(2019) Heights Vol. 66, Seniors Folio by Heights Ateneo

heights seniors folio 2019 Copyright 2019 heights is the official literary and artistic publication and organization of the Ateneo de Manila University. Copyright reverts to the respective authors and artists whose works appear in this issue. No part of this book may be r eprinted or reproduced in any means whatsoever w ithout the written permission of the copyright holder. This publication is not for sale. Correspondence may be addressed to: heights, Publications Room, mvp 202 Ateneo de Manila University po Box 154, 1099 Manila, Philippines Tel. no. (632) 426-6001 loc. 5448 heights - ateneo.org Creative direction, cover, and layout by Diana F. David Layout by Justine A. Daquioag, JJ Agcaoili, Liaa Austria, Kat Batara, Pilar Gonzalez, Arien M. Lim, Giulia Lopez, Juancho Luna, Anya Nellas, Moira Swann, at Tash Parayno Photos by Aga Olympia and Diana F. David Typeset in mvb Verdigris and Brown

Seniors Folio an anthology of seniorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; writing and art 2019

Contents Carissa Natalia Baconguis 2 Onda 3 Solitaire ng Pagkakataon 29 Sophia Bonoan 32 The Wind Hears You 33 Arianne Maxine A. Buenaventura 44 House of Mirrors 45 Andrea Chan 60 Sentimentality 61 Jayvee del Rosario 64 Bastard Boy 66 Inya de Vera 68 Found Faces 69 Sam Domingo 76 sipi mula sa Bersus 77 Genesis Gamilong 96 Mga Kababaihan ng Daraitan 97 Swimming 98

Martina Herras 100 Birdwatching 102 Ninna Lebrilla 104 Alienating (series) 106 somebody is calling. 107 Gabrielle Leung 110 Distortions 111 Celline Mercado 130 The bereaved, the fallen: The Moon 131 Niels Nable 136 Batang Yagit 138 Camille Ong 140 Mr. Dog 141 Franchesca Palattao Matimtiman 155 Reena Pineda 166 Untitled 2 168

154

Michaela Gonzales Tiglao 170 The Day I Ran Out of Words 171 Frances To 192 Following the Map 194 Loreben Tuquero 196 Paghahanda 197 Tim Yusingco 200 The Last of Her Stars 201

Introduction The past four years were tumultuous not only for Batch 2019, but for the rest of the nation. From the Presidential Elections, to the Marcos Burial, to Tokhang, to Earthquakes. We remember these checkpoints in our history, whether or not we stood at the fore or chose to sit at the back, because as witnesses our narratives changed along with our collective reality. For our 66th year, heights moved with a thrust in mind—which was to reinforce art and literature as a tool of subversion. At the beginning of the year, we were keen on settling with taking our advocacies to the streets. This is, of course, is the most immediate thing to do. To march the streets with the people in protest is necessary for solidarity. However, as we move along with our history, we must urge our own rhetoric to move as well. Beyond using our own voices, how can we uplift others without overpowering what they want to say? How do we respond with kindness in a world that insists on cruelty? In our 2015 OrSem we were asked to take a leap of faith with Lundag. Everything that came after happened faster than we thought it would, perhaps too fast to even stop and think. The challenge now, at the end of your undergraduate journey, is to figure out where to land after the leap. Do you let yourself watch from a safe height? Or do you aim to see what’s on the other side? Dear graduate, the road has yet to unfold in front of you.

Martina M. Herras editor-in-chief May 2019

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Works

1 · Carissa Natalia Baconguis

Carissa Natalia Baconguis

bfa creative writing

“Araw-araw namumulat ako sa mga tulang lumilitaw mula sa mga simpleng bagay.” —Homestuck,Dave Strider Si Carissa Natalia Baconguis ay isang munting diwatang manunulat na nagkukunwaring tao. Pinagsasaliksikan niya ang mga mito, pagkakakilanlan, at pananabik. Naging fellow siya para sa ika-23 na Ateneo heights Writer’s Workshop noong 2018, at Ateneo Artswork noong 2015. Sa kanyang huling taon sa Ateneo, naging Katuwang na Patnugot siya para sa Bagwisang Filipino ng heights. Maaring basahin ang kanyang mga akda sa heights, WriterSkill, Marias at Sampaguitas, at sa mga self-published niyang mga chapbook: Euridice at ang Paghahanap kay Bathala (2019), at Gugma (2017). Nanalo siya ng Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts para sa kanyang mga tula. Berde ang kulay ng kanyang buhok ngayon. Nangangako siya na hindi ito ang huling beses makikita niyo ang mukha niyang nailathala.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 2

carissa natalia baconguis

(onda) 3 · Carissa Natalia Baconguis

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lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig

5â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan

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hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla

7â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis nagtaka siya saglit habang hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla o wala naman ba kayang isla talaga

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9â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis isasaalang-alang itong nanghinang katawan gaano ba kalayo, gaano pa kahaba nagtaka siya saglit habang hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla o wala naman ba kayang isla talaga sa katahimikan, alam niya ring dinadala siya ng alon ngunit ako ay dala ng agos ng sariling takot

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11â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis nababasa ko ang kalahatan bilang ikaw sa mga kuwento, ito raw ang mangyayari: isasaalang-alang itong nanghinang katawan gaano ba kalayo, gaano pa kahaba nagtaka siya saglit habang hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla o wala naman ba kayang isla talaga sa katahimikan, alam niya ring dinadala siya ng alon ngunit ako ay dala ng agos ng sariling takot kahit kilala ko ang mga karagatang iyong nilakbayan nag-iiba ang lahat kung ang siya naging ikaw

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13 · Carissa Natalia Baconguis

nag-iiba ang lahat kung ang siya naging ikaw lumalayo ka pa rin sa akin, lumalakbay palayo

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15â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis

naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla o wala naman ba kayang isla talaga sa katahimikan, alam niya ring dinadala siya ng alon ngunit ako ay dala ng agos ng sariling takot kahit kilala ko ang mga karagatang iyong nilakbayan nag-iiba ang lahat kung ang siya naging ikaw lumalayo ka pa rin sa akin, lumalakbay palayo sa kathang-isip; makarating ka sana sa walang-hanggang paroroonan

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hanggang ngayon, sa bawat lawlaw ko muli napakaraming mga onda ang nalilikha, kahit sa paglutang palayo sa buhay na ito nababasa ko ang kalahatan bilang ikaw sa mga kuwento, ito raw ang mangyayari: isasaalang-alang itong nanghinang katawan gaano ba kalayo, gaano pa kahaba nagtaka siya saglit habang hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka

17â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis

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tinanong ako kung paano ako patuloy na nagmamahal hanggang ngayon, sa bawat lawlaw ko muli napakaraming mga onda ang nalilikha, kahit sa paglutang palayo sa buhay na ito nababasa ko ang kalahatan bilang ikaw sa mga kuwento, ito raw ang mangyayari: isasaalang-alang itong nanghinang katawan gaano ba kalayo, gaano pa kahaba

19â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis

nagtaka siya saglit habang hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla o wala naman ba kayang isla talaga sa katahimikan, alam niya ring dinadala siya ng alon ngunit ako ay dala ng agos ng sariling takot kahit kilala ko ang mga karagatang iyong nilakbayan nag-iiba ang lahat kung ang siya naging ikaw lumalayo ka pa rin sa akin, lumalakbay palayo sa kathang-isip; makarating ka sana sa walang-hanggang paroroonan paano ko ba malilimutan kung paano ako tinuruang lumangoy na sa una mong hawak sa aking nanginginig na katawan

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ngayon, alam kong kaya ko na, kapag tinanong ako kung paano ako patuloy na nagmamahal hanggang ngayon, sa bawat lawlaw ko muli napakaraming mga onda ang nalilikha, kahit sa paglutang palayo sa buhay na ito nababasa ko ang kalahatan bilang ikaw sa mga kuwento, ito raw ang mangyayari: isasaalang-alang itong nanghinang katawan

21â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis

gaano ba kalayo, gaano pa kahaba nagtaka siya saglit habang hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla o wala naman ba kayang isla talaga sa katahimikan, alam niya ring dinadala siya ng alon ngunit ako ay dala ng agos ng sariling takot kahit kilala ko ang mga karagatang iyong nilakbayan nag-iiba ang lahat kung ang siya naging ikaw lumalayo ka pa rin sa akin, lumalakbay palayo sa kathang-isip; makarating ka sana sa walang-hanggang paroroonan paano ko ba malilimutan kung paano ako tinuruang lumangoy na sa una mong hawak sa aking nanginginig na katawan sinabi mo, paulit-ulit: huwag kang matakot; huwag nang matakot

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kahit sa alaala, hindi payak ang pagkamatay ngayon, alam kong kaya ko na, kapag tinanong ako kung paano ako patuloy na nagmamahal hanggang ngayon, sa bawat lawlaw ko muli napakaraming mga onda ang nalilikha, kahit sa paglutang palayo sa buhay na ito nababasa ko ang kalahatan bilang ikaw

23â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis

sa mga kuwento, ito raw ang mangyayari: isasaalang-alang itong nanghinang katawan gaano ba kalayo, gaano pa kahaba nagtaka siya saglit habang hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla o wala naman ba kayang isla talaga sa katahimikan, alam niya ring dinadala siya ng alon ngunit ako ay dala ng agos ng sariling takot kahit kilala ko ang mga karagatang iyong nilakbayan nag-iiba ang lahat kung ang siya naging ikaw lumalayo ka pa rin sa akin, lumalakbay palayo sa kathang-isip; makarating ka sana sa walang-hanggang paroroonan paano ko ba malilimutan kung paano ako tinuruang lumangoy na sa una mong hawak sa aking nanginginig na katawan sinabi mo, paulit-ulit: huwag kang matakot; huwag nang matakot lahat ito ay liham lamang ng pagmamahal

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minsan umaapaw pa rin ang pagkawala kahit sa alaala, hindi payak ang pagkamatay ngayon, alam kong kaya ko na, kapag tinanong ako kung paano ako patuloy na nagmamahal hanggang ngayon, sa bawat lawlaw ko muli napakaraming mga onda ang nalilikha, kahit

25â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis

sa paglutang palayo sa buhay na ito nababasa ko ang kalahatan bilang ikaw sa mga kuwento, ito raw ang mangyayari: isasaalang-alang itong nanghinang katawan gaano ba kalayo, gaano pa kahaba nagtaka siya saglit habang hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla o wala naman ba kayang isla talaga sa katahimikan, alam niya ring dinadala siya ng alon ngunit ako ay dala ng agos ng sariling takot kahit kilala ko ang mga karagatang iyong nilakbayan nag-iiba ang lahat kung ang siya naging ikaw lumalayo ka pa rin sa akin, lumalakbay palayo sa kathang-isip; makarating ka sana sa walang-hanggang paroroonan paano ko ba malilimutan kung paano ako tinuruang lumangoy na sa una mong hawak sa aking nanginginig na katawan sinabi mo, paulit-ulit: huwag kang matakot; huwag nang matakot lahat ito ay liham lamang ng pagmamahal sa oras, dadalhin din ako ng daloy ng aking bangka

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 26

nakagapos ang ating buhay sa haraya ng tubig minsan umaapaw pa rin ang pagkawala kahit sa alaala, hindi payak ang pagkamatay ngayon, alam kong kaya ko na, kapag tinanong ako kung paano ako patuloy na nagmamahal hanggang ngayon, sa bawat lawlaw ko muli

27â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Carissa Natalia Baconguis

napakaraming mga onda ang nalilikha, kahit sa paglutang palayo sa buhay na ito nababasa ko ang kalahatan bilang ikaw sa mga kuwento, ito raw ang mangyayari: isasaalang-alang itong nanghinang katawan gaano ba kalayo, gaano pa kahaba nagtaka siya saglit habang hawak niya ang sagwan gamit ang balat niyang unti-unting kumukupas lumulutang ang bangka naglalakbay muli sa tubig iluminado lamang ng buwan patungo siya sa isang hugis-isla o wala naman ba kayang isla talaga sa katahimikan, alam niya ring dinadala siya ng alon ngunit ako ay dala ng agos ng sariling takot kahit kilala ko ang mga karagatang iyong nilakbayan nag-iiba ang lahat kung ang siya naging ikaw lumalayo ka pa rin sa akin, lumalakbay palayo sa kathang-isip; makarating ka sana sa walang-hanggang paroroonan paano ko ba malilimutan kung paano ako tinuruang lumangoy na sa una mong hawak sa aking nanginginig na katawan sinabi mo, paulit-ulit: huwag kang matakot; huwag nang matakot lahat ito ay liham lamang ng pagmamahal sa oras, dadalhin din ako ng daloy ng aking bangka kilala natin ang karagatan bilang tawiran

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 28

29 · Carissa Natalia Baconguis

Sa madaling araw, istatik na lamang ang tumutugtog sa telebisyon; Paulit-ulit na sagitsit ang tunog ng murang sampan. Hinihintay na lamang ng mga langgam ang hipo ng liwayway sa binti. Palabas na sila at tatakpan nila ako; papasok sa ilong, sa tainga, at Sa mata. Kakalat nang kakalat hanggang nabara na nila lahat; Hanggang hindi ko na mahinga ang alikabok ng ating kutson, Hanggang hindi ko na marinig ang tansong pumipitik tulad ng yapak, Papunta kung saan man. Sumirit ako—may mga anay sa sapin. Nakain na naman ang isa sa mga paa ng ating kama, kawayan; Mahahanap mo ako Sa pelikula; mahahanap mo ang aking sarili sa pagluwa ng katawan ng kawayan, Katawan kong nahuhulog sa nakabukakang pigura ng kawayan, muli at muli Sa lupang tinubuan. Sa sentro ng aking dibdib, magtatayo ng kolonya, Nag-aabang sa walang-salang bulok. Babalik din sila sa telebisyon, maya-maya. Sa pag-uwi mo, makikita mo ako, tulog, hawak pa rin ang baraha Sa aking mga kamay. Baka naman naitago mo na ang alas sa akin. Tatabi ka, Barahang kumalat sa ibabaw ng isa’t-isa, tulad ng bahay. Sa kalat ng kahoy Wala kang maririnig. Pagpatay mo ng telebisyon, tumutugtog na ang mga teleseryeng Bumabati sa umaga; ngunit nakabibingi pa rin: mahahanap mo ang mata ko Sa mga talulot ng bulaklak, sa iniwang bulo ng bubuyog. At makikita kita, Nariyan pa rin sa liwanag ng haraya, at babalik at babalik tayo sa mundong Nilikha ng kapalaran. Magmumukha tayong tadhana, ulo hanggang sapatos.

Solitaire ng Pagkakataon

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 30

Sophia Bonoan

bfa creative writing

“And I know it’s fine to end our time Be safe, be true, and I’ll think of you”

—Live Well, Palace

Grateful to so many, for so much. See you out there.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 32

The Wind Hears You everyone in the bar angay felt for Armando when he lost Ligaya. Ligaya’s death—sudden and gruesome, I heard—would make even the strongest men, as Armando was, weep like an infant. And he did. At the wake, the procession, the funeral; he sobbed harder than Ligaya’s parents, more like a woman, my husband Ton whispered to me. But grief does horrible things to the brain, our neighbor Tess reminded us as we exited the cemetery, all of us except Armando and his child. Even men like Ando, who are as strong as the carabaos that help him plow the fields of his farm, have a limit to their strength. She was right; I and a few others in town had thought Armando wasn’t behaving the way he should have, but then again, how can you when you lose your young wife the way he did? It was Jaclyn from the sari-sari store across the street from mine who broke the news to me. Twenty-five year old Ligaya, who we had both carried as a baby and who had just had a baby of her own, was found dead in the forest, floating at the end of the river where we all washed our clothes. Jaclyn’s daughter’s friend had found her first, face down in the water, completely naked, the light red of diluted blood surrounding her head like a halo. They had found her clothes discarded beneath the waterfall on the other end of the river. She must have jumped, they all said when they gathered at the edge. Suicide, probably, before they even knew who the body was. But then when the barangay captain, Victor, arrived, he ordered a few men nearby to get the body out. When they laid her onto the ground, there were screams. People had to look away, they gagged, some vomited, one of the older women even fainted. I saw it, just a glimpse. I couldn’t believe it, Jaclyn said, shuddering. Ligaya’s lips were gone, ripped away; it was all red and teeth, her face perverted into some morbid, permanent grin. Jaclyn only got a glimpse, but it was haunting, she said. They covered her face with a shirt, blood seeping through the

