Tangan ng tadhana

Katulad ng kandilang pinipilit patayin ng hangin
Iiwang bitin.
Paglalaruan ang apoy
Pero ‘di naman itutuloy.

Katulad ng lastikong parang nais lagutin
Hihigitin
Hanggang humaba at susubukan
Ang kakayanang ‘di maputol
Saka iiwanang may buhol.

Bakit ‘di pa kitilin?
Nang sa ganoon ay tapusin
Ba’t kailangang paglaruan
Ang buhay kong tangan.

Tadhana
Para kang bata.

Open letter

What sense do we make of it all? Is it too late or too early, too crowded when you just feel lonely?

It was eleven o’clock in the evening. Late as it was, I couldn’t possibly force myself to sleep at our office in Batangas City. I know I’d stay up all night thinking about everything yet end up concluding nothing. There’s something about sleeping on another place. The insomnia grows worse. Unfamiliarity, maybe? Or is it just me?

It was almost midnight when the first bus arrived. Amidst the throngs of people, I rushed in line not to get a seat but to get inside the bus. It was raining. The streets were flooded. I am wet, I am tired, and I want to get home.

There were no stars that night, like the dreams clouded in my mind. With nothing else to do, I set out on an arduous journey.

There are times when I hate it when I think too much. Questions are like screams found inside my head. I prepared for that; a two-hour bus ride plus a conversation with myself.

As the bus went past the solitary street of my solitude, I thought that somewhere out there, another child is crying, another heart is breaking. And if all the pain in the world would be put together, the agony would be too much for this world to handle. Unlike a balloon waiting to burst, the end might not come with a resounding explosion. Who knows what it would be; a drop of a needle, or a dry leaf falling from a tree?

Would everyone go to heaven since the life we have here feels like hell? I don’t know. Like a joke waiting for a punch line, the end of the story is always at the end. Some stories do end up happily, while some simply end in tragedy.

Two bus rides was what I had to go through. After more than an hour, the second bus did not take long. The road is always longer when the travel seems like forever. So after I got off the second bus on that starless night, I was hungry but was glad to be home. The rain had stopped and there were no floods in San Pablo City. Though one thing I did wish for inside my head that night. I was cold. If there were someone out there who’s listening, would he have heard my plea? That I be enlightened by my confusion, and I be silenced by my screams.

I’m still wishing.

“If your heart could speak out your dream, it would be in a form of a wish.”