink and White Out.  “Can’t you ask for more time?”

“No. The centennial celebration of the museum is in nine days. I could even be sued by those people.”

“Oh.”

Mariela finished her roast beef sandwich and signaled to the waiter serving a woman, two tables down, for another cocktail.  The cocktail arrived shortly and she sipped it while looking around at the near-empty café, at the cigarette vendors lingering in the corners, the smattering of cars in the parking lots.

“Let me ask you something,” Mariela finally said to her companion.  “What if there’s this really talented artist, see—”

“Just like you,” he cut in.

“—yes, say, a really talented artist, but she has to be in love all the time before she can actually produce art.”

“OK, go on.”

Mariela gestured with her hard hands, her animation bordering on frustration, expecting Rafael to misunderstand.  “So she gets into these love affairs with all these men, just so she could get work done.”

“And then in the middle of the most important project of your career, the last man you got involved with leaves you.”  His tone was casual, drinking from his second bottle of San Miguel.

“Yes,” Mariela sighed, slumping back into her seat.  “When I made a bid to do that mosaic for the museum lobby two months ago, Terrence and I were so in love like nothing could go wrong.  And I came up with this spectacular concept for a mosaic design—I’d shown you before, didn’t I?”  Rafael nodded.  “And the board of directors of the museum was reluctant to give the job to only one person, but I swept them away with my energy when I presented my idea, and they loved my art, plus of course I have my grandfather’s name…”

She trailed off, her face darkening again.

“Yes, your mosaic design is very beautiful.  Timeless,” he says conversationally.  “And your grandfather, if he were alive today, would be very proud of you.  But you were saying?  About your man?”

“Yes, Terrence,” she went on.  Rafael always referred to Mariela’s boyfriends as ‘her man’ because she’d had four or five of them from the time they first met.  Either he did not care to remember their names, or he was making a joke about how insignificant they were, as he and Mariela had been harmlessly flirting the entire time.  “We started having problems about halfway through my contract.  Always too busy with his job at the courthouse, barely had time to see me.  Which I didn’t mind.  But then when he did see me, he’d be quiet.  Like his mind was elsewhere.  And then when I’d try to talk to him, it always ended up in an argument.  It got worse and worse.”  She stopped and looked around again. More people could now be found strolling around, getting off from taxis, going into the restaurants.  Soon Malate would be in full bloom.

The sun started to set, painting the sky mauve and orange.

“The worse it got with Terrence, the worse it got with the mosaic.  I don’t know if you’d believe me, but things would just go wrong when my heart isn’t OK.  Or maybe I’m just inviting bad luck with all my negativity.  I left my cutting instruments in their case at this corner of the studio overnight and they just turned blunt and useless, I tell you.  And I’ve had them for like, ten years. Something about the moisture of that corner oxidizing the metal or some such thing.  I had to look for a place to get replacements.  And my adhesives won’t stick properly.  And my depression grew about Terrence, and my work, and it’s the most rotten feeling in the world.”

She expected Rafael to say something, and was charmed, somewhat, that he was just sitting there looking at her, listening.

“So anyway he finally told me he didn’t need any of it. Just like that,” her eyes had a heaviness in them.  “I haven’t heard from him since.”  For a moment she looked like she was about to cry, but was able to fight it.  “I mean, I’m not trying to make excuses about that mosaic job.  I’m behind schedule because I’d just lie in bed for days on end, not working.  I’m just not interested.  I mean, it would have been a great work of art.  But I’m irresponsible.”

“You’re brokenhearted.”

“Yeah, that too.  Does that make sense?  That I can only be a good artist when I’m in love?”

“Yes, it makes sense.  I mean, if that’s the way you are.”

A tear escaped Mariela’s eyes and she sniffed, looking at him with an apologetic smile.  She does not like crying in front of men.  “It is the way I am.  I mean look at that job I did at the senator’s house.  Damn good work, if I may say so.  I was involved with my sociology professor at the time.  We lasted for three months while I was doing the mosaics in those coffee tables.  Until his wife found out.  My God, that was a mess.  And don’t forget that floor I did in that hotel in Cebu, three hundred square meters, all by myself.  I was so in love with that poet—remember him?—but jeez, he had a really violent temper and it wasn’t healthy…”

“You know what you need,” Rafael interrupted the spillage of her recollections.  “You need a good man. But you just keep getting messed up with bad boys.”