33 · Sophia Bonoan

cotton. The rosary tattoo that encircled her ankle confirmed it was her, but they had to bring Armando to the morgue to be sure. They didn’t want to show him her face, but he demanded it. We all knew he wished he never looked. It rained after the funeral, when we all went home. Throughout the day, the skies were gray and thunder constantly rumbled. Even God is crying for her, my old father said, staring up at the sky from his favorite seat on our porch. She was a sweet girl. It was only a few days later when two men arrived in town. They went to every house, saying that they were hired personally to investigate Ligaya’s death. We all knew Ligaya’s father had a powerful friend in Manila, but he never told anyone who it was and left the subject to speculation. It was a topic many of us liked to bring up during lapses in conversation. The guesses could get ridiculous; saying he was friends with some shady crime lord who owned half of the city, maybe even the president himself. But we all knew it must have been someone in the government, with connections and a lot of money. Ligaya’s family, despite her own husband’s humble career and despite living in the rural barangay of Sto. Niño, was not poor. I offered the men some iced water when they got to my house, which they readily accepted, wiping the sweat off their brows with handkerchiefs. They both had their hair gelled back and wore watches that looked like the price of our yearly electricity bill. They asked questions about Ligaya, of course; what she was like, how we knew her, what we knew about her death. At every other word, one of them would jot something down in his notebook. I tried to peek at the page but couldn’t understand his handwriting from where I sat. They then asked what her relationship had been like with Armando. I knew this was going to be brought up, I wasn’t surprised. In the telenovelas, you must always suspect the spouse. Armando is a good, hardworking man, Ton replied. He loved her since they were both teenagers. This is the greatest tragedy for him. The men only nodded. Then they asked whether either of us attended mass on Sundays. Of course, I replied instantly. Then, they asked, Did you ever see Armando and Ligaya go to service? Both Ton and I had to pause to think. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 34

Probably, Ton said. Yes, but I haven’t seen them in quite some time, I tell them. Almost everyone in town goes to church on Sundays, either for the morning or evening services. Ton and I always went to the first mass of the day at seven in the morning, when there weren’t too many people and the lines for communion were still short. Armando and Ligaya were regular faces, for a while. When I stopped seeing them, I just assumed they began going at a different hour. They nodded again, but this time one of them wrote something down in his notebook. Did you notice any odd behavior in either of them over the past few months? Not that I can recall. No—well… During one of Ton’s weekly drinking sessions with Armando and some of the other men in the barangay, Armando had gotten drunker than usual. In a conversation about their sex lives—Ton shifted slightly in his seat as he recounted it—he had let slip that since the birth of their son, Ligaya wouldn’t let him near her. He had been itching for her since her belly had gotten too swollen to do anything with each other, and he had waited patiently, showering her with care and affection. But even three months into their son’s life, Ligaya would push him away, saying she was too tired or just wasn’t in the mood. She had even stopped holding his hand or embracing him, and every time he went near her or held her, he could feel her get tense beneath him. Eventually he just stopped touching her all together. It was unbearable for him, Ton told them. It wasn’t even the sex that bothered him. Imagine, the love of your life won’t let you touch them, and they won’t even tell you why. I saw Ton’s eyes glance at the clasped hands in my lap. I moved one over to his. And then? the men pressed on. Armando had to look for love elsewhere. Where, he didn’t say, but my mind immediately went to Carina. Carina’s husband Roy had disappeared just a few months prior, not even a year into their marriage. The local mechanic Hector told me that he was the last to see Roy, spotting him entering the forest 35 · Sophia Bonoan

at around three in the morning one day. Before that, the two of them had already become quite the popular couple in the barangay; I heard groups of people would visit their home on Sunday evenings for dinner and leave well into the morning. I wouldn’t have known myself as I had never been, given they lived a tricycle ride away and neither I nor Ton had much business with them or in their half of town. But then Roy vanished, and it was like Carina did too. She rarely left her home, and the big Sunday dinners stopped almost immediately. A few people would still come by on Sundays, but I felt like it was more out of pity, if anything. Roy spent so much time out of Sto. Niño than in it, and when he was home, he would often go on and on about how slowly everything moved, unlike in the fast-paced Manila, where there was always something happening everywhere you turned. Jaclyn scoffed as he walked away from her sari-sari store one day some time ago, having just finished one of his monologues about the big city. If he loves Manila so much why doesn’t he just go and marry it? I don’t understand what there is to love. It’s all just bodies and smoke over there. When Roy vanished and with no body being found in the forest despite all the thorough searches, everyone just assumed that he had run away to Manila. When Jaclyn heard the news, all she could say was, What did I tell you? That man loves Manila more than anything, even more than the girl that he got from there. We all knew how heartbroken or ashamed Carina must have been, and so everyone let her grieve in her own way: she was often seen walking around the barangay alone in the late hours, around the same time Roy was last seen. Agonized wails would be heard from her home at any given point of the day. She would sometimes even disappear into the forest, entering in the morning and coming back home at dusk, before she could cause any genuine worry. They even ignored the different men that exited her house every once in a while, alone. Women would come and go too, but this wasn’t strange. It was mostly the younger, single men that were questioned, and they never shared what exactly it was they did in Carina’s home, adding even more fuel to the fire spreading around town. But Tess’s sister, heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 36

who lived just down the road from Carina, had told Tess that she had seen Armando step out twice or thrice. Given that they weren’t very close to one another, even while Roy was around, it wasn’t hard to assume what was happening. I had never spoken to or met Carina, but I knew about her. Roy had met her in Manila and brought her to Sto. Niño himself. The chatter about her spread quickly, everyone on their street excited to meet Roy’s beautiful bride-to-be. But when they did, they were surprised to find that she wasn’t quite, to put it simply, beautiful. I was surprised to find out that she was a mature woman of about forty, with deep gashes on either of her cheeks, fully healed. According to Joseph, a tricycle driver who I would often catch at the palengke and who lived on their street, the cuts seemed to have been there for some time. My son, Mikael, told us over lunch that he heard they were made by her family who practiced some different religion. He was only ten at the time, so I branded it as a ridiculous rumor. But, it remained the most popular one in town. Would you know Carina’s exact address? the man with the notebook asked. He snapped it shut and tucked it into his shirt pocket. * I had nearly forgotten about the whole investigation months later. Roy’s disappearance was labelled as a one-off thing, and so was Ligaya’s death, only more tragic. I would only remember Ligaya when I saw Armando wandering around town, thinking to myself that he could use another serving of rice in his next meal. But I was surprised to find Rita, the woman I bought fish from in the market and who barely partook in gossip, leaning forward behind her stall as she handed me my plastic bag of galunggong. Have you heard about Armando? I confirmed the story with a few others in Sto. Niño. Despite all the small differences in details, the summary of the story remained relatively the same.

37 · Sophia Bonoan

He had disappeared too. One of Hector’s mechanics passed by his house and found the front door ajar and the baby crying and screaming in its crib. Some men scanned the forest looking for him, but they found nothing. He probably ran away, Rita said, just like Roy. He was probably too heartbroken. Maybe even the baby reminded him too much of the hurt from Ligaya. But then I heard about Carina’s neighbors, Mariano and Wilda. On Sunday night, before he ran away, they said, they heard a commotion next door. They peeked into Carina’s home through a crack in the curtains to see someone who could have been Armando, and who must have been Armando, kicking and struggling. He was restrained, as though two people were holding him up, and they saw who they knew was Carina, as Wilda spotted her cheek, trying to speak to him calmly. They wondered what was making him so angry. When Mariano ran up to Carina’s front door to see what the commotion was all about, Victor, our captain, opened the door. Sorry, he had said, a drunk bicker. We’re sorting it out. My young son Mikael came home from school and heard a similar story from his friends, but that sounded even more graphic and closer to a lie, the way young schoolboys liked to tell stories. He told me that Mariano and Wilda were at the gathering themselves and watched as everyone else murdered Armando and cut up his body so no one would find it. They all did it for Carina, mama. Don’t listen to foolish rumors embellished like that, I scolded, not letting him continue. This isn’t a horror story. This is a real man, this is real life. I relayed the story to Tess the following day. Ridiculous what these kids come up with nowadays, I told her, influenced by all the violence on the internet. Tess agreed, but said that the schoolboy rumor rang with some truth, or at least, matched up with some whispers she had heard around town, even the story I had been told by Mariano and Wilda. People were saying that Armando did run away, but not because of Ligaya as most of us had assumed, and he didn’t get far either. In a drunken rage, he stormed into Carina’s house, accusing heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 38

her of not just killing Ligaya but her own husband as well, in front of her dinner guests. He went on a tirade and accused everyone in the room of being a part of it, whatever it was. He was on his way to the police station in the other barangay, when Hector—again—had seen him on his way and heard him say where he was going. But according to the police at Sto. Domingo, Armando never arrived. Maybe he had pushed someone to their limit, Tess said, but none of the whispers accused anyone of the crime. None of them could even say who was at the dinner for sure. But every story, no matter how ridiculous, contained Carina. I knew how much people cared for her, letting her do whatever after what happened with Roy. In fact, more people seemed to love her with every passing day. More people came to her home alone, frequently, doing God knows what, they would never tell. But gradually, Sunday dinners became a grand event again. I didn’t know why, and less and less people were talking to me about her. My not knowing was frustrating. Even Jaclyn from the sari-sari store had befriended Carina. She said she was kind and listened to all her problems, genuinely. Not in the way everyone else listens in this town, she told me. Not like it’s some sensational story to twist and tell any ear that will hear you. She actually listens to me. Ligaya badmouthed Carina, saying she wasn’t a good influence on Armando. Maybe she just didn’t like seeing Armando become his own man instead of hers. Bless her soul, but the girl was never careful with her words. I saw less of Jaclyn after that. We would often talk after Sunday mass with Tess, but eventually it only became Tess and me. In fact, I had begun to see less people at church on Sundays, and noticed that the sign in front had even lessened their number of masses in the day. Ton and I had started going later in the day ourselves, as it began to seem like we were the only ones in the pews. Carina invited me over for dinner tonight, Tess told me one day as we were exiting the church. Will you go? I felt a knot at the back of my neck. I’m thinking about it. I asked around about the two men who were investigating Ligaya’s death months before. Ton’s barber, Jonas, told him that there were 39 · Sophia Bonoan

no leads and they gave up. No one cares about a small-town murder, anyway, he had said. There’s too much going on in Manila, better things. I get why Roy left. But how do we know he left? I asked Ton, to which he shrugged and replied with some annoyance, Sometimes it’s okay to leave things as mysteries when we aren’t involved in them, ano? My neighbor Kriselle, on the other hand, told me that she heard the men were scared off. Ligaya’s father offered them more, but even the money couldn’t keep them. Something in this town is even more powerful than their friends in high places. There’s a lot of politics going on that we don’t see. Walking down the dirt road on my way home from the post office one evening, I spotted a woman standing in front of the small gate of my house, staring at the front door. As I kept walking nearer, I noticed deep, brown cuts on her cheek. She turned to me suddenly, as if she saw me coming. I felt something in my gut, the hairs on my arms standing up. She waved at me, and I waved back, walking briskly towards her, her eyes on me the entire way. We’ve never met, officially. We haven’t. Carina smiled. The gashes on her cheeks deepened as she did, making her slim face appear more gaunt and hollow. Have dinner with all of us this Sunday, won’t you? I’d love for you to be there. She looked down the road behind me. Sweat trickled down my chest. I heard you were asking around about me, so I thought maybe you could get to know me yourself. The sentiment was kind, but something in the tone of her voice, monotonous and low, unsettled me. Carina looked back towards my home. I followed her gaze and noticed that she had been staring at the window by the front door. It was open, the lights inside the house switched off. All I could see where the white drapes flowing gently with the soft wind. I might be going to the city with Ton, I told her quickly. She smiled again and looked back at me. I realized her eyes didn’t move with her smile. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 40

That’s alright. She looked at my house again, scanning its exterior. But I do hope to see you one of these days. Have a good evening, Alma. I nodded and entered my home. It was dark inside, the only light coming from the television at the other end of the room, where Mikael and my father lay asleep on the couch in front of it. I peeked out the open window. I found her still standing there where she was, looking back at me. She waved again, and I waved back. Then she turned and walked back down the road, her hands clasped behind her back, looking around at the houses, then at the sky. I let out a breath and shut the window, then locked my door. I called out for Ton, needing to tell someone what had just happened.

41 · Sophia Bonoan

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 42

Arianne Maxine A. Buenaventura

ab literature (english)

I wrote “House of Mirrors” as part of my requirements for a creative writing class I took up last semester. The body is not an easy subject; like any other essay, it required me to separate myself from the experience of having, owning, and being. I suppose that through the separation I was able to find truths about myself that I have long been unable to face. I hope you do, too. To the many bodies I’ve encountered throughout my stay in the Ateneo: Erin, for being a constant source of inspiration. Martina, Alva, and Gela, for being steady support systems. Belle, Anna, and Tala, for accompanying me from Antipolo to Katipunan (and hopefully, to Taguig). The GUIDON, for being home. The GUIDON EB 2017–2018 and 2018–2019, for teaching me equal doses of love, patience, and pain. AB Literature (English) 2019, for accepting me as I am. The many professors I’ve had the honor of learning from: Dr. Mary Thomas, Dr. Vincenz Serrano, Dr. Joyce Martin, Ms. Mayel Martin, Sir Max Pulan, Sir Exie Abola, Dr. Katherine Lacson, Sir Bobby Guevara, Sir Louie Julian, and the rest. And finally, my parents, who have supported me throughout the years no matter how impossible the dream. Salamat at padayon. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 44

House of Mirrors* you were never really happy with your body.

An array of multiple health concerns aside, it never quite looked the way you wanted it to look. The stomach bulges too much. Stretch marks crawl up your sides; dark, gray-pink lines that you had noticed ever since you started putting on a little more weight than normal. Legs are too hairy. Almost everything about you is too hairy from the bottom to the top—except for your head, where the hair never really recovered from episodes of untreated trichotillomania as a child. You had ripped your hair out due to stress and grew addicted to the feeling, used it as some sort of twisted coping mechanism. There was something oddly relieving, something satisfying and liberating about the sensation of pulling hair as a form of releasing tension, releasing stress, releasing all the negativity that had stuck too long in that body of yours. Your calves are large and chunky. There are too many scars on your knees; reminders of your own clumsiness. Hyperpigmented spots and acne scars litter the lower half of your cheeks. The eyebrows, as always, need some maintenance; one is more arched than the other. You can never really get rid of that damned upper lip hair. You’re all squish, little height, not much to look at. There was always something to criticize and never really anything to compliment. Your body felt excessive at best, an excessive thing as a result of many indulgences; indulgences that seemed to result from your grandparents’ ways of loving. Mama and papa had always spoiled you rotten. Countless trips to Shopwise Libis, the now-closed Makro, and sm malls always ended up with you bringing home a sweet of some kind. Shopwise trips

*Sections of this piece were published in the author’s opinion column for The GUIDON’s January–February 2019 issue.

45 · Maxine Buenaventura

ended usually with large cups of taho; warm and overflowing with the softest tofu, tapioca balls that felt nice to hold in the mouth, and the arnibal sauce that you always made sure to save for last. Trips to SM, meanwhile, brought home freezing cones of ice cream or dripping popsicles that always melted in the Philippine heat. Jelly Tongue was a favorite of yours. It was a delight to eat, the squishiness and softness of the sweet easy on your growing teeth. Your tongue would typically be stained with either red or green after, depending on the flavor of the food. Your grandfather, despite having to maintain a certain blood sugar level, made sure to accompany your snacking by treating himself to some Pinipig-coated chocolate ice cream as well. The fun wouldn’t stop there. Coming home, mama would then surprise you by presenting a multi-colored bag of sweets that she had decided to buy while you and Papa were off choosing the dessert of the day. Sometimes it wasn’t sweets. On certain occasions would she bring back some chicharon and extra vinegar, a delicacy that you and your dad in particular loved. On other days, it would be a steaming container of toasted adobo nuts which smelled freshly of salt and garlic. Mom would often get on your back about eating so much; sometimes complaining that the peanuts would give you pimples, sometimes making scathing remarks about your weight and a pair of pants or a shirt that was starting to get a little too tight. The words felt like pinpricks, but against better judgment, you decided to indulge anyway. Sayang kasi yung pagkain kung hindi kinain. Sayang rin yung pera kung hindi kinain yung mga binili ni mama. Your family always talked about money here and there; not wanting to waste, you decide to go for it and enjoy yourself. All of these were signs of love; at least despite how nutritionally unhealthy these signs actually were. Indulging eventually became a coping mechanism. Bouts of unexplained sadness were usually soothed by a scoop of ice cream or two; it’s a nasty habit that develops in high school and continues until college. Frustrated fits led to you scouring the fridge or something good to munch on. You cope and cope until the weighing scale stares you in the face one day. At some point, you realize that clothes weren’t quite fitting as well, your face seemed to be much rounder, your health heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 46

was harder to manage, and no one really gave you a second look; not so much even as an interested glance. You rummage through the refrigerator again for something to eat. * You start to realize the wrongness of your body throughout grade school. Swimming was mandatory from first to seventh grade as part of the school’s physical education curriculum. The school mandated a rather simple bathing suit as a way to prevent students from wearing overly flashy or revealing attire. It was an indigo one-piece that bore the white Assumption insignia placed around the left or right thigh. To other classmates of yours, the bathing suit was just that: an attire, a bathing suit, something to wear once a week and not think much of afterwards. To you, however, it was something that made you realize that maybe something was wrong with you. Your thighs poured out, as did your arms. Every patch and inch of skin screamed excessive. Whenever you walked or moved, parts of you jiggled and bounced. Your body, after all wasn’t like the taller, slimmer, and leaner ones of the other girls. They were almost statuesque; perfect in every way, with little hair on their legs or having stomachs that barely bulged. Those were the bodies you aspired for; bodies you never ended up owning, having. You always dressed the quickest because of this. While the other girls would lull about in the changing room and laugh, talk among themselves, you would dress down quickly and without noise. You barely peeked at the mirror, barely gave your roundness any regard. Zipping out of the changing area without anyone else noticing became a handy skill. By the time the rest of your classmates would be out and ready for swimming, you would be in the pool, sitting at the corner rather awkwardly and longing, wishing for the lesson to be over. The years pass. You keep swimming. You keep darting out of the bathroom, keep making your way to the pool, keep hiding yourself from the world. Ignore the jiggle of your arms when you lift them above your head. 47 · Maxine Buenaventura

