Because Of These Things 10/19/2018 This essay originally appeared on #allpinayeverything. My answer to the question of why I write has always been because I just...do. It’s a bad answer, I know. For one thing, it lacks the kind of colorful specifics that would make me a more entertaining person to chat with at a party. It’s also flippant and dismissive. I don’t mean to represent myself in this way, but the facts are boring. Writing simply comes to me. It comes to me as I imagine melodies or brush strokes or pirouettes come
This essay originally appeared on #allpinayeverything. My answer to the question of why I write has always been because I just...do. It’s a bad answer, I know. For one thing, it lacks the kind of colorful specifics that would make me a more entertaining person to chat with at a party. It’s also flippant and dismissive. I don’t mean to represent myself in this way, but the facts are boring. Writing simply comes to me. It comes to me as I imagine melodies or brush strokes or pirouettes come
At Eighteen 05/02/2018 This morning while still half-asleep in bed, I realized that two of my teenage daughters had left for school, but that I hadn’t heard the telltale footfall or breakfast-making noises of the third. “You awake?” I texted. When she didn’t respond, I made my way upstairs to her room. Her door was open six inches or so, and I could see her still fast asleep, long hair fanned out on the pillow, morning sun painting her with fairytale light. She is eighteen now—a senior in high school—but when sleeping
This morning while still half-asleep in bed, I realized that two of my teenage daughters had left for school, but that I hadn’t heard the telltale footfall or breakfast-making noises of the third. “You awake?” I texted. When she didn’t respond, I made my way upstairs to her room. Her door was open six inches or so, and I could see her still fast asleep, long hair fanned out on the pillow, morning sun painting her with fairytale light. She is eighteen now—a senior in high school—but when sleeping
Madaling Araw / Daybreak 03/21/2018 This story first appeared in Lakas Zine. __________ She awoke, unsurprised, on a bed of crushed glass. Once it was fire ants, once it was lengths of twisted wire, rotting fish, bludgeoned rodents. They were always doing shit like this. She rose to her feet quickly in a single motion and walked into the lake to rinse away the shards semi-buried in her back, her buttocks, her calves. Her hair, like her mother’s before her, was thick as twisted rope, and the back of it glittered with sharp
This story first appeared in Lakas Zine. __________ She awoke, unsurprised, on a bed of crushed glass. Once it was fire ants, once it was lengths of twisted wire, rotting fish, bludgeoned rodents. They were always doing shit like this. She rose to her feet quickly in a single motion and walked into the lake to rinse away the shards semi-buried in her back, her buttocks, her calves. Her hair, like her mother’s before her, was thick as twisted rope, and the back of it glittered with sharp
