Tag: Krisza Joy Kintanar

For James

There are at least two things that you yourself wouldn’t want to miss. One, seeing your dad at the audience area during your first ballet recital. Second, having your firsts.
 
Mama bore me with a furious mole on my cheek that swells every time I grin and has been resting itself for years on my eyeglasses’ rim. Next to that, I’ve never tried Victoria’s Secret for my scaly skin. Perhaps that was why my classmates never shared tables or sat with me during recess, or else they also thought I was a complete freak who lived in the attic. Although sometimes, I did believe Mama when she said that it was because of my high mental capabilities (Mama taught me that) that I’d get chewed gum on my skirt and lose my desk during Homeroom. But you see, that was more of the “not so good” part of my life. Just like Cathy and the girl behind her and the janitor who cleaned the girl’s restroom, I did have fun too.
 
Continue reading You Never Had Me at Hello

Because his left ear was shaped like that of an enormous punch bowl, my brother could always hear what I said. For instance, he would hit me on the head if I let out a giggle when a good-looking guy passed me by after taking Communion. Only then would I glance down at my cupped palms like a proper girl while my brother gave the cute guy a dirty look.

Contrary to how his classmates had teased him in third grade, he was not delivered breech nor did my father, who was a policeman, pinch his ear frequently. My brother had a big left ear, that’s all. And this ear, would cup every sound like radar. It had no static, it never had a dead air. It was like a portable spy microphone and it always heard what I said.

And only what I said.

Continue reading His Ear

Sunrise, this lone miracle by which night is transformed into day; a perpetual incarnation of beauty to a city that they think has stepped out from the pages of a fairy story.

Far from what seemed remote a land was a castle of cold shacks where two boys, dull and gray, awoke to the realm of men’s coats and women’s dresses moving in throngs. These spectacle of colors they never tire of seeing, yet sorely wish at harmonizing.

Across the castle was the Land the boys call Fairy in which they see people go as they break from the moving throng and then come back, still in harmony amidst the hubbub of such beauty. In their heads were the different wonders, marvels, and miracles dragged from the cupboards of the Fairy and certainly kept for these people, them so full of color.

Continue reading Why Doesn’t Gray Appear in the Kaleidoscope?

Father and I were in the purple car handed to him for the nth time; where n is equals to the infinity of the fathers who drove their daughters to the JS Prom. For years, the tinted windows of the car and the strangulating seatbelt have created an artificial intimacy—between me and the world outside the car, and him.

The suffocating airconditioner made the car windows misty, and I traced escape holes with my thin fingers. The traces made me recall my tongue, carefully parting the hairs of his stiffening chest that night we lay awake.

Continue reading In the Car that Straddled Me and Father