Another incident happens in the sixth grade. While lining up post-lunch, one of the nosier, nasal-sounding girls points out the bald spot around the front of your head. She’s shorter than you are, probably around four foot something, but that doesn’t matter when she’s slimmer—almost even daintier. At ten or eleven, you started to pick and tug at your hair. You never found out why. You just started one day, liked the feeling, and continued to do it—all until your hair had started to thin around the front and middle of your head. Your parents eventually took notice and forced you to join your grandmother in one of her routine visits to a dermatologist in Mandaluyong. The dermatologist noticed immediately and barraged you with questions. When did this start? You don’t remember and give a rough estimate; it’s been a few months at that point. Have you been getting sick? No. Have you been taking any medication recently? No. More questions about my hair-picking. She asked if you’ve done it to your eyebrows, to your arm hair, your leg hair, anywhere else. No, you replied, it’s just the hair on my head. You don’t have to worry. Just rub this on your head for a few weeks and your hair should start growing back. But when your classmate points out the bald spot with a catty smirk, you feel something catch in your throat. She notices; prods more, calls over a few other girls and points out the bald spot in a louder, obnoxious voice. Come here, look here, look at this. Her hair’s thinning, right? Ang nipis kaya. You try to ignore her but she keeps poking, prodding, coming closer, invading your space. The lump becomes too painful to swallow. There’s a burning fury to it; it climbs from your palms to your cheeks. It’s the vulnerable kind of fury, the fury that makes you shake. You never wanted to admit it, never wanted anyone to notice, but there she was, dragging one of your many, many imperfections out in the open. You snap. It’s explosive, filled with resentment and bitterness. All the disappointment you harbored spills out for the rest to see. Everyone else scatters away and she stops prodding. No one expected you to snap. You were the quiet one, after all, the girl with her head in the clouds, the girl who liked to hide away and scribble away in her heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 48

notebook during her spare time. Another classmate of yours pulls her away. But there’s a satisfied kind of smile on her lips and you want to ask if she was proud of ripping the secret out of you; if she was proud of ripping you open, exposing yet another weakness, exposing you as someone less attractive, less desirable, less of a person just because of the amount of hair on your head. But you don’t. You keep silent instead and hold back, your vulnerabilities out in the open. This is why you start wearing headbands much after and keep doing so until after you graduate from high school. It pushes your hair back and keeps everyone else from seeing the bald spot, from talking about it, and from bringing yet another bodily mistake into the light. There’s some sort of control there, some kind of reclaiming that doesn’t completely feel like it—but it’s a step towards it. While you struggle to reclaim your hair, you fail to do the same for your body. You bloat throughout high school, the coping mechanism you turned to as a child finally biting back. It’s not too obvious. There are bigger girls in your batch, girls with a little more excess than you do, but the mere fact doesn’t make you feel better about yourself at all. There’s no solidarity in being overweight. It doesn’t help that you’re the biggest among your barkada. You and your friend Marie joked about it back then. She towered at five foot seven or eight, standing as one of the tallest girls in your batch. Marie was slim like the rest of the pretty girls and taller than you would ever be: exactly the kind of stature you wanted for yourself but would never really attain as the years would pass by. “If there was a machine that could help trade fat for height,” she commented one day during one of your breaks, “then I’d trade with you quickly. No question.” The both of you laugh; Marie genuinely and with a wide smile that showed off her retainers, and you with a little less sincerity and a little more resentment. You would do it in a heartbeat and finally be the kind of pretty you always wanted to be. During your junior year, the school hosted an event they called the parent-daughter bonding. The program called for some kind of daytime bonding activities during the morning and afternoon, with the event coming into fruition during the evening segment. 49 · Maxine Buenaventura

Most of your friends were excited for the evening part in particular; the teachers mentioned that everyone had to be in dresses given the formality of the event, after all, and this was everyone’s chance to glam themselves up and take a break from the stuffy white blouses and red skirts they were made to wear every day. You wished you sat out. You could have stayed home with your parents, ordered a pizza, put on a movie, and call it a night. Memories of the night are painful ones. You and a few friends were dressing up in one of the bathrooms during the hour break, and you were the only one who undressed inside of the stall. When you came out, they were all giggling, fixing their hair, and applying the slightest bit of lip gloss. Ang ganda mo, one squealed to the other, eyeing my best friend’s peach dress with some admiration and jealousy. She compliments her back and eyes her pinker, rosier dress. Both of them look great. Their dresses were modest at best, but it didn’t take a fool to admit that they looked good in them. They hugged the right areas and looked flattering on them, emphasizing all their good parts: long legs, slim arms, a cinched waist, a perfect figure. Parts, again, that you’ve always wanted but never got for yourself. Neither of them took a glance in your direction. You wouldn’t either. You took pictures with them throughout the night and did your best to enjoy yourself, but all you could think of was how the blue, white, and yellow-striped dress only did more to amplify your bloating, your roundness, and all the things that you so desperately wanted to erase. The pictures didn’t come out right either, and you spent the next day online trying to un-tag yourself from a good chunk of them. * You try to find ways to correct your body and its imperfections in college. Makeup is one. You borrow your mother’s lipstick in the latter half of freshman year for an en12 presentation, wanting to look impressive as you presented a debate in front of the whole class. You got many compliments for it; your classmates commenting that it was a nice color heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 50

on your lips. Your professor, on another hand, gave you a measured look as she took you in—you in your white button-down, black slacks, black heels, and lipstick—before telling you that perhaps a more vivid, true red would suit you more. You purchase your first lipstick that summer. Going through the website was both fulfilling and overwhelming at the same time. There were different finishes, types, and colors of lipsticks, ranging from liquid to bullet to matte to creme, going from the lightest of nudes to the deepest of reds, and even delving into bolder colors such as mint green and purple for the braver at heart. Another section of the website was dedicated to eye products such as eyeshadow, eyeliner, and eyebrow pencils; at your dad’s permission, you go a little overboard and end up purchasing three different lipsticks as well as an eyeliner pencil that you would later fully consume within two, three months. There were many things you could do to your face, many techniques you could use to look better, a vast spectrum of colors you could apply just to look more put-together and more impressive; the kind of pretty you wanted to be. All you wanted was to be pretty. And maybe this was it. Your order arrives in less than a month. The package sits nicely at your study table when you get home and you tear it open eagerly, your mom watching on in fond amusement as you do. Receiving mail was a usually exciting experience; but when it came to makeup, as you would learn later in the future, it was usually a much more different experience. There was something about opening up a package that seemed to hold the solution to most of your problems; more so if those problems had to do with your own body. It’s a thick, white box that contains four goodies: three lipsticks in varying shades of red, and one creme eyeliner in black. Avenue was your first liquid lipstick. While you fall in love with the color, the struggle to put it on and take it off makes you rethink falling to begin with. The formula dries out your lips and makes them flake. Applying it is a struggle. You need to be careful and precise, unless you want the color to bleed out your lips and end up an ugly smear on your mouth. It’s a bold red, a deeper red, a red you slowly acquaint yourself with and get along with eventually. Silk, meanwhile, 51 · Maxine Buenaventura

runs much deeper and reminds you of the wine that your family drinks every Christmas and New Year. It’s much more plum in hue and reminds you of freshly-bought and refrigerated grapes. It didn’t seem sensible to wear such a deeper color in the summer, but you did so anyway and gradually fell in love as well. You took it out to fancier events, matched with smokey eyeshadow and slicked-back hair. Out of the three, however, Bichette is your favorite. It rests comfortably alongside all your other ones until this very day. You’re attached. Upon wearing it, you’re convinced that it’s the perfect red. There are minimal blue undertones that make it seem pink, but only until there. It’s a red that’s alive, a red that commands attention once applied to the lips. Bichette becomes a regular and makes a home on your lips. The universe seems to fall into place when you first put it on. Unlike the lipstick that you borrowed from your mom, this one fits you perfectly. Upon turning to your mom, she wishes out loud that you had ordered something much more tame and nude and pink instead. But you ignore her well-wishes, look at yourself in the mirror, and feel a little bit happier with the burst of color on your lips. You find yourself dabbling then diving into makeup as the days, weeks, and months pass. A humble collection grows into something bigger. You find that you have to keep track of all your makeup with a neatly-designed tracker on Google Sheets. The love for makeup takes a toll on your own personal savings, but the pay-off, you found, was worth it. The creams, powders, and different finishes of lipstick—matte, creme, satin, frost, gloss, sheer—finally made you feel some kind of beautiful. The makeup made your face look better. You looked like an enhanced version of yourself: more put-together, more mature, more in control. Red lips and sharp, winged eyeliner became a staple of yours; so much that people found it weird whenever you’d come to school without one or the other. You purchase more and more of the makeup as the months go on. YouTube videos, Reddit, and blogs introduce you to more products than you could ever imagine, and you start asking for those very products as birthday and Christmas gifts. But while you heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 52

do your best to make your face as presentable as it can be, you neglect your body more and more. Freshman fifteen is real. So is the added weight after sophomore and junior year. In the summer before senior year, you’re the heaviest you’ve ever been and it takes a toll on you. Your pants grow tighter. Your arms look gigantic in the mirror. No amount of contouring can make your face any slimmer and instead seems to make you look worse. Pimples sprout on your cheeks, down your jawline, and on the edges of your eyebrows: all of which being hints of an increasingly unhealthy lifestyle. When you take a step on the scale, all it tells you that you had to do something or else you’d end up with worse problems than your weight. Diabetes and high cholesterol run in your family, after all. Your body, as horrible as you thought it looked, deserved better than clogged arteries and premature heart failure. Your dad pitches the idea a week after coming back from a month in Australia. You had managed to bring back over a hundred dollars’ worth of makeup and more than five pounds of unnecessary weight. It’s simple, really: a combination of lowering your sugar count while also adjusting to something called intermittent fasting. The first suggestion was difficult and the second easy enough. You loved sweets. Candies, juices, and caffeine were pretty much your coping mechanisms when the days were heavier and when your brain was meaner. They acted as both comfort and reward. To restrain yourself and only allow a bite or two’s worth every weekend would be as hard as you think it was. Intermittent fasting, meanwhile, was something you didn’t exactly know about. Looking it up online and reading a few articles your dad had forwarded told you the barest of basics. All you had to do was stick to a schedule. Intermittent fasting allowed you to eat within an eight-hour timeframe, while the rest of the sixteen hours were spent not eating at all. The only thing you could consume during the sixteen hours was water, black coffee, or tea. No food at all; not until exactly sixteen hours after you last ate. You accept your dad’s suggestion and agree to start the day after, scoffing in your head and wondering how hard it could be. 53 · Maxine Buenaventura

The first week is horrible. You nearly cave and prepare yourself some warm Milo on the first morning, find yourself staring longingly at the foreign chocolate bars reserved for your younger brother, wish that you could just give in and down the rest of the specially-wrapped Tim Tams you had brought home from Australia. No one would know and you could pin it on your brother. But you don’t. You found yourself developing a schedule and sticking to it. That was the easy part. Being a night owl, you found yourself only start getting up around eleven or exactly noon. Your first meal would be eaten at around that time, and you could keep eating anything you wanted until seven or eight in the evening, depending on what time you took your first bite. The following week (and the ones after that), healthy eating becomes your new normal. Some meals offered fried fish, others white chicken breast. Kalabasa and ginisang pechay become much more common at home. A cup of rice would always be present beside your plate at every meal. You decided to start using the biggest glass you could find for water. To curb your sweet tooth, your dad asked your mom to buy cartons and cartons’ worth of flavored yogurts, both in mango and berry-flavored variants. You were advised to have a container of water with you at all times. On the weekends, you were allowed mostly a slice of cake or a small piece of chocolate depending on whether or not you had cracked during the duration of the week. At the end of the first week, your dad asks you to weigh yourself. The weighing scale has always been an enemy of some sort. At some point during junior year you decided to stop checking in every week, as the sight of the numbers getting higher and higher only demotivated you even further. It’s a quantitative reminder of your imperfections and excesses; a list of reminders on how you could be better but aren’t. Each time the numbers go up, you punish yourself and claw at your hips in disappointment. The lines are pink and raw against your skin, melding with the stretch marks etched all around them. They disappear in mere minutes, but for the rest of the day all you do is stumble around with the sensation on your skin a reminder, a lingering punishment. You always ate less on the day of the weigh as a way you to make up for it. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 54

Approaching the scale gives you some sort of dread. There’s a knot in your stomach that climbs all the way up to your throat. Your nails are nice and long, shapely and sharp at the tips just in case you would prove to be a disappointment all over again. To your shock, the number drops. You’re three pounds lighter than you were in the previous week. The feeling is foreign to you, and you end up rechecking your weight at least thrice more just to confirm the number. Three less. Three down. Three. More than you expected. You tell your dad later that night, and he gives an approving smile. Let’s continue the diet, he says, and you agree. Don’t become complacent. You won’t. The plate in front of you—cooked vegetables, white meat, and a cup of rice—suddenly seems more delicious. * While growing up, you loved to collect magazines. You would always pick up a copy of Total Girl by the cashier when it would be time to pay, sneaking it into the cart and batting your eyelashes at your grandmother when she saw it next to the ice cream. It usually worked, and you would spend the ride home poring over the glossy pages despite your grandmother’s warning that reading in the car would hurt your eyes. You eventually ended up trading Total Girl for Cosmopolitan despite your mom scolding you for reading something that wasn’t meant for your age. You ignored the raunchy headlines (“What His Ex Didn't Do In Bed”) and instead found yourself staring at the ones that seemed to call out to you. “Peel off those pounds,” one read. “ look hot In 10 Minutes Flat!” cried another. Being a pudgy girl on the way to high school, those seemed to be the articles that mattered the most. High school, as you would eventually find out, was the time to meet people beyond your batchmates in Antipolo. Secretly-planned soirees suddenly became the new normal, and batchmates of yours started dating left and right. It didn’t help that the one boy you crushed on later in sophomore year ended up setting his sights on a more petite and foreign-looking girl who, coincidentally, liked him back. 55 · Maxine Buenaventura

Plastered on the covers of these magazines were pretty girls with skinny bodies and inviting smiles. Magazines like Cosmopolitan often featured their cover models wearing clothing that showed off their assets: flat, toned stomachs you could eat off of, hairless legs that went on for miles and miles, and perky breasts that didn’t seem to need the support of a push-up bra. Over and over would the same kind of body be featured on these magazines, and eventually you’d start seeing it on different platforms as well. Starring on new telenovelas would be girls of similar body types, skin colors, hair styles, and facial characteristics. Different standards have come about through the years, with consistent ones pertaining to the ideal skin color, the ideal body type, the ideal facial size, and even the ideal height. The tall girls whose height you sought for weren’t spared. Apparently, if you were too tall, you would scare off the boys. Go figure. All these standards rise up and become the new normal, acting as a basis for beauty. You find yourself measuring up to the standards throughout the years, comparing yourself to all the pretty girls on the television, the girls featured in the movies, the ones plastered on teen magazines, girls watching you from billboards while you were on the way to school, and even the girls you passed by inside school. You look into a mirror each day and the reflected image looks like the exaggerated ones in a house of mirrors. Hundreds of reflections stare back at you, a mixture of what you are and what you could be. The more you move through the house in an attempt to escape, you only run into more mirrors of false truths and false images. There’s a little bit of truth mixed into them, but you don’t know which is which anymore. * What now? You don’t know. As far as personal pieces tend to go, this was supposed to be the part where a big breakthrough would happen. There’d be a harping of lifelong lessons about self-love, self-care, and heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 56

how internal beauty is what matters the most. You wish you could espouse the same values, but that’s not how your brain works. The only thing you realize is how horrible your view of yourself is. It’s awfully distorted and disjointed; so much that you barely even want to associate yourself with your own body anymore. The entire experience thus far feels more a distancing than anything else, a listing of even more reasons to continue referring to yourself in the second person. You always wished that you could have someone else’s body, that you could have someone else's looks, could have been someone else in general—someone who loved her body, someone who took care of it and did all she did so that it could stay beautiful just the way the world wanted it to be. Then maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t have to rely on the makeup and the dieting just to prove to the mirrors and their reflections that you aren’t as ugly and as horrible as they made you out to be. This is the breakthrough. The mirrors don’t shatter. You’re still inside the house of mirrors, and the next step is entirely up to you. * You try to be happy with your body. It doesn’t look the way you want it to, but it's getting better. The stomach still bulges, but not as badly as back in June. The stretch marks are fading to a pale pink. Legs are hairy, but you've stopped caring. Your hair is growing out steadily and is cut the way you like it. You’re thinking of having it bleached again come the break, but the pain sort of scares you away. The hair-picking habit has stopped. Your best friend keeps tabs on you and your habit, reminding you to drop five pesos into a glass jar for each time you pluck one out. (You haven’t—not in a long time.) Your calves are slimming down, your scars are healing, and the acne scarring on your cheeks is no longer as horrid. Your eyebrows still need maintenance, but no one really pays attention. They were meant to be siblings, after all, not exact twins. The upper lip hair bothers you less. You’re all squish and little height, but it works out in your favor when your friends tell you that you’re a 57 · Maxine Buenaventura

delight to hug. There’s always something to criticize but you try to find ways to compliment yourself every once in a while. From time to time, you catch a glimpse of yourself at the end of the day, faded lipstick and all, and try to make peace with the fact that this is the only thing you can control. The mirrors look less convincing now.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 58

59 · Andrea Chan

Andrea Chan

bfa information design

Hello! I’m Andrea Chan, more commonly known as Drea, from 4 bfa Information Design. I am an illustrator, graphic designer, texture photographer, and travel; culture enthusiast based in the Philippines. I like to create my own textures using texture photography, or using traditional mediums by hand before scanning and digitalizing them. I am passionate about using my multicultural background to bring experimental, hands-on, and organic approaches in telling the stories of cultural institutions, brands, spaces and start-ups through branding, graphic design, illustration, and product design. Check out more of my works at behance.com/lannyu or feel free to hit me up if you’re looking to collaborate, talk about theater, Korean music, or language! Hopefully gradwaiting, Drea-chan.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 60

Sentimentality (series) 2. Photomanipulation, digital painting, and texture photography.

