hello sunshine...

I have such wonderful memories of sitting beside the mango tree and carefully peeling each green mango to yield its sweet-sour yellow-green flesh, slicing it and dipping each slice in a dip made of fermented anchovies and vinegar. To me, outside of the inevitable heat cooking you instantly as you step out into the sun, nothing evokes summer more than the sight of fruit-laden mango trees begging to be picked. Until I was 21, we lived in a house nestled among various fruit trees. I remember two mango trees, one on the side of the house and another at the back, plus various other trees including a weird guyabano tree that did not bear any fruits the whole time we lived in that house and which the help thought was haunted. Its trunk was directly outside my bedroom window at the first floor, while the bough could be seen from my sisters’ bedroom window upstairs. The low-hanging mango tree at the side of the house was fair game, and we would often pick its fruits and wallow an afternoon away feasting on our bounty.

It is summer once again, and every day as I come in to work I am greeted  by the sight of the office’s three mango trees bursting with fruits. The sight makes me smile, and reminds me of a time when all I had to decide was what to do for the day and whether that would include climbing that friendly mango tree to the inevitable scolding from our grandparents. They’re all gone now, my grandparents, that house, that tree. But I still have the brilliant memories of those lazy summer days, of sneaking out from the afternoon naps my grandfather required us to take to climb trees we were expressly forbidden from climbing, of childhood really.   

i thought i saw your face today

Is it possible to miss someone who isn't really gone from you? At odd times, I find myself talking to you and missing the old you, the one whom I could spend hours upon hours talking to, I miss sitting with you quietly and talking of heartbreaks and new loves. As selfish as it sounds, I miss the you who patently needed me, the you who was insecure and slightly immature, just like me. It is not that I am not happy for you, I am truly, except for that small, childish, immature part of me who misses the you that belonged with me, was just like me. As much as I like the grown-up you, I loved the old you, and maybe just maybe, this is one of the reasons why I am not too enthused with you anymore. That perhaps you have grown away from me, and I have allowed myself to grow away from you. So that I find myself missing us, the wide-eyed innocent dreamers that we were, weaving plans and schemes for when we reached this age with an enthusiasm and belief that we had the world laid out at our feet, that all we had to do was work at it and everything will fall into place. I still wish for those things, stronger now than you because you have found a quiet joy in the life you are living, and in what you have achieved. And rightly so. And so I find myself searching for the old you when we are together, as unfair as that may sound. I still catch glimpses of the old you in the same way I catch glimpses of the old me sometimes.

of friendships and growing apart

today I met with L and her hubby. I also met her little boy, who is my godchild, for the first time. Funnily enough, I wasn't really that excited about it; so much that I was actively contemplating not disturbing my routine sunday nap and was actually typing my message asking for a raincheck when her sms telling me they were already at our meeting place arrived. It was good to see her again, that I would admit, but also, it wasn't something that I really looked forward to anymore. I find that as I grow older, I have began to move away from my friends. My world has began to revolve around work and more work. I wonder if this is what my parents did, was it an active moving away from friends or had they merely lost touch? Maybe as we grow older, our priorities shift, because I find myself no longer adjusting my time to be able to see her. Whereas the old me would have shifted my schedule around to provide me with optimal time with her, the me now would contemplate canceling on her without any reason really, at the drop of a hat. Will I become like my spinster aunt, with no friends and no partner, just her pets, grumpily grumbling her way through old age? I hope not, I want to be able to form relationships, nourish them, the way a mature, well-adjusted person does. I want so much, and I hope for so much, but sometimes I feel as though I have fortified myself against the world, that I tend to lose myself in a world of my own making, content to sit inside the house, in front of the computer, working or reading, or bingeing on books and staying in bed reading the day away. I feel like I am frittering my time away, that this solitude I cultivate and nourish, has allowed me to lose touch with relationships and its demands.

A Kindness

A KINDNESS

Where did we stop? In dead summer, that is
male, yellow. You stripped into that glare
of live gold.
It was like living in gold to try to touch you.
It was as if you were day.

None of this is true, but will you
let me have it, imaginary?

The laugh, the confidence, the symmetrical clean
body capable of itself, so being body
as to be naked even to the hands. Will you give me that?

Because, even if it is not true, I need
something now to look back to, in order to say,
I have been sudden in the sun’s perfection,
I have had blood rise like light,
my hands have answered,
my memory is a bush of grown flame.

It is a kindness you can do me, to have been there
at the center of summer, yourself the attack of summer,
and to have made all that light out of being young.

I need to have loved you. I need to have told you so.

William Dickey

endings...

and there it was, the proof I was looking for. We never were, and we will never be, but I did fall in love with you and I am over you. I spoke with someone we both know today; it was rather unexpected but welcome nonetheless. I was told you are now back in that place I believe is home to you, with your new (ish) son. And unsurprisingly, it did not hurt, not at all, unlike that invitation two years ago. I'm happy for you really.

another year....

Thirty three today. Still nothing much to show for it but I'm relatively happy with my life. As my sister says, our time is coming. I just have to hold firmly to that belief. All things considered though, I'm very very grateful.

you.

Cleaning out my inbox at 1 in the morning, I run across your emails. I still can't bring myself to delete them. The same goes for the text messages you sent me. I have changed phones twice but I transfer the messages and keep them saved every time. Pathetic I know but what can you do? I'm supposed to be over you, I am over you. So why do I save these scraps of memories, these tokens of attention wrung unwillingly from you?