Baby Hopes

Fiction by | April 25, 2010


I didn’t want to see pain in Mama’s face as much as I didn’t want to see anguish in Papa’s. I never wanted to look at their faces twisted in a way that I have never seen before, or hear unfamiliar gasps and cries because they wouldn’t have words to scold me. It was not like breaking my Grandma’s urn, or my mother finding out that I had just transferred the mess inside my room to my locker, piled underneath my clothes. It was much, much more profound and complicated than that. I was pregnant.

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His fatherly love

Nonfiction by | April 18, 2010

fatherly
When I was a child, I used to play with my friends after every class. We would play different games each day. But I only remember the game we play on Thursdays – the dakop-dakop. It was a predator searching for its prey type of game. My friends and I would play this high-energy game in the quadrangle of my grade school. I would scream, shout, and run as fast as I could so that the hungry predator would not catch me. When I am caught and become the “it,” I run faster to grasp my prey. Usually, everyone becomes a predator of the game before the first round ends.

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What it takes to be a man

Nonfiction by | April 18, 2010

I was six years old then when someone came knocking at our door around seven in the evening. I was asked to open it and so I did. After that, I saw myself standing in front of a huge man wearing a police uniform. That man was one of the people whom I feared the most, admired the most, and wanted to surpass the most – my father. He’s a huge, strict, man who had once killed a lot of people as a member of the army’s elite force – an example of this society’s idea of a real man.

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Maris and Jude

Nonfiction by | April 11, 2010

It is a Friday, 5 am, and Maris comes home after having pulled yet another all-nighter. She goes up to her room and sees her two children, Gabby, six, and Patrick, three, sleeping and oblivious to the creaking door as it opens. Maris enters and sits at one side of the bed watching her children. Her eyes linger on them for a moment, then fall on two travel bags that remind her of her flight to Tacloban City later that day. She glances at her watch, she realizes that she still has to go to work in three hours.

Coming home in the wee morning hours is normal for Maris — at least now it is. She works for two law firms, one in the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel and another with a consultancy for a business process outsourcing company. As the law firms don’t require her to be present daily, she also handles cases in her private practice. It is not the hours that measure the work that she does, it is the load of corporate cases she handles within those hours and after hours. Draining, but Maris does not let this get to her.

But this is not how it all used to be.

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The Young Sultan and the Plague

Fiction by | April 4, 2010

sultan
In the days when the Kingdom brimmed with prosperity and good fortune, the dining room of the Palace flowed with food and wine for the many revelers. Expensive draperies festooned the windows; servants brought in exotic delicacies on platters made of gold and silver.

Now, the days of such merriment were long past. The young Sultan shuffled into a dining room dim and empty. No revelers, no food, no wine, windows closed, an eerie silence pervaded the room. Only a flickering candle on the round table held back the darkness. The sultan said sat on his throne, still uneasy.

While he was though how all this came to pass, the three Rajas, whom he was expecting that day, arrived one by one.

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The River Rages

Fiction by | March 28, 2010

river rages
She slept at the balcony on the banig that Andres laid down for her. He had given her the mat the night after the fire burnt their house down. Earlier that morning, he came to her and gave her money to buy merienda at the store. He had this light aura around him and smiled generously as he had the night he offered his place for Minda’s family. Her mother, Manang Leticia, did the housework for Andres who lived alone in his house near the river.

The river had a stench because of the garbage that the people dumped into it regularly. Minda could hear the wet rustling as pailfuls of dried leaves, candy wrappers, and bottles are thrown on it. The river swelled as the trash mounted and created pools of stagnant water. She smelled them from the balcony and she buried her face in the pillow that had Andres’s hair gel scent on it.

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Keeping

Poetry by | March 28, 2010

So she is my meteor who I foolishly follow
Through the longest nights.
She teases and leaves me a trail
Of all thoughts about her
Till the morning.
A fiery line of promises
Flashed and unfolded
Before my eyes
The moment she crossed the sky
And I saw what could be mine—
She loving me fully,
I making love to her fullness.
The wanting just grows stronger
And the raging desires are just
Depressing me with the fact
That I am left unloved.
So I’ll never get that star
For me to selfishly own.
I won’t ask for more.
I won’t bother God a little.
For a complete love
Will only bring hurt to both of us.
I resolve to keep everything as is.
My heart won’t fear.
It will always be loud and musical.
It will continue to eat all of me
And I will always feel good.
That’s the way it will be.
That’s the only way she’ll get
To love me.

—-
Freidreich C. Layno is a junior writing major in UP Mindanao.