61 · Andrea Chan

Sentimentality (series) 3. Photomanipulation, digital painting, and texture photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 62

Jayvee Del Rosario

ab-ma political science

scrape, scrape, scrape, I’m like a Termite. scrape, scrape, scrape,

scrape.

••• cut to: Wild World by Cat Stevens

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 64

65 · Jayvee Del Rosario

Bastard Boy. Acrylic and postage stamp on canvas. 8 x 10 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 66

67 · Inya de Vera

Inya de Vera

bfa information design

Inya de Vera is a painter, graphic designer, and illustrator. Among these roles, her favorite is playing with paint and all its possibilities. She is constantly exploring different mediums and ways to build world around them, with portraiture as her favorite subject.

heights Seniors Folio 2019â&#x20AC;&#x201A;Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;68

Found Faces (Series) 1. Cut outs from oil palette. 8 x 11 in.

69 · Inya de Vera

Found Faces (Series) 2. Cut outs from oil palette. 8 x 11 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 70

Found Faces (Series) 3. Cut outs from oil palette. 8 x 11 in.

71 · Inya de Vera

Found Faces (Series) 4. Cut outs from oil palette. 8 x 11 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 72

Found Faces (Series) 5. Cut outs from oil palette. 8 x 11 in.

73 · Inya de Vera

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 74

75 · Genesis Gamilong

Sam Domingo

bs psychology

Sam na lang. Bale, galing akong 4 bs Psychology, Minor in English Literature. Nagsusulat lang ako kapag sinusumpong, kaya mahirap daw akong intindihin.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 76

sipi mula sa Bersus mga tauhan erikson ochoa — labing-siyam taong gulang, batang city jail, payat. fidel — trenta’y dos anyos, tindero ng balut. tagpuan Alas onse y media ng gabi. Sa isang waiting shed.

77 · Sam Domingo

Bubukas ang ilaw. Makikita ang isang waiting shed sa entablado na may katabing lamp post na bukas. Isang malaking body bag ang makikita sa lapag na katapat ng bangkuan sa waiting shed. Nakapatong sa bangkuan ang isang basket ng balut na may papel sa harap nito na nagsasabing “Balut 4 Sale (P50 isa).” May selpon sa gilid ng basket na ito. Maririnig sa background ang kantang ballad mula sa selpon: “Lumaya ka na sa akin, At hindi na kita muling kakailanganin Lumayo ka na’t umalis Sa piling ko’y puro ka na lang hinagpis At kung kaya kalimutan mo na, Magsimula kang muli at hanapin ang iyong sarili Patawad, mahal at malaya ka na sa aking piling.” Habang tumutugtog ang kantang ito, makikita ang isang binatilyo na marahang papasok sa entablado habang tinitingnan ang maliit na papel na hawak niya. May suot siyang bag, pantalon, at t-shirt. Hihinto sa paglalakad ang binatilyo pagkatapos ng mga liriko ng kanta at titingin-tingin sa paligid. Hihinga ang binatilyo nang malalim habang mahinang tumutugtog pa ang kanta.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 78

erikson

Hmm... heto na nga.

Titingnan niya ang papel. erikson

(pabulong) Saan nga ba ‘to?

Tutuloy ang lalaki sa paglalakad habang mukhang may sinusubukang alalahanin sa pagtitig sa papel. Aabot siya sa waiting shed, at masisipa niya ang body bag sa lapag. fidel

Aray! Putangina! Sino ‘yun?

Sisigaw nang malakas si ERIKSON. Mahuhulog ni ERIKSON ang papel.

erikson

May patay na buhay!

Lalabas si FIDEL sa body bag. fidel

Gago ka! Anong balak mo sa’kin? Huli ka, balbon!

erikson

Ha? Ma? Kasama ho nino? Ano pong sinasabi niyo?

fidel

Nasaan na selpon ko?

Lalabas si FIDEL na nakasuot ng makukulay na shorts, sando, at sapatos. Kukunin niya ang selpon sa tabi ng basket ng balut. Itututok ng lalaki ang selpon niyang may flash kay ERIKSON at masisilaw ang binata. fidel

Tangina, ka! O, ha?! Anong balak mo sa’kin? Ha? Huling-huli ka ngayon! Hello, gudibning sambayanang Pilipino! Nakikita niyo ‘tong lalaking ‘to, pinagsisisipa niya ako! Ang sakit! Ang sakit ng ulo ko, sa ulo ako tinama—

79 · Sam Domingo

erikson

Ma, ano hong ginagawa niyo? Anong ginagawa niyo?

fidel

Wala kang pake!

erikson

Ma! Pasensya na, pasensya na.

fidel

Kilala ka na ng buong Pilipinas. ’Wag kang gagalaw!

erikson

Ha?! Ser, ‘wag po. Wala akong balak, wala akong alam! Wala akong kasalanan, wala.

fidel

Anong pinagsasabi mo?!

erikson

Inutusan lang po ako. Inutusan...

Mapapaupo si ERIKSON at mapapayuko sa lapag. Magtataka si FIDEL. fidel

Ano? Ano’ng pangalan mo?

erikson

Erikson. Erikson Ochoa, ser! Ser, may assignment pa ako, ser.

fidel

Ilang taon ka na? Anong ginagawa mo rito?

erikson

Sampu, ser. Sampung taon lang ako, ser. Please, ser.

fidel

Gago, ano?

Paiyak na si ERIKSON, habang nanginginig. Magtataka lalo si FIDEL sa kaniyang nakikita. erikson

Ser, please, ser. Wala akong ginagawa, ser. Naglalakad lang ho ako.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 80

fidel

Talaga? Eh ba’t mo ako sinipa?

Hahablutin ni FIDEL si ERIKSON sa kwelyo. erikson

Ser, hindi ko kilala ’yung sinasabi niyo, ser. Wala ho akong dala, maliban sa dala kong damit. Wala rin ho akong binebenta! Hindi ko alam ’yang mga pinagsasabi niyong halaman! Ser, please. Bitawan niyo po ako. Pa-pasensya na. May ibabalik lang akong damit sa tiyahin ko, kailangan niya mamayang madaling-araw. Ser, may pasok pa ako bukas.

fidel

Ano?! May problema ka ba sa kokote?!

erikson

Ser, sorry na ser. Sorry. Wala po talaga akong ginagawa. Ser, pwede na ba akong umalis? Pwede na ba, ser? Ser, mag-aaral pa ako.

Titigil ang background music ng kanta at tutunog ang selpon ni FIDEL. fidel

Shet...may mga mata. Ang bilis nilang ubusin.

Agad na papakawalan ni FIDEL si ERIKSON, ngunit kakapit si ERIKSON kay FIDEL. erikson

Ser, sorry po, ser.

fidel

Oo na! Tinigil ko na. Tigilan mo na ako.

Titingin-tingin sa paligid si FIDEL. erikson

Salamat, ser. Ser, ser, ser...

81 · Sam Domingo

Lalayo nang bahagya si ERIKSON habang nakatitig sa kawalan. Hihikbing parang hinihingal siya. Titigil sa paggalaw si FIDEL, at ilalock ang selpon. Tititigan niya si ERIKSON at magbubuntong-hininga. Unti-unting titigil ang paghikbi ni ERIKSON hanggang sa umabot sa saglit na katahimikan. Tulala si ERIKSON. fidel

May...may problema ka ba sa utak?

Hindi iimik si ERIKSON. fidel

Huy! (tatapikin si ERIKSON) May problema ka ba sa utak?

Tititigan ni ERIKSON si FIDEL nang nakangiti. Lalayo si ERIKSON kay FIDEL. erikson

Sino ka?!

fidel

(sa sarili) Pucha. Walang pag-asa ’to.

erikson

Ano... ano ho ’yun?

fidel

(habang nakangiti) Wala.

Ngingiti si FIDEL kay ERIKSON at ayusin nito ang body bag. Makikita niya ang papel at itatago sa bulsa. Titingin-tingin sa paligid si ERIKSON. fidel

(kay ERIKSON) ‘Nak ng, may isyu ka pala talaga. Pasensya ka na, kid. (sa sarili) Malas ko naman, oo.

erikson

Ano? Nasaan ho ako?

fidel

Saan pa ba? (ituturo ang waiting shed) Bulag ka rin?

erikson

Ah... pasensya na ho. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 82

fidel

Tumayo ka nga riyan. Dali. Dinudumihan mo ang tapat ko; makikita nila.

Tititigan lang ni ERIKSON si FIDEL na titingnan muli ang selpon nito. Magbubuntong-hininga si FIDEL. fidel

Huy! Hindi kita aanuhin, bata ka, kaya tumayo ka na.

Tititigan lang ni ERIKSON si FIDEL. fidel

Anak ng. Wala na, hindi na nga kita bibidyohan, oh? Wala na?

erikson

Bidyo? Bakit may bidyo? Ano hong bidyo?

fidel

Ang labo mo rin talaga kausap, ano?

Tatayo si FIDEL at hihilahing paupo si FIDEL sa bangko ng waiting shed. fidel

Umupo ka, umupo ka rito. Pasalamat ka, hindi kita pinagkakitaan.

erikson

Wala ho akong maintindihan.

fidel

Kalimutan mo na nga lang. O, eto balut. Ako pa gumastos sa’yo, pucha.

Kukuha si FIDEL ng dalawang balut at ibibigay ang isa kay ERIKSON. Tulala pa rin si ERIKSON nang nakaupo. fidel

Kunin mo na.

erikson

Hindi ako kumakain niyan.

fidel

Okay, kid. Basta hawakan mo ’yung balut.

83 · Sam Domingo

erikson

Bakit ho?

fidel

Basta.

Ilalagay ni FIDEL ang balut sa kamay ni ERIKSON. Sisilipin muli ni FIDEL ang kaniyang telepono, at ngingiting bahagya. Unti-unting babalatan ni FIDEL ang balut at kakainin. fidel

O, ba’t ka ba nandito?

erikson

Kasi pinaupo niyo ’ko rito?

fidel

Hindi! Ba’t ka napunta rito? Dito sa waiting shed!

erikson

Ah, pinalaya nila ako.

fidel

Taga-roon ka? (ngunguso sa gilid ni ERIKSON)

erikson

Oo. Dati.

fidel

Ilang taon ka ba doon?

erikson

Siyam.

fidel

Ilang taon ka na ngayon?

erikson

Nineteen, ho.

fidel

Ah! Ang bata mo pa! Ano’ng kaso mo, kid?

erikson

Section 5, section 5.

fidel

Ah... tulad ng iba. E ba’t walang sumalubong sa’yo? Wala kang pamilya?

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 84

erikson

Tumigil nang dumalaw sila mama noong thirteen ako. Hindi ko alam kung bakit.

fidel

Ah... tulad nga ng iba.

Saglit na katahimikan. fidel

Fidel nga pala. Ako si Fidel.

erikson

Ako si Erik—

fidel

Oo, alam ko. Narinig ko.

Magsasalita sana si ERIKSON, pero pipigilan niya ang sarili. Saglit na katahimikan. Titingin-tingin si ERIKSON kay FIDEL. erikson

Ba’t ang bait niyo sa’kin?

fidel

E, mukha kang may problema talaga e. Baka lang ikaw ’yung mga sinasabi nila sa newsfeed ko, ’yung mga nangangailangan ng tulong. Pero, parang sobra naman ang nakita ko. Para ka bang nag-a-ating sa harap ng TB Patrol, ’yung todo iyak. Aktor ka ba doon? (ngunguso sa gilid)

erikson

Hindi, hindi ako aktor. Paano ho akong nag-a-akting?

fidel

Ay un...naglulumpasay binidyuhan kita.

erikson

Bidyo?

fidel

Heto ka na naman eh. Wala... wala ’yun. Binidyuhan lang kita.

85 · Sam Domingo

noong...ano,

erikson

Ha? Baket, ho? Anong nangyari?

fidel

Wala. (pabulong) Pagkakakitaan kasi kita.

erikson

Ano ho?!

fidel

Pagkakakitaan kita, ang sabi ko.

erikson

Eh masama naman ho pala balak niyo sa akin! Ba’t niyo pa ako binigyan nito?

Mahuhulog ni FIDEL ang balut. fidel

Anak ng tokwa, ’wag mong gagawin ’yun!

Tutunog ang selpon ni FIDEL. fidel

(sa sarili) Kainis... Tumitingin sila.

erikson

Sino?!

fidel

(kay ERIKSON) Sila! Silang mga may mata! (sa sarili) May kapangyarihan sila sa lahat...

Malilito si ERIKSON. Agad na aayusin ni FIDEL ang kalat ng balut na nahulog, kukuha ng bagong balut at ilalagay sa kamay ni ERIKSON. fidel

Ngumiti ka.

erikson

Ano?

fidel

Ngumiti ka lang. Utang na loob. Hindi na nga kita pagkakakitaan e.

Tititigan nang masama ni ERIKSON si FIDEL. Pilit na ngingiti si ERIKSON. Ngingiti rin si FIDEL. Tutunog ang selpon ni FIDEL. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 86

fidel

(sa sarili) Hay, buti naman, bumilis na ang pag-akyat. (kay ERIKSON) O, kid. Wag mong ibababa ’yang ngiti mo. Bale, bibidyuhan sana kita. Iba na kasi ngayon, kid. Outdated ka na.

erikson

(habang nakangiti) Ano ba’ng meron sa bidyo na ’yan?

fidel

Iba na ang may alam. Iba na ang may pruweba.

erikson

Ha? Anong ibig niyong sabihin?

fidel

Ngiti sabi eh.

Ngingiti pa lalo si ERIKSON. fidel

Ganito kasi ’yun. Nakikita mo ’tong selpon na ’to? Itong selpon na ’to ngayon ang magliligtas sa buhay mo. Dapat meron ka nito. Meron ka ba?

erikson

Wa—

fidel

Oo nga naman syempre wala. Galing kang piitan. Malas mo, kid. Kakabit ng buhay mo ang selpong ito.

erikson

Papaano?

fidel

Kapag nakuhaan mo ng litrato, bidyo, o kahit anong recording ’yung kung sinuman ang gagalaw sa’yo, panigurado mapagtatanggol mo sarili mo sa mga pruwebang ’yun. Hindi na baril ang sagot ngayon. Selpon na. Mga kamera. Ganun, madali na kasing bagu-baguhin ang mga salita, ang impormasyon kumbaga. Dahil doon, wala ka nang mapagkakatiwalaan. Ang tanging meron ka lamang na dapat lagi mong kasama–hindi tao, kung hindi selpon.

87 · Sam Domingo

erikson

Kaya kanina...

fidel

Sinubukan kitang bidyuhan. Oo, ganun na nga. Ganun katindi ’tong selpon na ’to! Sa totoo lang, maswerte ka at minalas ako. ’Yung ginawa ko sa’yo kanina, trabaho ko lang ’yun. Dugo’t pawis ko na.

erikson

Ha? Paano? Hindi ba sa inyo ‘yang balut basket?

fidel

Oo, nagtitinda rin ako ng balut pero part-time ko lang ’yan!

erikson

Ano?

fidel

Ganito ’yun. Hindi ba sinipa mo ako? Hindi talaga masakit ’yun pero, pwede kitang pagbintangan ng kung ano-ano. Ng pambubugbog ganun. Dahil sa? Dahil sa kuha ko sa selpon ko. Bale ang gagawin ko, ilalagay ko sa internet ’yung kuha kong bidyo habang kasama ’yung mga pinagsasasabi kong kasinungalingan. ’Di ba parang kanina, sinabi ko na pinagsisisipa mo ako, kahit hindi naman? Tapos ang mangyayari, magiging viral ’yung putanginang post. Syempre, kung may katungkulan ka, matatakot ka para sa pangalan mo. Ganun ’yun! Kaya sa takot, binabayaran na lang ako ng mga nabibiktima ko. May isa, nagbigay ng bente mil. ’Yung iba, nagbibigay ng isang libo. Basta, hindi bababa sa isang libo! ’Pag mukha kang mayaman, mas mataas ang singil ko sa’yo. Eh ikaw, mukhang may problema ka, kaya hindi ko na tinuloy. Mukhang balut ko pa nga ang kailangan mo. Ang payat-payat mo.

