(First posted here.) On the matter of {ria}. It’s the name she responds to, the name Nirvana calls her. But I’m pretty sure I never really heard the girl’s name or never really understood the sounds and letters Nirvana uses when actually speaking it. {ria} The sound, either an exaggerated sigh or a full-bodied incantation,…

(First posted here.) I get schizophrenia, somehow. It’s when the sounds of memories and dreams and fabricated scenarios dance around direct experience and merge, cross over, overlap. It’s hearing, tasting, smelling, seeing things that are not supposed to be in this plane of reality. When I get these mental blips, I get not only other people’s…

(First posted here.) Behold the monomyth, Keebs thought as Dante grabbed the keys to the Adventure and strode out of their living room with the weight of the world gone at last. He wondered whether he should come, whether this was something a guy without Dante’s total disregard of his own life could manage. He…

(First posted here.) I’m cheating. I’m on a date with a girl I met in Humanities. This is not going to work, not really. This thing felt forced, desperate, even, when I’m really just playing this stupid mind game by myself. “Well, so you know those hot air balloons in Subic?” the girl was saying.…

(First posted here.) I could almost see the standard issue pitch-black wings erupting from Ramon’s back in between blinks. But there were none, of course, just the laid-back stance of a battle-hardened mercenary moving in for a minor kill. I am the aforementioned minor kill. “What are your dreams about, Dante?” He hugged the mug…

(First posted here.) This memory is the answer. Tidal waves don’t beg forgiveness. Ang Pearl Jam na ang nagsabi. I had no idea where she was then. I was desperate and I only had a single clue after hours of searching. Nanginginig ako sa nerbyos sa nalaman ko. When people are sad they do certain…

Keebs started demanding they each clock in four solid, uninterrupted hours every day inside Andres’s Manila penthouse (really just the only unit on the topmost floor of his dorm along Cayco Street). Sen-sen found this scandalous. So scandalous in fact that she developed severe allergies in response. But there really was no way around an…

(First posted here.) It’s not like we give them names. If anything, it is these creatures that gave us—whatever it is you would like to call us—the power to rule their lives. To Dante we are the kagluyag, but to you, sentient beings as weak-willed as the rest of the putrid, cake-y, unthinking masses, you…

(First posted here.) Tiny leaves rebelled in my ear. The domestic-smelling darkness wrapped histories and myths and the lunchtime chatter of laborers around everyday places. The streets, while everyone was furious at the world, breathed imperceptibly through concrete pores. I cast what I hoped was a blank gaze at a street that had no idea…

(First posted here.) There are certain truths you can speak only to walls. The electric fan droned. So this is what it feels like. I stare at the microscope on the desk. The weight of years crashed into me like the volume of a hundred radios cranked beyond their limits. The weight of years, both…