“True,” she smiled weakly.  “I mean, I want forever.  I’m open for forever.  You know?  But I guess that’s too much to ask.  If I need to be high on romance and sex with every artwork commission I take on, sometimes it just gets out of hand.  I mean, if any of my boyfriends stayed, I would have been happy and content, dedicate all masterpieces I produce thereafter to just one man…” Mariela’s voice trailed off, and, as if she suddenly remembered the problem at hand, her body went limp.  “I’m sitting here and I should be panicking about that job at the museum.  I suppose when I wake up tomorrow morning the panic will set in.”

“Let’s fall in love then.”

She looked at Rafael, taken aback.  “What?”

“I said, let’s fall in love.”  He reached for her hand across the table and held it.

It was too much; Mariela fell apart.  Started sobbing.  Funny, she didn’t think there were any tears left, but here they were, coming in torrents.  She covered her mouth with her free hand, the one Rafael was not holding, and just wept.  Self-consciousness hit her momentarily and she glanced sideways at the woman two tables down to check if she had noticed, but the woman had a cell phone pressed into one ear and was not moving.

Rafael got up, enfolded her in his arms and she put her hands on his chest, and leaned her head on them, unresisting.  He rocked her slowly, telling her she was beautiful and promising her she was going to be all right, and they just stood there for some minutes until she calmed down.

Finally she pulled away and looked at him.  Not knowing what she expected to find, she only saw understanding in his eyes.  Understanding and a painfully sensitive masculine desire.  In a moment they were kissing.  In front of Café Adriatico for all of Malate to see.  And Mariela was filled with life.  She forgot the nights of sleeplessness and the angry words flung at her earlier at the museum office.

She looked again at the woman two tables down and she was still in the same position, cell phone on one ear.  Not moving.  And instinctively Mariela looked around her, at the waiter carrying a tray with two glasses and two bottles of beer on it, and a check enclosed in a dark leather pocket, at the cigarette vendors on the corners, the people strolling around.

Nobody was moving.

Time had stopped.

She looked at Rafael, half afraid that he would be frozen too, but he was looking at her, smiling, his eyes on fire.  His hands on her hips, moving slightly in a subtle caress.  She started laughing and gave him another kiss.

* * *

That twilight lasted for six months, twelve days, and nine hours, but neither Mariela nor Rafael had any way of knowing.  They were in love.

At first, it exhilarated them so much, the stage of mutual discovery.  They’d lock themselves up in Mariela’s studio, which doubled as her living quarters while on the museum job, for days on end just making love and talking, talking and making love.  The mauve and orange color of the sky did not change.  They fell asleep in each other’s arms and woke up feeling fully rested and the sky would be the same color.

They’d take walks around Ermita and Malate and along Roxas Boulevard next to the ocean, passing by the statues of people and dogs, the yachts and vessels on Manila Bay not stirring.

The wind still blew and the waves still rushed on the breakwater, which delighted them.  High and giddy on the feeling that they were alone in the world and only had each other, which was more than enough, they made love out in the open on a bench on Baywalk, a few yards away from a middle aged couple frozen in time, Mariela laughing happily as she rode Rafael with intensity until they achieved bliss.  He had chased her around through unmoving traffic, the passengers and drivers of the jeepneys and buses and private cars oblivious of their shared happiness, cornering her at the crowded lobby of Manila Sofitel, where he’d undressed her and taken her from behind vigorously on the grass of the posh garden of the hotel until they both came.

After a span of time the equivalent of two weeks, despite her complete and utter happiness, Mariela started to yearn for more.  Her hands that had done nothing but rest and enjoy themselves started to look for something to do, and she realized she wanted to produce art again.  So she finally returned to working on the commissioned mosaic.  She set out to put order back into her tesserae, cutting the colored glass and ceramic with her own hands, getting her hands dirty and her fingers ache, but she was in Paradise.

Rafael, with pride in his eyes, would sometimes sit with her as she worked, sketching her picture in charcoal, or playing the saxophone to her to keep her company without occupying too much of her aural space.  Without any clocks or calendars to look at, Mariela would keep working on and on and only rested when she had no more power in her limbs to lift a pencil.  She’d roll onto her back and close her eyes, sighing dreamily, and after a while Rafael would just lift her in his powerful arms and carry her to bed.  He’d put her down gingerly, strip down and lie down beside her, snuggling up to her and whispering things that always brought her the sweetest dreams.

He’d cook for her complicated dishes, four-course meals with meat that needed to be boiled for half a day to achieve the right tenderness, with desserts that never melted and fruits that never spoiled.