Mukhang malilito si ERIKSON.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 88

fidel

Naglalaro lang ako sa mundong meron tayo ngayon. Mahirap na ang buhay, kailangan mong kumayod sa ibang paraan.

erikson

Hindi ba binebenta niyo ’yan? (tuturo sa basket ng balut)

fidel

Kulang ’yan. Lugi pa ako diyan. Mahal na kasi ang balut. Lahat na imported, as in lahat, kid. Pati itong tsinelas ko, t-shirt ko, shorts ko, nako! Brip ko rin—Caivun Kleini. Pati siguro ’tong lamp post, galing din sa ibang bansa. Galing lahat sa China. Wala nang pwedeng mapag-arian dito, maliban sa impormasyon. Masisisi mo ba ako kung ayun na lang ang pinanghahawakan ko?

Saglit na katahimikan. fidel

Ah, pucha. Masyado na akong maraming sinasabi.

Titingin-tingin ulit sa kapaligiran si FIDEL. Titingnan ni FIDEL ang selpon. Ngingiti ito nang malaki. fidel

Ay! Mukhang good boy na ako sa kanila... Hmm... Gusto mong makita mga naging kliyente ko?

Kakalikutin ni FIDEL ang selpon niya. erikson

Teka, sino—

fidel

Heto, heto si Konsehal Calderon. Nakakatawa ‘to. Tingnan mo!

Magpe-play ang bidyo sa selpon ni FIDEL. fidel

Si Konsehal Calderon, konsehal ’yan dito nang mga sampung taon na. Mapagkakatiwalaan ’yan, laging nananalo eh. Pero, hindi rin nagtagal ’yun dahil,

89 · Sam Domingo

syempre, sa katarantaduhan ko. Isang gabi, bumaba ‘yan sa waiting shed dito. Iniwan siya ng drayber niya rito—siya lang mag-isa. Naamoy ko na na darating ’yan kaya, naghanda ako nang mabuti. Bale ang nangyari, hindi rin nakita ’yung body bag ko—nadaganan niya ako! Ayun, heto naman ako, magaling umiyak ta’s hindi pa nakatulong na nahuli ko ang lahat. Naka-standby lang kasi ’yung selpon ko sa gilid ng balut basket ko. Ayun, nag-live-video ako. Wala na siyang magagawa! Tatawa nang malakas si FIDEL. fidel

Ayun, tinanong ko, bayad o sampa?

erikson

Sampa?

fidel

Sampa ng kaso. Syempre, walang magagawa si gago, binayaran ako—labas agad ng wallet, ang bilis din palang makakuha ng sampung libo. Ayos, ’di ba? Easy money, instant delete din! Instant delete nga ba? Hmmm... (tatawa) Ta’s ayun, umalis na lang siya.

Tatawa pa nang malakas si FIDEL. Saglit na katahimikan. Kakalikutin muli ni FIDEL ang selpon niya. fidel

O, eto. Eto pa, nako, napakarami! Si Ma’am Jonel, si Ka Nicho—

erikson

Hindi ba kayo takot mahúli diyan?

Saglit na katahimikan. Matatawa si FIDEL. fidel

Hindi naman, kid.

erikson

Bakit? heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 90

fidel

Kasi... nakatingin nga sila.

erikson

Sino nga ba sila?

fidel

Sila. Silang may kapangyarihan sa lahat. Silang may mga mata... Silang magtatakda ng buhay mo.

erikson

Hindi ko maintindihan.

fidel

Ang mga kawani ng bangko ng kapangyarihan. Sila ang nagbibigay-kapangyarihan...sa lahat. Kahit ganito kabulok ngayon, naniniwala akong pantay sila tumingin.

erikson

Ha?

fidel

Ganito, sa malayuan, noong nadaganan ako ng konsehal, sino ang mukhang may kasalanan? Ako o siya?

erikson

Siya?

fidel

E ‘di tapos. Tapos ang usapan. Siya ang may mali sa mga mata nila. Kung kaya’t kailangan niya akong bayaran sa disgrasyang dinulot niya.

erikson

Pero...

fidel

Iyon ang huling nakita ng kamera. Iyon ang tama.

erikson

Pero, sinadya niyo naman ang nangyari.

fidel

Ulit, ano ang huling nakita?

erikson

...ang pagdagan niya sa inyo.

91 · Sam Domingo

fidel

Sino ang mukhang lubhang nasaktan?

erikson

Ikaw.

fidel

E ’di tapos na nga ang usapan. Oo, nakabantay nga sila sa bawat galaw namin, pero hindi naman nila nakikita ang intensyon sa likod ng mga iyon. Tapos na ang hatol pagkadapo ng tingin nila sa’yo. Sabi ko nga kanina, naglalaro lang din ako sa mundong ito.

erikson

Paano namang pantay ang pagtingin doon?

fidel

Pantay... kasi ako ang mabuti. Akong naghihirap... ang mabuti.

Saglit na katahimikan. Tutunog ang selpon ni FIDEL. Titingnan ni FIDEL, at ngingiti kay ERIKSON.

fidel

Ayos! Napuno rin. Salamat, kid.

erikson

Para saan?

fidel

Sa pagpapahaba ng buhay ko.

Sabay kindat ni FIDEL. erikson

Ano?

fidel

Malalaman mo rin.

Ngingiti nang mas malaki si FIDEL sa nalilitong si ERIKSON. Pipindutin ni FIDEL ang kaniyang selepon, at may kukunin sa bulsa nito. Tutugtog ang tunog ng kaninang kanta.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 92

fidel

Puntahan mo na ang dapat mong puntahan. Doon, liliwanag ang isip mo.

Iaabot ni FIDEL ang papel kay ERIKSON at mapapapikit sa saliw ng musika. Pero hindi pa rin ibabaling ni ERIKSON ang tingin kay FIDEL. Hindi niya lubos maisip kung anong mundo ang dinatnan niya ngayon.

telon

93 · Sam Domingo

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 94

Genesis Gamilong

bs legal management

Si Genesis, ang simula, ay isang potograper, mangangawit, at tagahanga ng sining (isa sa tatlo ay hindi totoo, hulaan). Siya ay madalas makikitang nakatingala at naglalakad sa Cubao o Marikina. Hinihintay niya ang rebolusyon ng mga umaasa at umiibig sa isang mas maaliwalas na bukas. Pansamantala, malamang ay magpapaalipin muna siya sa kapitalismo’t konsumerismo o maghahanap ng sugar daddy. “Sa ating paglalayo Pinapangako kong hindi tayo mabibigo Ang ating hangad na malayang bukas Ay tiyak na matutupad” — Anak ng Bayan, Demi

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 96

Mga Kababaihan ng Daraitan. Digital photography.

97 · Genesis Gamilong

Swimming. Digital photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 98

99 · Martina Herras

Martina Herras

ab literature (english)

For Yvetta and Benedicto who try their best. Christian for the books and all the love. Manuel for the spunk and the laughter. Joshua, for shared anguish over ballads and poetry. Janelle, for kindness, for your endless kindness. Janus, Ryan, Gaby, for hysterics and comfort, for strength. Max for listening, always. Jayvee, Jess, whose friendship is a second home. Karl, for the music and the mountains. Sophia for all the nights sobbing and laughing and babbling, sober and un-sober. heights, of course. Diana, for the trust. Sandy, Jamie, for being my rock. Justine, Ives, Sarmie, Dorothy, I am proud. Cat, too, thank you. Bagwisang Filipino Chaela, for fan theories and dogs and your voice of reason. Kristoff, Ponch, Coco, Wax, Ninna, Neil, Celline, Marco, Alex, for the beach, for karaoke. I owe you the next pitcher. EB 18-19 For being a part of what must have been an impossible year. I am thankful. For Tom—I promised you a line in my acknowledgments. Here it is. Be well. Oey, there isn’t a place I’ve gone to that I haven’t been told you about. For here, and there, and for everything. I still think you’re the best cellist in the world, nevermind that I don’t know a thing about playing instruments. Maybe you are my favorite Mirabueno. Bee, for Mitski’s dance tracks. For Mitski’s sad tracks. All the tears in between both of those. Hot noodles, cups of coffee, and backaches. Medicine and off of it. For sitting with me everywhere and wherever. For sitting with me in the dark. For those displaced in home and in heart. There’s another year of this. I’ll never run out of gratitude. See you in 2020. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 100

101 · Martina Herras

Birdwatching

I guess we were wrong all this time to call the Maya a Maya— They aren’t the creatures that nested in center island trees, scouring for trash to survive, the way we both knew them to be. This makes sense to me now. Imagine, the sound of birds in the middle of the city? How beautiful and how unlikely that it makes the sound of water dripping from a leaky faucet sound like an anomaly. I’m familiar with leaving like this: quiet until the half-dead morning, until the outside stirs with chirruping. I know now that I was hearing an imposter, because the Maya never says goodbye, you only see the blurry red of its flight when it decides to disappear out of view forever. Did you watch from below when I, quiet with penitence, left the apartment with nothing, not even a word, for the last time? What would it do to tell you that I was convinced we were right about the birds? Maybe we loved the same way we misnamed animals. Maybe it was the sound of a tree sparrow, chirping like mad in the heart of the metro, when you held my hand for the first time.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 102

103 · Ninna Lebrilla

Ninna Lebrilla

bfa information design

“You and I can share the silence, finding comfort together the way old friends do.” —The Way Old Friends Do, ABBA To friends who have given my heart the chance to dance—thank you. My super senior loves, Regina, Celline, Bee, Chaela, Oey, and Diana; my senior friends, Sophia, Sandy, Ryan, Martina, and Ives; my undergrad dears, Sarmie, Justine, Cat, JJ, and Juancho; and my study buddies in Japan, Josh and Aimee—thank you always and everyday.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 104

105 · Ninna Lebrilla

somebody is calling. Ink. 7 x 4.75 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 106

Alienating (series) 1. Digital.

107 · Ninna Lebrilla

Alienating (series) 2. Digital.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 108

109 · Gabrielle Leung

Gabrielle Leung

bs applied physics

Bee’s first piece published in heights was a numbered essay about a boy very close to her heart. Four years later, she’s still (re)writing that same essay, but with so much growth to be thankful for in between. Bee entered Ateneo five years ago a bundle of nerves with small dreams (i.e. get a nice haircut, start a blog, not bomb any orals). She leaves Ateneo with a major in physics and a minor in creative writing. In her junior year, she was a fellow for nonfiction in the 22nd Ateneo heights Writers Workshop, and in her senior year, she was the editor-in-chief of heights Ateneo. She was granted a Loyola School Award for the Arts in both nonfiction and poetry. You can find her work published in heights, Kritika Kultura, Plural: Prose Journal, and qlrs. She would like to express her deepest gratitude for her friends, accomplices, confidantes, professors, family, support groups, Maggie Nelson, copyediting, Juizy Juiz, mvp 202, Pokémon, em-dashes, and Mitski.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 110

Distortions

1. The day we stood in my childhood bedroom, everything we saw was light. This is where our vocabularies intersect: David is a cinematographer by trade and so although a thought from one of my physics classes struck me, it would have been stating the obvious to tell him what we see is only ever a function of scattered photons. There would be no need to explain I was thinking about how when I look at him, what I see is not David but the energy bouncing off him, his skin reflecting the particular wavelengths of unabsorbed light from the white bulbs above us flickering fast enough that we hardly notice. Seeing, I remembered, is just the way our brains have evolved to make sense of all this light being tossed around. That thought alarmed me, then, a little, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Instead, I tucked it away with all else I did not say, for another moment. In that moment, David turned the old camera I gave him over and over in his palm. On our first date, he mentioned how fond he was of old Hollywood movies, the graininess and bursts of color. So by our first Christmas together, when I first brought David to the house in Baguio where I grew up, I had scoured the internet for camera models and tried to translate my theoretical knowledge of optics into a workable understanding of film photography. Finally, I settled on the camera David held in his hand, a little dull silver and dark gray point-and-shoot that was heavier than it looked. Neither of us had ever used a camera like that before. He fumbled hooking the film roll onto the right metal parts. The camera closed up and the lever seemed to turn freely enough. For the first shot, David asked me to stand by the gauzy white curtains and look straight at the camera—at him—the morning sunshine falling across my face, pushing shadows aside. He lined up the frame, his neck tensing up 111 · Gabrielle Leung

ever-so-slightly in the familiar posture I have come to associate with care, capture. My body froze. I am uncomfortable with being seen. David says I think too much. We would later find out that we had loaded the roll of film wrong. When we took them to be developed, the film strips were a solid black, which meant they had never been exposed to any light. By the time we realized that, the moment was already long past and the lost photographs were out of our hands, the light that would have been captured already dissipated beyond recognition—but in that moment, he takes the picture and the whole world is frozen in the flicker. 2. If I were to trace this alarm at sight and its distortions to the beginnings, I would start with the 7-Eleven. Before that, light was cold to me, purely utilitarian. I turned on the lights to read; I traced out ray diagrams for my optics class, sending light through endless hypothetical lenses to watch how they would bend, scatter, dissipate. David’s world is a love affair with light. He stops in the middle of the street at night to point out the glow of the streetlights on the wet pavement. I always thought there was something romantic about it, the way he watched the colors change across my hands as the afternoon came and left us in the orange dusk. To be honest, I never understood his fascination—but at times I could almost see the beauty in it, as David gestured wildly at something my eyes never seemed to register. I almost could. I always nodded as though I had seen it too. The day something changed was an ordinary day. I suppose that was the point. It was a few weeks after our second anniversary, which sounds like an unremarkable amount of time, but for me then it meant that we were running out of new things to occupy ourselves with. In the beginning, I often insisted that we should do something, by which I intended some kind of adventure—walking loops around Binondo in an attempt to find David my favorite dumplings, braving the crowds at Ocean Park so we could gape at the penguins through foggy glass, sitting through a five-hour bus ride for a weekend heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 112

in Zambales although neither of us could surf. These dates were meticulously organized, owing to my incessant need to overdetermine and our mutual inability to drive. This latter fact forced us to navigate the world on foot, bickering over pictures of maps on our phones until we somehow stumbled upon our destination. We talked for hours on end. We settled into a dynamic that worked for us: I would do all the research and draw out a plan for our excursions beforehand, David would take pictures and hold the day together when my plans inevitably start to unravel. I craved the energy of it even as I found myself uneasy self-consciously posing for another picture, the camera pulling me into the scene—by which I mean the awareness that this was all, in fact, a scene we were producing, as foolish people do when they are young and in love and undeterred by their clichés. But there is only so much newness that can be found in the world; eventually you let go of the performance and start to want for something more familiar. So we found ourselves sitting at the 7-Eleven by my house, me with a cold coffee and him with his preferred sugary-sweet tea. I can’t even remember what the conversation was about, the inane chatter meant only to fill up the silence, a gesture of reassurance. I’m here, I’m listening, I see you. The sun was high in the sky. It reminded me of those children’s drawings, bright yellow circle with spokes stretching across the pale blue air. In reality, the sun is more white than anything else, the light we see a combination of all possible colors on the visible spectrum. As a child, I learned this from a rotating prism we hung by our dining room window; as the sunlight spilled through the glass, it cast rainbows of light all across the wooden floors. I couldn’t name the emotion that memory made me feel. I wanted to tell David this, but somehow instead he asked what my favorite color was. I was certain we had that conversation before. David is often forgetful with details—anniversaries, birthdays, names of acquaintances—until he digs around for them in his memory, and so I told him he knew already. Surely, he must have known. He guessed wrongly, and then again, and then again. Frustrated, he asked me to just tell him. 113 · Gabrielle Leung

