The mayor says the river is clean.
He says this while bottled water
waits on his table like a witness
trained not to testify.
In the barangay hall,
posters smile in laminated mercy,
promises stapled beside missing persons,
tarpaulins brighter than the classrooms
that forgot how to hold rain.
We learn early
that statistics are softer than bones.
A boy shot last summer becomes
a footnote in a PowerPoint,
then a rumor,
then a story told only
when the lights go out.
The mountains are rented now.
Their names changed to projects.
Trees fall in neat paragraphs,
signed by men who never learned
the language of leaves.
In the city,
a woman sells silence by the kilo.
She weighs her words carefully:
too heavy, and the checkpoint will ask questions;
too light, and no one will believe
she ever existed.
The radio says progress
like it is a weather forecast.
Tomorrow: growth.
Next week: displacement.
Long-term outlook: unrecognizable.
We clap during inaugurations,
our hands trained to applaud
even when the ribbon is tied
around our throats.
Still, in kitchens and backrooms,
we speak in small, dangerous verbs:
remember, refuse, record, return.
History here is not written in books
but in who survives long enough
to finish a sentence.
Kris Kristofferson Halog, also known as “Toffee,” is a Mindanao-based writer working in poetry and narrative nonfiction.