If you meet me halfway

I'm home -- the flattened-toad-splattered streets of Imus and all that. Home, depends on how you look at it. Definitions are vague if you're the prodigal daughter squatting in your family's living room. Good thing I had enough sense not to pack my mattress and a pillow or two in a big-enough box, that I let Moosebert hop into my purse-thing, that I've got clean linens in easy-access laundry bags, that I'm not at all iffy about being stepped on in my sleep. Yes, life is good. I sneak in a cigarette or two, smoking in front of my dad's chicken poop (I meant coop, but I'm keeping that). How's this for entertainment: watching widdle chicks poop and twitter, that's Telemachus, that's Darcy, that's Efren. I'm a feast for them damn mosquitoes -- new blood and all that. I feel caramel-coated most of the time. Whenever I move, I feel like dust particles and little bugs slapping into me, most of them on the way their Purpose in life (trademark owned by that un-balls-ified Rick Warren). Yeah, they're trapped, we're all trapped. Four showers a day don't do anything. Not even a stint in sudden rainfall -- ever notice how the torrents just stops, just like that, the moment you get the beginnings of a drenched shirt?

Two nights ago, I'd gotten lost with dear friends and darling children, and the windows of Pancho's car were rolled down, because the night felt nice, soothing in fact, and a little girl in the backseat kept looking at the lightning that trembled every moment or so, and she was asking, "Why, Tatay, Why?" A couple of hours after that, I ventured over to Que Ricos, which should've burned down in a freak accident some months ago, but I, ahem, er, uh, well, it never came around to happening. Fuck. Anyway, a drink or two, or four, and a Coke, a pack of cigarettes, some literary tempers. Delightful night. And then it was back home, and I was tired, coming down from a two-day adrenaline high, and I plopped onto bed, hitting my head on the corner of one cabinet door in the process, but it was worth it. Man, oh yeah, was it worth it. Panalo.

Hours after that, brother Gabriel Joshua (on a break from his DLSU basketball training whatever) and my mother helped me cart boxes and boxes galore from my fourth floor room, to the rented L300. Get evicted with dignity, check. Have one hell of a booze-fest before leaving for toady Cavite? Not exactly, especially hours following zombie-mode that automatically kicks in come the Palanca deadline (which got moved, yeahba). But it's cool. When something sweet wakes you up in the middle the night (well, at the crack of dawn) and simply takes your breath away (cliche, cliche!) that can sustain me. I didn't get my grand farewell -- I really can't help but think I'm permanently stuck here in Cavite, as all my worldly possessions have been dumped here -- but I really do think I got something, well nicer. Something quiet, words said simply, no thoughts of lyricism (no doubt due to the brain-leeching that accompanies deadlines like that), honest, so goddamned matter-of-fact that it gets me speechless whenever I think about it, as speechless as I'd been at the time (fucking schmaltzy cliche.)

Speaking of cliches (haha), Sir Sawi tells me the first of this year's Dumaguete fellows arrive tomorrow. Hello, hello. Learn, have fun, and all that jazz. Saya diyan, madrama. Beer. That's not a poem.

Toodles, kids. My dad just came in with some grilled tilapia (*insert Homer drool here*), and I've got to coat these legs with Off! lotion. Have fun, whatever part of the world (first, or third) you're in.

*

It's May, yes, and the rain this afternoon was probably a fluke or something -- weather gods playing poker or yosi break daw muna -- but this here is a whiff of that strange little wonder that is poetry: From "April Rain Song" by Langston Hughes -- "Let the rain kiss you. / Let the rain beat upon your head / with silver liquid drops. / Let the rain sing you a lullaby."