I couldn’t explain then why it mattered. It didn’t, really. I didn’t want to tell him the answer. I wanted him to have already known, as ridiculous as that sounds, to have tucked away even this insignificant piece of information, the record proof that something was worth being recorded. It was gray, I told him, eventually. That isn’t on the color spectrum; gray is a combination of all the colors, like white, but less so. 3. Once, when I knew David for less than a year, he took my photograph as we wandered around his village. Ostensibly, capturing my picture would allow us to better acquaint ourselves with each other through the contours of sight. I was taken in by the idea. The light glistened on his hands as he composed the shot. In the absence of a viewer—if I weren’t around to see—that light would be scattered, lost. But if the light rays could be collected, focused in the right way, then they formed an image, a sort of copy of the object being seen. Rather than the light from those early days being lost, I looked at David and the beams bent as they passed through the lens of my eye, the image scaled down and distorted on my retinas. Then, I took this reality of sight as an imperative to hold all that I could, to affix the present into something that would remain in some way. Else, all of this would be irrecoverable to the steady march of time. Hence the urge to document, to record. I was insatiable for the future memories that these moments promised. I wanted to hold their light in my hands. Unless it is too much for you to hold, I was reminded as David talked about overexposure. It is easier to turn the brightness back up; once you let in too much light, the image is lost. What remains untouched by light cannot be seen. But light unrestricted is greedy, and you are left with only a blown out white. Like staring into the sun for too long— when you look away, the illumination is burned onto your retinas. In cameras, just as in eyes, the light is warped in just the right way to contain it as it passes through the lens. Before I could register what was happening, his finger tapped the button and the shutter clicked heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 114

the blades open for just long enough. All at once, the rays flooded through the lens and this energy jumpstarted a reaction in the film strip: silver salts turning back into metal leaving a latent trace of the image, a ghost of myself held in the darkness. Later, when he showed me the pictures he took, I ran my fingers over the image of my face and asked David if this is really what I look like to him: eyes shocked and mouth twisted into silence. I thought I looked unhappy, maybe even afraid. By way of an answer, he told me about lens distortion. Depending on the particular lens, objects at the edges of the frame appear squished together or stretched out; this has to do with the shape of the glass. What this means to David is that this must be accounted for in the framing or maybe in post-processing. What this means to me is that the impossibility lies in the mapping of an infinitely wide three-dimensional world into a finite two-dimensional image. It is a problem of translation, something is changed in the capture. I nodded as though he had answered the question. 4. David is familiar to me. It surprises me how I have grown accustomed to routine ruptures in my solitude: the smell of his laundry detergent on borrowed items of clothing, answering a ringing cellphone expecting the lilts of his speech, a pink mark on my calendar signaling hours of time as untouchable—though inevitably intruded on still by the endless march of everyday concerns. There is time, he tells me, when I apologize for my work disturbing us, a troublesome line of code or a stray measurement needing to be double-checked. There is time, I tell him, when he arrives thirty minutes late, by now the expected course of things, certain enough I have already accounted for it. There is no reason to hurry, no rush in the longing; perhaps once there was, but now that is replaced by the reassurance that we find ourselves in a surplus of hours. This does not need to be said. I joke that we’ve become an old married couple without the age or the marriage. We do errands together: me holding my shopping 115 · Gabrielle Leung

list, David pushing the grocery cart. We make fast food picnics on my bedroom floor, meals eaten in between naps or half-watched movies. We think up grand plans, and then discard them to settle back into our comfortable routine. We are busy, we are tired—it is the contentment of easy companionship that we return and return to, the knowledge that some things, at least, can be merely themselves, certain. Beyond the other side of the newness of emotion, I have found myself in a quiet space, perhaps a place more of yellow flush than burn, but one I am often gluttonous enough to call ours as though that could hold it steady. Among the places I think of as ours: a Shakey’s parking lot where we once spent the early hours of the morning waiting for a passed out friend to get home safely. David says it was there—under the cheesy cinematic glow of the 24-hours sign—he came to love me. That was so long ago I can hardly separate the memory from the photograph, taken months after the fact. Now, what I remember when I walk past that lot is David’s hair falling in dark curls he swept aside so as to press the camera more closely to his skin, as though that could have brought the photo closer to the image in his mind. The light was fading fast, the storefront spilling illumination, me bathed in a red light and David in pale warmth. Eventually, such moments always blend into the memories of them, into their photographs. I make the walk down Katipunan and realize how little has remain untouched by David. An image of a thing must stand for the thing, but it also stands for something more, metonymically, once it is permanent: that photo of me at Shakey’s must stand for the memory of that night. It must also stand for a narrative around this relationship that David and I continue to construct. It stands for nostalgia for ourselves in an older time. The world feels heavy with such places these days. We return to them, some magic about them gone when seen under the light of another day. The place itself is unable to compare with the picture of it, with the pictures of other places, struggling mutely to conjure up the exact circumstances of their taking, superposing them into the frame until that becomes all we see. Perhaps better, then, to leave heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 116

the place as a photograph: fixed, known. When he took that photograph in that Shakey’s parking lot, I knew what he would see even before I saw the picture. I found myself straining under his gaze, anticipating the shot. I wanted to call it beautiful. Look at me, is what I wanted to say, I want you to look at me. I did not say this. What I have trouble with, still, was allowing myself to be seen. 5. The lexicon around photography is violent—load, aim, shoot, take, capture—perhaps because there is an inherent violence to the act. This is nothing that has not already been written about at length: Sontag, Barthes, Benjamin. I do not know much about photography, but I know about violence, and I am interested in locating it, in seeing what this means when framed as light. David loads the roll of film. Holds the camera to the rays of sun, adjusts the aperture just wide enough to shoot. Careful, as always, to be as unobtrusive as possible. Of course, this is impossible, of course he obtrudes into my view, as much a part of the scene as I am, though he can remain out of frame. He says he prefers to catch me by surprise, in the natural state of things before I can calculate my body into stiffness. He checks to make sure I am all lined up. Folk legend: a photograph will steal your soul. I am not afraid of being consumed, but perhaps there is some truth to this. Light from the sun takes around eight minutes and twenty seconds to reach us on earth. As fast as light moves, it is not instantaneous. And so seeing is always in some capacity looking backwards in time. Perhaps, if the light source is a bulb or a lamp, only on the order of nanoseconds, but backwards nonetheless. That time is longer still if you use the light from even the closest stars: a little over four years for Proxima Centauri, over eight and a half years for the Sirius, six and a half centuries for Betelgeuse. That light travels, mostly unobstructed, in the vacuum of space. Here and there, some photons are absorbed or scattered or shifted, but the ones that make it to us have had a long way to cover. 117 · Gabrielle Leung

The rays bounce off of objects, and into the camera. There, the light is extinguished, devoured, its path cut short in service of capturing one instant. The motion made to stop. The violence of photography’s capture, I find, is multiplied in the stillness of its product. David selects, composes the moment he wants to catch. I am inside the frame, and David is outside it. A picture is silent about what remains out of view beyond the lens’s sight, so what matters only is that I am inside the frame, that the light allows me to be seen. A picture does not speak of idle banter in the seconds before or of what happened after the shot of the cream curtains billowing in an unexpected breeze. A photograph holds you as you were seen, fixed other to yourself. Our eyes see different things depending on where you watch from, the way the light falls, how the object is placed relative to everything else in the frame, the particular way that your brain takes in this information to recreate a coherent model. You see yourself most often in the mirror, which appears to flips you from left to right. Your brain interprets the version of yourself inside the glass as having turned around to face the you outside: raise a left arm, and your reflection seems to raise their right one. But a photograph displays no such reversal. Instead, you see yourself exactly as you are seen to others, which is to say opposite from your mirror image. This is why people are so often unnerved by the difference between what they see in the mirror and in a camera—this isn’t just a trick of the brain, it simply isn’t the same image. When I look at photos David has taken of me, I see myself for a moment as he sees me. I become a voyeur, not to myself, but to the image of me in his mind. Looking over the pictures, I am trespassing into a version of myself that I was perhaps not meant to have uncovered—a version of myself as the beloved, smiling wordlessly, laid bare, the unmoving object of love and therefore graspable in this way: beautiful, or in other words, fixed. How could I ever measure up.

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6. Of course there are things which must be left out of photographs. These are spaces that I am trying to fill. There are no photographs of this. I wake up in bed with him, beautiful boy that he is, and I am overcome with the urge to ruin it all: the crisp sheets tucked into the bed frame, the occasional hum of passing tricycles five stories down, the yellow light streaming in through the curtains. The beautiful boy flutters his eyes open and of course this means I love him. Of course I know there is something still finished here. I can hear my heart making the same intermittent whir as the ac unit. I can’t stop thinking of what the wind on the balcony sounded like the night before, louder than the door opening and the beautiful boy walking in. I wonder if falling in the dark would make the same sound as closing my eyes in broad daylight and tip-toeing my way off the ledge. What does it change to be seen? This does not need to be spoken. The night before there was a man standing by the door of the house across the way, the beautiful boy points him out in silence, or maybe it was only his shadow, our eyes playing tricks on us. 7. I have heard it said that love is to see yourself in someone else’s eyes. The conflation of love and intimacy is obvious enough, but I prefer to think of it as an optics problem: if the human eye is, on average, say, 24 millimeters in diameter and has a refractive index of about 1.4, how closely would someone have to be standing in order to see the virtual image of themselves in your eyes? The point is clear enough, though I think it is ultimately a bit narcissistic to suppose that we look at one another in order to see ourselves. It is kinder to recognize that we all would like to be seen: that we want to be watched, witnessed. For to become the object of vision means we are valued in some way. David taking my photograph has always been an act of care, his way of saying there is something beautiful in all of this that he finds precious enough to want to memorialize. I am grateful for this, still. What seems to be inescapable in love is the confrontation with 119 · Gabrielle Leung

how you are seen through the other’s eyes. You are seen, and you see yourself being seen. As light passes from one medium to another— say from the air into the lover’s eyes—some of the rays are absorbed, which for our purposes is synonymous with loss. Some of the rays are bent, transmitted into the eye and processed by the brain into an image. And the remaining rays are bounced back, reflected perhaps into the eye of the one being seen. Thus if the angles are lined up correctly, an object is twice-duplicated as it is seen; it becomes both itself, its image within the eye, and its reflection. And distorted each way, different and other from itself. This is the anxiety of the newly beloved. Who do you see when you see me? How do you know the gray I see is the same as the gray you see? The truth that must be contended with is that of course they are different. When I say that David is familiar to me, what I am saying is that I know who he sees when he sees me. I know too that the image is different from myself in many ways: less conscious, more serious, wide-eyed, moving through the world as though light—steady and direct and unchanging. The girl in the photograph, leaned back, looking into the camera, asking to be read. A picture reveals what is not otherwise said. This is not about the photograph, but about what is seen, and how the image is maintained. Or broken. But the image is precious to David and so I would prefer to hold it careful. This is something we all do, I think; I want to be seen in the best possible light, and so I bite my tongue rather than retort. I say I’m just tired to explain everything. I keep thoughts to myself. I smile when necessary. I am not afraid of being consumed by this gaze. I am afraid that I have in some way allowed myself to be rendered obliquely. In the everyday withholding, I forget which parts of me are tucked away—even from David, even still—until all at once I am reminded of who it is being seen. Idiom about light: to see the world through rose-colored glasses. Definition: being in possession of a naively optimistic or unrealistic viewpoint. Definition: to see things more favorably than reality. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 120

Definition: once, I would have wanted the beautiful boy to see me this way. 8. Let me not here conceal my own sight. In the act of my writing, I am insisting on my own narrative of things. This is all distorted too. Once, I thought what I was trying to do was fill in the blanks that the photographs necessarily leave out, and in that way to better grasp the moments already getting away from us. In the translation from image to page, what happens is not merely a reproduction of the picture at hand—that would be simple: girl standing in a road in front of an orange streetlamp. Of course, the reiteration is incomplete, and you would be better served to look at the photograph itself, which says already what needs to be said in a language that this text can merely echo. The words there are merely a copy of a copy. Instead, I would like to think of it as writing the gaps in the photos: if the picture stops an instant in time, then I would like to unloosen it—to see the memory better for how it was—and then capture it in a more faithful way. I write about things the photograph does not see, the boy with the camera, the sound of cars on the street, the moments leading up to the click. In that sense the translation is not merely an articulation into words what has already been said, but an attempt to grasp what the medium has left silent and thereby ephemeral. In that first draft of this essay, I named him only by an initial: D. I had intended this as a kindness, a motion towards privacy, a way to soften the blow of being written about, to draw attention to how incomplete a picture I necessarily sketch when I talk about him. It is facetious, in a way, for me to admit to this; what does it matter to gesture towards the limits of my sight, if not in some way to mark myself as self-aware enough to be trustworthy? About a year ago, in the darkness of a few stage lights as the sun was quickly setting and the rain was beginning to threaten a downpour, I introduced David to a friend who also happened to have read the earliest incarnation of this piece. Exchanging pleasantries, the friend said almost as an afterthought, so you’re D. The conversation froze for 121 · Gabrielle Leung

a moment, until I explained the circumstances, as though explaining a joke. David didn’t know what to say to that, then, though that was far from the only time. When my friends first meet David, it is inevitable that they recognize him from my writing, ask him to confirm a choice detail or two, measure him up to the descriptions herein. I used to never want David to read the things I write about him, for fear that he would find it unkind or inaccurate, that he wouldn’t see it for what it was meant to be: an act of love. The first time I showed him something about himself, he singled out a section in which I read too much into a throwaway question he once asked me. Let a thing means what it means, he said, but left it at that. See, for David, things mean what they mean. An image is what it represents. A picture of a girl is a picture of a girl. A paragraph about that picture is more of the same, a reproduction of a moment that has past us, one that you can hold in your hand. Me, I want to chase the picture down and see what it doesn’t say. There is something these words can say that the picture cannot. There is something the picture says that these words cannot. There is something about the moment that renders both of them silent, but I’m grasping for it the only way I know how. I write to complete the picture, in a way, even though it can never be completed. And yet aren’t I merely excising for myself what I want to, now twice removed from the moment that I wanted to hold? I turn the lens in the other direction, as though that tells a more complete story—what I wanted was never to tell a story, but to somehow freeze the truth. David is silent, usually, taking it all in stride. If he chafes up against the borders of the self I have written for him, he allows me this violence intended as tenderness, lets me continue to see him as I do, distorted as the light may be. Or perhaps this is merely my projection of what I would want from him. Or else my anxiety over how the beloved must bear the gaze quietly. There is no way of knowing from secondhand light. But to talk about it in this way makes it sound like a stand-off: David takes my photograph, I write about him. As though we were in a power struggle over whose narrative might dominate the other’s. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 122

As though this sight was merely about desire. As though desire was necessarily about apprehending. As though this were inevitable. I believe it matters what you call a thing. 9. I don’t care about the epistemology of it. Nor of power. I do not want to just lay bare the violence and leave it there as it is. I am tired of thinking about this in terms of domination, memorialization, capture. What I care about is in what way we can hold, be held. Whether it is a kindness to see, be seen. If there is a vocabulary for love besides the violence of the lover’s gaze, beloved, capture. If there might be a way to see even without truly seeing. If there is a way to love even when the light is clipped. What is there to call beautiful. Not domination, but choosing. How could it be an act of care to gather up what warped beams of sight I can into something resembling reality, however obliquely, however incompletely, however elastic, however breakable. If I could call it ours. And what of our silences, the places shrouded beyond light. 10. Light does not experience time. I learned this first in a class about special relativity, where we spent most of the day talking about rocket ships and astronauts’ watches. The gist of it is that time does not move uniformly throughout the universe; it depends on who is watching, and what. As an object travels faster and faster, time seems to tick slower and slower when it is seen by someone not in motion. For the object itself, though, time passes as normal. When we push the object’s motion to its limits at light-speed, the passage of time approaches stationary for an outside observer. More properly, it is incorrect to talk about light experiencing time at all—time, like distance, can be measured only for a path with a beginning and an end. Perhaps it is less misleading to say that a photon experiences everything along its path simultaneously. It is both at its beginning and its end. The concept of time breaks down for light.

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For us though, physical bodies in space, time must hold true. It is impossible for a body with any mass—which is to say as well, for any observer—to travel that fast. We are bound by our presence. This is a roundabout way for me to talk about this: David and I have realized that our time is finite. Of course it is, of course it had to be. We held onto our quiet space for as long as we could, wrapping ourselves in the narrative of excess time, but the world has a way of irrupting. In our case it was the undeniable reality of opportunities close ahead that would mean having to be apart, or else the steady background accumulation of things we pretended wouldn’t bother us, or else all of those things and maybe even more we couldn’t quite pinpoint. I was tired of finding ourselves a stagnant photograph; I wanted to feel the light of it brush up against my skin. So I told him I wanted to talk, asked if we could stay at a coffee shop that was as of yet untinged with any memories of us. I invited him out of the scene, laid out on the table the things that we had allowed to remain out of frame, things that were never supposed to be a part of the narrative. That perhaps we no longer need each other. Perhaps I do not see him. Perhaps I have not let myself be seen. There was no fight—I looked at him, and he looked at me. We were quiet, for the most part, until he asked if it would be better to end things on good terms, to leave our time together in a warm light. This is difficult to write about, because I never intended for that day at that coffee shop to become more than what it was. The image gone and lost, unglamorous in its honesty, its fear. What I think about instead is the walk we took later that day in his village, as the night snuck its way onto us. He talked circles around it. I was silent, taking in the passage of time. Eventually, I found myself humming along to a song we had slow-danced to in my childhood bedroom in the morning sun. When David realized what I was doing, he asked me to stop, his voice trembling. It would have been too dark to take a photograph, but our bodies were blue and breathless. I did not know what he was seeing, but I saw the light and I saw David and it could be that simple.