They’d take baths together, sitting in the tub together sharing stories of their childhood and their past relationships, sharing the books they’d read and the movies they’d watched, until their fingers and toes were wrinkled like raisins.

They’d take their meals on rooftops of buildings overlooking Manila Bay, play in elevators that opened and closed and ascended and descended for no one else but them.

They’d wander about the walled city of Intramuros laughing out loud and shouting at passersby that did not hear.

Rafael would sing or play music at intersections on UN Avenue or TM Kalaw, while Mariela let go of all inhibitions and danced under stop lights that perpetually glowed green.

But above all they talked.  No matter where they were, they talked.  They talked about religion, and politics and society, and shared abstract thoughts about human nature.  They talked about love.  The truth about love that people kept missing, or dodging, Rafael told Mariela, was that it was not something you saved while you waited for the right person.  It was something you should give everyday.  And Mariela had looked at Rafael with an overwhelmed gratefulness in her face after that, because at the moment she was sure that this man at her side understood that love she believed in.  Not the love that any of the past men in her life had offered her, nor the love that the people around her thought about, the kind that made them judge her cruelly whenever she’d tell them about needing to be in love all the time just so she could produce art.  Rafael knew that love she knew.  And she could not imagine being happier than she was at that moment, that eternal twilight.

* * *

Having no one but Rafael around, it took them the equivalent of several days to transfer the parts of the mosaic from her studio in Ermita to the museum facing Roxas Boulevard.  They “borrowed” big vehicles from the parking areas in the hotels and transport the four feet by four feet flat blocks, Mariela always flushing with love and pride as she watched the man in heart lift the heavy segments effortlessly.  They’d steal kisses all through the process and sometimes took breaks pleasuring each other at the grand hallways of the museum, with the immortal works of Luna and Amorsolo and Hidalgo standing sentinel to their insatiable love.

* * *

Finally, the mosaic was finished.

In the middle of that endless sunset, they sat on the marble floor of the museum lobby, surrounded by three walls of Mariela’s timeless mosaic, enlaced in each other’s arms.

“And to think I finished it all in a single afternoon,” she joked, nuzzling Rafael’s neck, which tickled him.

“You are the smartest, most amazing, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”

Deep and peaceful kisses.  Kisses that are full of knowledge and understanding, kisses that aren’t reckless, kisses that receive as much as they give.  And when their eyes met, is was as if their souls had merged into one soul.

“I love you.”

“And I love you.”

“Let’s get you home, baby.”

They woke up a few hours later, naked and their skin glowing, and found everything dark.  Rafael got up and parted the heavy pleated curtains and was amazed to see that it was night.  Street lamps were lighted.  There were people walking down the street, standing on sidewalks and twenty-four-hour drug store counters, going into buildings, speaking audibly, their faces animated. Jeepneys and taxis inching their way through the traffic, a gridlock forming in the corner of Padre Faura, horns tooting.  LRT zooming past, the passengers swaying inside.  Shadows silhouetted against glowing light emanating from windows across Taft Avenue.  Moving.  Alive.

Mariela lay stretching under the blanket, then rose slowly. Her eyes fell on the clock on the wall, and she was enthralled to find that time had started ticking again.

“Come back to bed, baby,” she called out to him softly, running her fingers through her hair with one hand and patting the empty space on the bed with the other.

Rafael smiled and obeyed.

My words,
and I claim them rightfully,
can’t be read over the mic
in a roomful of people
they are secrets
you pass on
by reading it off the page
against the silence
in your private moments
let the white spaces speak to you
and you can pick up the next line
as belated as you need
to ready your heart
I will not intrude upon your thoughts
read me at your pace
and you don’t need to walk out
of the room to be free of me
just close your eyes

exit that freeway and
let me be the corollary to your
life’s work
the cornerstone of the journey
into your
next chapter

remember that phrase your grasped for
that witty imagery at the tip of your tongue
you tried to emancipate
from the prison of your forgetfulness
so hard it blurred
the street into a phantasm of lights?
let me be the déjà vu
hanging on the chilly night
that hits your spine and surprises you

remember those nights when
you searched the alleys for love
calling it the many names
you baptized it with
in the ordained waters
orchestrated
by your three-piece band?
let me be the obvious answer
that presents itself
in the corner of
the Boulevard of Dreams
and Reality Avenue
let me be the reciprocal curvature
of the illegal U-turn
you take
after passing love by
without meaning to

.