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| photo from 'Sleeping Beasts' by Dara Scully |
Our overture was the static from the earphone that dangled loosely on my right ear. Champ Lui Pio's breathy voice bristling through the cracked ribs of its wiring. Be it copper, alloy, steel, it was soft and complacent, lying like an abused bride within the plastic insulation. I was lost in its circulation -- to a point that even the headlights felt lost in me. And maybe, for a moment, I became indivisible from the periphery, from motion parallax, from the musk of honks and absinthe of traffic. Then his fingers came, searching, slender but uncertain. How many times have I seen this gesture? How many times have I made it? Curled my fingers as if embryonic, seeking refuge, desperately clutching the coins waiting for someone else to take this leap of faith and take take take it from me. My palm immediately readied to cradle, my eyes parametizing the curve of his hand -- from wrist to finger. Tracing. Connecting each frail, beautiful dot. Rather than thinking it was the hand of a musician, I thought they belonged to a poet. Much more eager, more devastating. Those slight indentations at the tip of his fingers, like leaf scars, could be from a lead pencil or a pen held too long. A word held too long. Words stripped and redressed of meaning. I wondered the many things they could do. Both clean and dirty. Pagpuyo girl (Calm it, girl) -- was what I thought, after watching him through the slightly oiled corner of my eye. The slight cant of his eyes, owing to a Chinese heritage, that was slowly covered by a pair of black rectangular spectacles. I don't know why I watched you. I don't know why. I don't know why I watched you leave the jeepney and memorized the sight of the night taking you in. For refuge? Respite? Where will it take you? Deeper? Higher? I don't know why I felt like someone beneath an ocean, watching at someone's half-body stroke the water to keep his breathing. And I almost opened my mouth about to speak to you, once or twice, throughout that long ride from Roxas to Ulas -- wanting to ask if it would be alright, to pretend to drown? But the ocean would try to get in, fill me with its brackish meat. Because I never met you, I love you. Beware how much I love you and let me hold onto this warmth, till it calcifies.
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