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I am thankful for that: the camera has a way of insisting itself, of asking you to be a certain way, of reminding you that you are being seen and that this sight will take on a life of its own beyond this small second of light. It reminds you of the world beyond the moment, like photons leaking into the film when the camera casing isn’t quite sealed, streaking the images with spiderweb paths of white. For weeks after, the possibility of the end loomed in my mind. It worried me to put a deadline on it, suddenly everything we did contained in it a reminder it would be the last time, the last birthdays, the last anniversary, the last time we went to this old haunt or the other. I couldn’t bear to think of December in Baguio as the final Christmas. Not even what we meant when we talked about being grateful to have enough time to wrap things up, as though it were just a narrative, as though it were just a matter of framing. He said not to rush, that we could take our time, even still. At least for the silence of that moment, there were no answers needed. I held him, I chose to hold him, beautiful boy, I chose to be held. I found my peace with the unstopping of time, with the light beginning to dwindle and disappear, with the muteness of what comes after. 11. The thing about sight is that we do not experience the world as a consecutive succession of still images, but as a fluid series of events. Light, after all, travels faster than anything else—a photon travels three quarters of the way to the moon in just one second—and so your eyes receive a nearly continuous flow of information, as fast as the light can bounce of the objects and into your field of view. The human brain, though, can only process so fast. Imagine the whirring blades of a fan, their images blurring together until eventually each individual one becomes invisible amongst the others. This means that your eyes can be tricked. The persistence of vision: when I look at a photo of a hand, my visual perception of it does not fade until several moments after the light bouncing off of the hand’s image have ceased to enter my eyes. There are traces left 125 · Gabrielle Leung

behind, afterimages. If you flip between several pictures on a roll of film fast enough, the mind fails to see the dark spaces between them. If the pictures are similar enough—perhaps, the same hand curling one finger at a time—there is beta movement; a series of still images seems to be a single object proceeding in time. Whether the illusion is true or not, this is how we perceive films to be more than just a series of individual frames. A photograph on its own is silent, because it lasts only for an instant, it does not attempt to speak what cannot be said, it contains something unstuck in time. Yet set into motion, it sings—if we do not try to still it. I think of David in the moments after he takes a picture, how the world seems to come again and again into focus. I think of Fermat’s principle of least time: The actual path traversed between two points taken by a beam of light is the one which is traversed in the least time. I think of the paths the light does not take, the ones with space enough to wander, wait. I return to these spaces, the gaps in the memory that remain untouched by a photograph, an essay, what meaning is wrenched out of the silence if we choose to leave the gaps, to leave enough light to keep going. I watch for what only I can see, the moments that a picture, a sentence could never have any claim on. I do not try to name them, let the light of them glimmer for a moment and then float past me, the ghost of them on the backs of my retinas, and even then, fading. 12. There is an art piece that David and I have spoken about making, but have yet to get around to: first, we will walk around as aimlessly as we always do, taking video clips of all our favorite places, the patterns cast by passing trains on buildings and the glint of glass on street corners. We will remain out of frame, the both of us, except maybe the occasional accidental shadow. We will print out each individual frame and lay them out in a row. Xerox each sheet of paper over and over and over again, until the details of each image are lost, warped, transformed. I imagine our heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 126

ink- stained hands. The texture of the pages against skin. The light coming out of the photocopy machine in a steady march from right to left each time setting off the whir of paper and dust. Until we are uncertain what it is that we saw. Until what we see is this, copy of a copy, we hold the days in our hands. When that is all done, we stitch the images back into motion, perhaps slow enough to draw attention to the flicker of the empty moments in between the images. This is all constructed, I want to say. This is just how memory works, David tells me. In my mind, we project the video onto an old bed sheet and watch it once, the whole way through, reaching out to the places we saw each other in, our bodies dripping in light. And when the movie is finished, I will sit there with him, in the darkness.

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129 · Celline Mercado

Celline Mercado

bfa information design, bfa art management

Celline is a visual artist who works primarily with traditional media. Her works can be seen in Graphika Manila, and in heights Ateneo, where she served as the Art Editor during its 65th year. She has been exhibited in Manila and in San Francisco. Her first curatorial project, In the Spaces We Mend, opened at the Ateneo de Manila University in March 2019. Celline was confered the Loyola Schools Award for the Arts under the category of Visual Arts, for Mixed Media. She graduated from the Ateneo with a bfa in Information Design and a minor in Japanese Studies, and is set to complete her second undergraduate degree, a bfa in Art Management, by December 2019. She hopes to pursue a career in costume design. She dedicates her work to her family and friends, who have been supportive of her creative pursuitsfrom the very beginning. Celline has always wanted to become an artist, but never thought she would be. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 130

The bereaved, the fallen: The Moon. Mixed Media (paper clay, acrylic, found objects, digital photography).

131 · Celline Mercado

The bereaved, the fallen: The Moon (Supplementary 3). Mixed Media (paper clay, acrylic, found objects, digital photography).

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The bereaved, the fallen: The Moon (Supplementary 4). Mixed Media (paper clay, acrylic, found objects, digital photography).

133 · Celline Mercado

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135 · Niels Nable

Niels Nable

bs environmental science

Niels is going down the hill with a degree in environmental science and a minor in sustainability. He loves watching films and tv shows. He has probably seen every episode of Friends more than seven times, for a total of at least 610 hours since sixth grade. He wrote Batang Yagit one year ago with the desire to submit it to heights. He didn'thave the courage to do so until two months ago. Sa lahat ng naniwala at patuloy na naniniwala, maraming salamat. Makalalaya na.

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137 · Niels Nable

Batang Yagit

Mutyang singkit Kay ganda’t kay rikit Nagsuot ng damit Kahit gula-gulanit Patuloy pinilit Kahit masakit Ang damit na maliit Hanggang ito’y mapunit Kaya’t kanyang kinupit Barong nakasipit Mula sa kuwartong mainit Gamit ang tubong panungkit

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139 · Camille Ong

Camille Ong

bfa creative writing

Camille is graduating with a degree in creative writing. She initially chose this course because she liked the idea of being a writer. She took double the required writing workshop classes when she realized she sucked at writing. She was a fellow for nonfiction at the 24th Ateneo heights Writers’ Workshop, and a recipient of the 26th Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts for Nonfiction. * I owe my thanks to the following people: to my parents, for being my number one fan no matter what; to my cousins Claver and John, for being critical yet supportive; to Ambeth Ocampo, for making me want to do more; to Ethan, for being my friend and editor despite the thousands of miles between us; to Sir Ang, for helping me through algebraic equations to anything that life throws at me; to James and tj, for being there for me despite us not meeting as often as we would like; to Sir Martin, for suffering through my landi essays to mentor me to become the writer I am today; to Bacon and Lex, for being my constants in this confusing but beautiful life; and to Fed, for letting me drag you to the Loyola Mountaineers’ booth even when you barely knew me. Thank you for being my very first best friend in Ateneo and I’m sorry for what came after. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 140

Mr. Dog trees sparkling against the morning sun and the air blowing back Tara’s hair, the body stuffed in her bag felt a lot like a burden. She hitched the hiking bag higher on her back and continued walking. It had only been a few hours since she started to hike, but the body was already starting to rot. Flies surrounded her, and she had to swat them away every now and then. “The smell is starting to get to me,” she said to Mr. Dog. He was a Bernese mountain dog with a tri-colored coat of white, brown, and black. He had shiny fur and long ears that flopped whenever he ran. “You got this, Tara. I believe in you.” he said. Tara scrunched up her face against the smell but continued walking. When she arrived the other day from her week-long visit to her parents in Lipa, she headed straight to Carl’s place in Cubao to fetch Mr. Dog. She knocked on his apartment door, but no one answered. Tara fumbled with the potted cactus outside his door; he kept a spare key buried in the soil in case of emergencies. When the door finally swung open, she saw Carl lying on the floor with Mr. Dog sitting beside him. “Woof,” he said. The smell hit her then, and one look at Carl’s mangled and broken form had her puking the regurgitated remains that was pepperoni pizza. “Tara? Tara?” Mr. Dog hurried to Tara. “Are you okay?” “What,” she said, still reeling from her retching. “Happened here?” She looked at Carl again. Her boyfriend was gone; in its place were chunks of his torso and limbs, and bits of his brain. His curly, black hair had lost its sheen, and they were in clumps on the floor. Tara couldn’t help but feel sad and sentimental; how she loved to run her fingers through them. “I missed you, Tara. Carl died, and I had nothing to eat.” Tara opened her mouth to say something but instead of words, laughter bubbled out. The sound was high-pitched, and it didn’t have with the pine

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any hint of joy in it. She laughed until fat tears formed at the corner of her eyes. “You ate him.” Mr. Dog warmed up to her boyfriend immediately when she first introduced them. She didn’t think this would be a problem. “He collapsed out of nowhere. I waited for days but he didn’t wake up.” Mr. Dog whimpered and tried to hide his face in his paws. Tara sat down beside Carl and took the cleanest part of him which was his hand. His arms had chunks torn from them and she tried to ignore the less than appealing parts of him. “You’re fine,” she said. “Everything’s fine.” She had planned a traverse to Mt. Purgatory in Benguet. They were supposed to go after Tara visited her parents, but she guessed that wasn’t possible now. She was hoping the trip would help them reconnect with each other. They haven’t been fighting much lately, mostly because Carl didn’t care enough to. Tara would start something, but then he would just give up. He couldn’t even generate enough passion to be angry at her, and this scared Tara because she didn’t want him to leave her. That was why she planned to propose to him at the summit of Mt. Purgatory. She couldn’t bear the thought of living without him. Carl was her first serious boyfriend, and when they got together, she promised to herself that she would make it work; that even when the honeymoon stage has come and gone, she will work on their relationship because she learned from her parents that that’s where real love starts. Carl thought differently though. All of his previous relationships were just as serious, but he always ended it right away when things got tough. Carl was detached, but she knew there were still lingering feelings for her. She just needed to convince him that their relationship was worth saving. She just needed to make their trip to Mt. Purgatory perfect. It was a 2-day hike and she had a plan. But now, that didn’t seem plausible. The mood ring she had been keeping in her pocket for a couple of days suddenly felt heavy. It was a cheap little thing that she bought heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 142

in one of the many vintage shops in Cubao Expo. It was close to rusting, but it still changed colors depending on the temperature. Carl would’ve appreciated the quirkiness of it. “What are you thinking, Tara?” Mr. Dog asked. “I just really wanted to climb that mountain with him.” “Then go.” She stared at his literal puppy-dog eyes: shiny, round, black eyes surrounded by rust colored spots. Even with gore sticking to his snout, Mr. Dog still looked adorable. “He’s dead, Mr. Dog, and you ate him.” He turned on his paws and trotted away from her. Mr. Dog entered Carl’s bedroom and Tara waited for him to rummage inside. He returned with a bag almost as big as him, hanging from his teeth. The black bag was longer than the length of Tara’s torso. While the main pocket had a zipper, it also had a lot of clasps to secure the contents inside. It had a hip belt, so the bag could be snug against the body of the user. It was the bag Tara bought for Carl when she surprised him with her hiking plans. “Bring your favorite parts with you,” Mr. Dog said. Her relationship started with him when they met on a climb to Mt. Kalisungan. It seemed fitting that they would end on Mt. Purgatory; in-between heaven and hell. Carl would like that, Tara thought. To undergo purification before entering heaven. She didn’t believe in religion, but she supported him in his Catholicism. She would do so even in his death. With her dog’s encouragement, Tara hacked at Carl’s parts with the bolo she planned to bring to their hike until she had: his left hand, the remains of his head, a part of his right leg, a piece of his torso, his eyeball that somehow popped out of its socket, one of his front teeth, and of course, his penis. “Everything will be okay,” Mr. Dog said, and Tara believed him. She was lucky Mr. Dog accompanied her to her trip. He kept her distracted during their six-hour drive to Benguet and even now, when they were hiking their way up Mt. Purgatory. “I always loved how he smelled,” Tara said. “I didn’t expect him to smell this bad.” 143 · Camille Ong

She also didn’t expect to get tired after a few hours of walking uphill. The trail featured pine trees and dirt paths that were big enough for Tara and Mr. Dog to walk side by side. He was going up at an easy pace, so he was always ahead of her. He would go and explore the forest if the trees and bushes permitted him. Mr. Dog never left Tara for more than five minutes though. He kept going back to her side to check on her as if she was a child who couldn’t be left alone. “But the cool climate is alleviating the smell, at least. Imagine if we were still stuck in the city, Tara.” It was cooler in Benguet, but she was still sweating from exhaustion. “You didn’t wait that long before eating him, did you?” Mr. Dog stopped in his tracks and started to whimper. Tara was grateful for the rest. “Don’t you dare give me those puppy-dog eyes. I won’t get mad at you, I promise.” He huffed and then trotted over to a rock. Tara removed her bag from her shoulders to sit beside him. “I waited for a few hours.” She blinked. “Are you fucking kidding me?” “I was hungry.” “I thought you liked him!” “He was dead, Tara. Liking a corpse isn’t normal-” “Eating a corpse isn’t normal!” “Besides,” Mr. Dog continued. “Would you have wanted me, your bestest friend in the world, to die alongside him? From hunger?” Tara rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.” “Rigor mortis would have set in a few hours after death. I had to act quickly or else I would really have nothing to eat.” “You could have gone out and eaten a cat!” “But you love cats.” “Well, I loved Carl but I guess that doesn’t matter now, does it?” “It’s not my fault I can’t open the door with these paws, Tara.” She could feel bile rising up in her throat. “You sure he was dead when you ate him?” she asked. “I licked him in the face a couple of times to try to wake him up.” She nodded and then proceeded to fix her ponytail. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 144

“Does that make you feel better?” “No,” she said before standing up. “But he’s dead and we can’t do anything about it. Come on. We still have a long way to go.” After walking for about an hour, the cloud moved in to cover the sky until light couldn’t seep through. The trees surrounding the trail started to accumulate moss while the ground slowly inclined. If it becomes any steeper as it is, Tara and Mr. Dog would have to crawl uphill. “When is this going to end?” she asked. “Just a bit further,” Mr. Dog said. Even he was panting. Tara saw a bright orange that flickered with red sparks in an opening up ahead. The flame moved in and out of their sight, as if it was a living thing. Seeing as it was only a few meters away, the two of them sprinted. They stumbled into a campsite surrounded by pine trees that looked threatening in the night. A lone tent was situated in the middle, but Tara ignored it. Tara collapsed onto the moss-covered floor. It was a bit damp, but Tara didn’t care at that point. Her legs were shaking from the effort of walking uphill. The hike only felt like a few hours but since the sun had set and darkness had settled in, it must have been past seven. “The stars are bright tonight, Mr. Dog,” she whispered, repeating what Carl said to her all those months ago. Mr. Dog said something back, but it was lost among the edges of her consciousness. Her heart was pounding rapidly a few minutes ago, but now, a kind of calm settled in her bones. She was just so tired. Lying on the moss-covered floor with her bag as a pillow, Tara slept fitfully. The smell of burning wood filled her nostrils, then she heard a rustling that led to the sound of a zipper opening. She forced her eyes to open despite its heaviness and what she saw made her squeak and roll over to her side. There was a man standing over her. His face was shrouded in darkness, but she could discern long, greasy hair attached to the head of an unwashed man if his smell was to be trusted. “Yo,” he said. Tara tried to stand on wobbly legs and Mr. Dog, having just woken up, trotted over to her side and barked at the man. There was a bonfire 145 · Camille Ong

situated a few meters away from them, just beside the green tent they saw earlier. “What’s that smell?” the man asked. “It smells like there’s a dead animal around here.” Tara tried not to look at her bag on the floor. “Maybe it’s just you,” she said with a shrug. He laughed. “That’s a nice dog you have there,” the man said. He kept brushing his hair away from his face because the wind kept displacing it. He wore leather slippers that went oddly well with the malong tied around his body. Mr. Dog barked. “I’m Tara, and this is Mr. Dog.” “Hello, Tara and Mr. Dog. You can call me Jesus.” “Jesus?” “Yes,” he said in a tone that dared her to make fun of him. “Just Jesus.” Tara hesitated. “I see.” Jesus motioned for them to follow him and then he made them sit around the bonfire. Outside his tent was a bag clumsily made from a bed sheet. It was knotted at the top, but Tara could almost see it bursting with its contents. “They’re mostly trash,” Jesus said after noticing her stare. “Hikers leave a lot of plastic bottles up there.” She blinked. “Sorry,” she said. “I think Mr. Dog and I are lost.” “There’s no other way to go but up. You’ll find your way eventually.” Jesus tried to engage in small talk with her, but Tara was still tired so the best she could do was reply in short answers. He took the hint and retreated into his tent shortly after, the flaps in the opening waving at her goodbye. Tara tried not to gag at the overwhelming smell when she opened her bag. She pulled out her sleeping bag and then unrolled it on the floor. She opened a can of dog food for Mr. Dog and a can of tuna for her. They ate in silence. When they were done with their dinner, Mr. Dog settled beside Tara and moments later, he was already snoring. It was long past heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 146

midnight, but Tara guessed it was still a few hours before sunrise. She settled inside her sleeping bag and removed the ring from the zipper pocket of her shorts. It was just a simple band inlaid with the stuff that made the ring change colors. It was blue, as of the moment, and it glimmered as she held it up in front of her. She sighed and pocketed the ring again. Tara looked up at the sky and tried to name the constellations Carl taught her more than a year ago. He taught her the basics: Ursa minor, Orion, and Taurus. He made complicated gestures and kept pointing at the sky until Tara laughed at him. The best she could point out was Orion’s belt, which consisted of three stars in one line. It wasn’t actually a constellation, he reminded him, but an asterism. That was the same night they met for the first time. There were two groups staying overnight at the summit of Mt. Kalisungan in Laguna. It just so happened that the campsite was small, so the two groups decided to share a bonfire. When the fun started to die down, Tara excused herself to lie down on a field somewhere. That was where Carl found her when he was looking for a place to pee. He was already starting to open the button of his pants when Tara yelled at him to stop, alerting him to her presence. After that, they talked under the stars until Carl couldn’t take his bladder anymore and asked her to wait for him as he looked for another pee spot far away from where she was. She let him put his arm around her later on that night, after asking him if he washed his hands. Tara glanced at Mr. Dog. He was a heavy sleeper so she didn’t have to worry about him waking up as she stood to get Carl’s remains. The decomposition process had taken over days ago, and his chopped-up parts looked closer to a zombie’s than an actual human being. Gone was his tan skin, and in its place was a green and gray tinge that reminded Tara of sewer water. Everything was hard and cold to the touch. Much like a child playing with dolls, Tara fixed his parts until it somehow resembled a crude version of Carl. A lot of his parts had to be filled in but some of his limbs, head, and torso were there. What was left of him didn’t look good, and he smelled so bad that Tara was forcing herself not to gag. 147 · Camille Ong

