(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 I was watching. Everyone was furious. In my ears, the sound of people’s innermost conversations with themselves replaced the rustling of tiny leaves. Inside their homes, on their beds, on the phone, while in prayer, everyone was furious.

I was not ready to come back to a place with so many people. None of them were outside, maybe two or three from the barangay. But Nirvana was missing.

The medical record of the transfusion on the night of accident told me everything I needed to know.

Or maybe it told me nothing, really.

She risked her life to keep me alive. Anemic, stick-thin, with hardly a meal down that day. There was no reason for her to do what she did.

A wave of loud voices that no one ever really hears or listens to assaulted the general furiousness of the weary masses on this single street. Furious, like unpardoned cheaters who did it just this once, or the betrayed, or the abandoned, or the self-hating lot of tired human beings.

This wave of loud voices smelled like dust. It prickled through my consciousness like a surf of golden bubbles begging to be seen.

I tried to get close to it, not knowing why, wishing only that these goals that I make up along the way are helping me avoid the inevitable. I have a single finger left clinging onto sanity, and this, the voice of a girl’s thoughts alternating between concentrating on dinner and wanting to die a fast and quiet death, simply made me sad.

And I, Danilo Bustamante, never get sad.