Morning  

I’m so tired, and I really don’t know why. It isn’t really a very physical kind of tiredness. It feels more like my emotions have been all tied up in knots and I can’t seem to find the strength to untie them just yet. What happened? I look at my hands and they seem to be the hands of a stranger. I no longer do the things that kept these hands busy.

Yesterday I walked past our old neighborhood. I used to live in a tiny, dingy little two bedroom place with seven other people. I'd go from waking to work to drinking until I would almost pass out and head back to the shithole I called home to sleep only to wake again to stare at the walls we'd plastered with posters of girls in lewd poses, frozen forever in some frightened state. They all stared out at me, their steely rabbit eyes pierced the fabric of that threadbare sheet. Some mornings I would draw the curtain back just a few inches, and if my timing was right, the girl next door (the one whose cascade of shiny black hair would send a grown man panting) would be in the upstairs bathroom getting ready for school. I never knew if she left the damn window open on purpose, if her fingers wandering the expanse of her caramel colored skin knew just what they were doing to me as she went about her morning rituals. Those mornings, I could hardly find a silent way of breathing. I would find myself hurrying into the grimy green-tiled bathroom so I could rub up against the flat of my palm only to end up wracked in the blessed release that was always coupled with dry heaving cries, my cheeks damp with the faintest trace of tears. And of course I'd still have the rest of the day to face. I would get myself ready as well and head out to face the day. Most of the time, slightly hungover and dehydrated, my fingers fumbling in the space of so many pockets for a cigarette, a match to light it with. The ghosts of so many lonely mornings like a line of paper dolls, following me out into the blinding light of day.


You've all done it. Huwag nga kayo magmalinis diyan. Even if you haven't, you've certainly thought about it. About watching someone from the secret places in your heads, about being with someone who isn't your husband | wife | girlfriend | boyfriend | lover | partner, whatever the fuck you have. Or even if you have no one to screw. You've done it too, if only in your head. Your hands grope about in the dark dirty spaces of your minds looking desperately for something to cling to, to claim, so you'll be able to say that you too are alive.