Her eyes started to burn. She could feel a tightness in her throat. Her vision was starting to get blurry; her tears threatening to spill. A whimper came out of her and she tried to cover it with a hand. She felt a dread so deep that for a second, she couldn’t breathe. For the first time since Carl died, Tara cried. She didn’t know how long she was sitting there but when the sky started to brighten, she heard someone gag behind her. Jesus, once again, was standing over her. She wiped her face quickly and was about to throw her sleeping bag over Carl’s parts when Jesus stopped her. “What the fuck is that?” The fire that burned last night was reduced to glowing embers and the tent was disassembled. Jesus stood in front of Tara, and at that moment, she was reminded of the religious calendars and figurines in Carl’s house. “Are you really Jesus?” Tara asked. “What the fuck?” “Are you really Jesus?” she repeated her question even though the swearing should’ve thrown her off. “Fuck, no. I’m stuck with this name because of my parents.” Tara looked away from him. For a second there, she hoped he was the real deal. Maybe he could heal Carl but one glance at his remains, Tara knew there would be nothing to heal. She would have changed her mind about her belief in God and everything that came with him if only this Jesus guy could change her situation. But he was just an unwashed man, and Tara was foolish to think otherwise. Tara sobbed. She was supposed to propose to him at the summit. She never imagined she would be burying him. Jesus gagged again. “God, the smell is getting worse.” Mr. Dog growled and advanced on Jesus. He must have woken up when they started talking. “You know,” Jesus said while backing away from them. “I don’t wanna know what you were crying about. I’ll just act as if I never saw any of this.” Jesus turned his back on them, disassembled tent and bag in hand. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 148

“I hope you get your shit together,” he said before walking towards the opening where Tara and Mr. Dog went through. Mr. Dog licked her hand. “I’m really sorry, Tara.” “It’s not your fault.” “Did you get enough sleep?” “Yes,” she lied. “We should go. Hopefully we can arrive at the summit by nightfall.” Tara reached for her bag to get ready for their hike but was suddenly hit by a feeling of hopelessness. She wanted Carl beside her. “I think we should turn back,” Tara said. “There’s no point to this anymore. Carl’s dead.” “We’re so close, Tara! Carl would have wanted you to bury him above the clouds.” Tara glared at him. “You don’t know that. Carl didn’t know he was gonna be eaten by you so he didn’t plan for his fucking funeral.” “You know he loved the mountains,” Mr. Dog said calmly. “What better way to say goodbye to him?” “I’m so tired Mr. Dog. I can’t do this without Carl.” Whenever Tara climbed a mountain with her boyfriend, she was always the one lagging behind. Despite this, Carl always came back for her and he adjusted his pace to suit hers; even though it meant they were usually a day late when it came to major climbs. He would always hold her hand and guide her through the mountain. As Tara stood over Carl’s remains, she wanted nothing more than for him to hold her hand and tell her that everything was going to be okay. His rotting, chopped off hand was on the floor in front of her, but she couldn’t bear to look at it. “I know the way, Tara. I will guide you so don’t worry about that. As for Carl, he is here with us in spirit.” Tara snorted. “Thanks for the TED talk.” “Now, come on.” If they turned back now, that was going to be another day of walking. It might even take them more time since Tara felt as if her legs were jelly. They were more than halfway through, and Tara might as well finish this. She didn't see any point to it now, but maybe this 149 · Camille Ong

might help her accept what happened. Tara hoped for that. “Are you sure we’re near the summit?” “Yes, but if you keep talking then we won’t reach it by nightfall.” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Lead the way.” Tara and Mr. Dog started their hike just as the sun was starting to rise. They walked through damp, mossy forests with trees that towered over them and refused them sunlight. They encountered a number of bird species on their way up and Mr. Dog kept barking at them in greeting. They stopped for short breaks to eat and drink, but majority of their time was spent on walking uphill. Tara’s legs transitioned from shaky to aching. She hoped numbness would overtake it soon. The forests gave way to grasslands until the trees disappeared from their view entirely. It was as if Mt. Purgatory shaved its head. The midday sun colored the fields in a golden light so Tara had to squint at her surroundings as they continued their ascent. Mr. Dog strayed away from the trail and ran around in circles on the grass. There were parts where the grass was as tall as him so he had to jump up and down to be seen. “Tara, look,” he said. “Tara, do you see me?” He ran ahead of her and Tara hurried to catch up with him. She found him looking down at a sloped edge that ended in a lake. It looked more like an oversized puddle of water than anything. Mr. Dog slid down the slope to drink from the lake. It was so clear that it reflected the clouds above them, and Tara couldn’t wait to bathe in the clouds. “Is that safe to drink?” she called out to him. “It tastes clean, Tara! Come on down.” She removed her shoes first before skidding down. Her feet hit the water and it was almost as cool as ice. The dirt that accumulated for the past few days now floated around her. She could only imagine submerging herself fully and how much dirt that would remove. “Mr. Dog,” she said. “Go and explore. Find something to eat, if you can.” Tara already removed the hair tie that was keeping her ponytail in place and was starting to unbutton her jacket. He got the hint and bounded away from her. “I’ll be back with a rabbit,” he called down to her before disappearing into the grass. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 150

Once naked, she submerged herself in the lake in one go and tried not to scream from the cold. She wasn’t at the deepest part yet but already, she had to keep herself afloat. The dirt that clung to her skin for the past few days faded away to mix with the water. Tara floated with her face up against the sky and tried to enjoy the view of clouds flitting in and out of her vision. The color of the water turned to purple, as if grape-flavored powdered juice was added. It was Carl’s favorite color. He would have loved to swim in this. He kept trying to make her interested in snorkeling but Tara preferred climbing. The unending depths of the water scared her while it excited Carl. Whenever they would go swimming in the ocean together, she would cling to his neck until his laugh turned into a choking sound. Carl tried to teach her how to swim properly, but they always ended up playing around with each other. As if someone flipped off the switch to her mood, the color of the lake darkened into a stormy gray. Before numbness could get to her, she heaved herself up from the water and tried to pat herself dry with the small towel she brought with her. The color of the lake returned to its clear blue. She changed into fresh clothes and then wrapped herself in another jacket. While waiting for Mr. Dog, she emptied out her bag and took Carl’s parts down to the lake. It was caked with dried blood and a bit of mud from the night before, and Tara wanted to clean him up before reaching the summit. She submerged each of his parts in the water until they were clear of grime. The color of the lake retained its clearness, the dirt from Carl’s parts disappearing into the water. It was as if she was doing her laundry in a pool of clouds. Tara was ready to go when Mr. Dog appeared with a bird hanging from his mouth. “No rabbit?” she asked him. Mr. Dog shook his head and was about to drop the bird at Tara’s feet when she told him he could have it. He didn’t hesitate before chewing. They scrambled up from the lake to return to the trail. The golden grasslands greeted them, and Tara sighed at the view. The higher they went, the colder it got. Tara shivered under her 151 · Camille Ong

jacket and tried to focus on the sound of crunching grass underneath her feet. Her legs were past aching and was starting to numb. She hoped it was just the cold because she didn’t know whether she should be thankful or worried. “We are definitely close to the summit,” Mr. Dog said. Tara trusted him and left it at that. Their surroundings started to get foggy. She couldn’t see much except for what was in front of her. Mr. Dog moved closer to her so they wouldn’t get lost. It stayed like that for a few minutes. They had to pass through the whiteness of the fog for them to arrive at the top. The sun was just starting to sink below the horizon, and views of other mountains greeted her. They were high enough for the world to disappear, so Tara and Mr. Dog had to look down at a sea of clouds instead. Layers of clouds that resembled waves took her breath away. It was unending. Tara moved forward to sit at the edge of a rock. She removed the bag from her back and the shoes from her feet. She took the ring from her pocket and opened her bag. She was expecting the smell of rotting flesh to greet her, so she was surprised when it didn’t. She peeked inside the bag to look at her favorite remains. She took his hand and slid the ring on a finger. Tara was expecting a shift in her emotions, a feeling of accomplishment at least, but she just felt tired. She trekked all this way and it got her nowhere. What she did started to sink in and she sat down beside Mr. Dog to ward off dizziness. Silence hung heavy in the air as they looked on at the wide expanse of undulating clouds. Mr. Dog was panting. He took no notice of what was happening and stared off into the distance. Tara smoothed down his fur. “Mr. Dog?” He looked at her and barked, but said nothing at all.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 152

153 · Franchesca Palattao

Franchesca Palattao

bfa creative writing

Nais ko lang bigyan ng lubos na pasasalamat ang isa sa pinakatanyag na impluwensya sa labinsiyam na taon ng aking pamumuhay, ang bts.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 154

Matimtiman mga tauhan klara – 17, senior high school student, taklesa ezequiel – looks late twenties, tall and dark skinned, a Kapre cass – 18, senior high school student, best friend ni Klara tagpuan Sa kwarto ni Klara oras Hatinggabi.

155 · Franchesca Palattao

Liliwanag. Nakahiga si CASS sa kama habang nakadikit ang mata sa cellphone. Nasa lamesa si KLARA at nakatalikod kay CASS habang nakatitig sa Macbook niya. Nakabukas lang ang isang blangkong document sa harap niya.

klara

Ayaw ko nang gawin ‘tong paper na ‘to. Mag-aasawa na lang ako ng matandang Amerikano.

cass

Uso pa ba ‘yun?

klara

Oo! Marami kaya sa Subic. Uso pa rin mga red light district ‘dun tapos puro mga ‘Kano tumatambay.

cass

Wala akong alam sa sinasabi mo.

klara

Mas magugulat ako kung alam mo.

Iikot sa upuan si KLARA para humarap kay CASS. Makikita ni KLARA na ibinaba na ni CASS ang kanyang cellphone, at nakanguso ito sa kanya. Tatawa si KLARA. klara

Bakit ganyan itsura mo?

cass

May alam naman ako kahit kaunti, ‘no.

klara

Sige nga, anong ibig sabihin ng switch?

Tatahimik nang panandilian si CASS. cass

Eh basta!

klara

Hindi mo namang kailangan magkunwari, Cass. Hindi kahiya-hiya ang walang experience.

heights Seniors Folio 2015 · 156

cass

Hindi ako nagkukunwari at lalong hindi ako nahihiya.

klara

Ibig sabihin nakasubok ka na?

cass

Hindi sa ganun! Bakit, ikaw ba? Marami kang alam sa mga ganyang bagay pero ni first kiss nga sa lalaki wala ka pa.

klara

Hoy, tumigil ka nga. Sensitive topic.

cass

Tatlo na ex mo pero sabi mo sa akin wala ka pa ring nahalikan sa kanila. Kakaiba ka.

klara

Alam mo sobrang weird talaga. Parang wala lang talaga ako sa ganoong mood tuwing malapit na mangyari. Para bang napapansin ko bigla na ang baho ng hininga nila, o kaya masyadong mainit o malamig sa kwarto, o kaya nagiging conscious ako na baka maraming tumitingin.

cass

Naghahanap ka lang ata ng rason para hindi sila halikan eh.

Tatahimik at mapapaisip si KLARA. klara

Baka nga.

Tititigan ni CASS si KLARA nang walang imik. Hindi nakatingin si KLARA sa kanya sa sandaling ito. Nang magkatinginan sila, saka bumalik si CASS sa kanyang phone. cass

Baka naman may susunod ka nang biktima ngayon.

klara

Cassandra, grabe ka sa akin! Hindi naman ako ganun kalandi.

157â&#x20AC;&#x201A;Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;Franchesca Palattao

cass

Dalawa hanggang tatlong linggo pagitan lagi ng mga ex mo. Ang bilis-bilis mo kumilos.

klara

Bata pa naman ako. Sila rin. Wala pa kaming konsepto ng forever.

cass

May commitment issues ka lang.

Hindi iimik si KLARA. Iikot-ikot siya sa computer chair niya nang sandali. klara

Whatever. Halos lahat naman ng babae sa school natin ganito rin eh. Ikaw lang ata mabait.

cass

Kayo naman kasi pinapahalata niyo agad sa mga lalaking nakakasalamuha niyo na deprived kayo. Supalpal na nga na ganun kayo kasi galing pa tayo ng all-girls school.

Uusog paharap si KLARA sa kanyang upuan at bubulong. klara

Kasalanan ko bang dito ako tinapon ng magulang ko?

cass

Oo, alam nilang kailangan mo ng guidance. Paper mo nga lang hindi mo masimulan.

klara

Low blow, Cass.

cass

Gawin mo na kasi. Sabi mo kailangan mo ng tulong ko pero ayaw mo naman sabihin sa akin kung tungkol saan paper mo.

klara

Gusto ko lang nandito ka.

Mapapaupo si CASS sa kama. cass

So hindi mo ako kailangan dito? heights Seniors Folio 2015â&#x20AC;&#x201A;Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;158

klara

Siyempre naman kailangan kita. Kailangan ko presence mo. Yiiee.

cass

Klara, nagmakaawa ako sa nanay ko na pumunta dito. Ako maglalaba ng damit namin sa susunod na linggo dahil dito!

klara

Sus, parang konting laba lang.

cass

Alam mong mahirap kausap nanay ko. Big deal ’to para sa akin.

klara

Kailangan talaga kita rito. Ilang araw na rin tayo hindi nagkita.

cass

Tatlong araw lang naman ako nawala.

klara

Sana nga nakasama ako eh.

cass

Ilang beses ka kaya niyaya ni Steph sa birthday niya. Hindi ko maintindihan bakit ka humindi.

klara

Hindi naman ako ang may-ayaw. Hindi lang talaga ako pinayagan.

cass

Kung alam ko lang sana ’nung time na ’yun na hindi ka pinayagan ng magulang mo last minute, hindi na sana ako sasama. Hirap na hirap pa naman ako magpaalam ‘nun.

klara

Hindi ba close mo sila Steph? Masaya naman, ’di ba?

cass

Oo, pero inakala ko lang talaga makakapag-beach tayo nang magkasama.

klara

Pervert ka. Gusto mo lang ako makitang naka-two piece, ano?

159 · Franchesca Palattao

cass

Ilang beses na kita nakikitang naka-bra’t panty. Hindi na bago ’yan sa akin.

klara

Gusto mo pa rin makita, ‘di ba?

Tatawa si KLARA at tatayo mula sa kanyang upuan. Tatabi si KLARA kay CASS sa kama at yayakapin ito pahiga. Mapapasigaw si CASS sa gulat. Ilalagay ni KLARA ang hintuturo niya sa labi ni CASS para tumahimik ito. Sa sandaling panahon, magkakatinginan ang dalawa nang walang imik. klara

Ayaw mo ba?

Tatahimik si CASS. klara

O, wala ka masabi ngayon.

cass

Tigilan mo nga ako.

klara

Alam ko namang gusto mo.

Tatahimik ang kwarto nang sandali. Uupo si CASS sa kama at bibitawan siya ni KLARA. cass

Gumawa ka na nga ng papel mo. Malapit na mag-one.

klara

Kinikilig ka lang eh.

cass

Hindi ka na nakakatuwa, Klara. Tama na.

klara

Totoo naman diba? Anong problema?

Hindi iimik si CASS. Bubuksan niya ulit ang cellphone niya ngunit kukunin ito ni KLARA.

heights Seniors Folio 2015 · 160

cass

Huy, ano ba!

klara cass

Kausapin mo ako. Unahin mo papel mo mamaya na pasahan niyan, ’di ba? Balik mo na phone ko.

Susubukan abutin ni CASS ang cellphone niya mula kay KLARA pero mas mabilis umilag si KLARA. klara

Kausapin mo muna ako.

cass

Sana pala hindi na lang ako pumunta rito kung ganyan ka lang rin pala.

klara

Sorry na, ang sarap mong pag-trip-an eh. Tsaka inaantok na rin kasi ako. Pampagising kita.

Yayakapin muli ni KLARA si CASS. Hindi ito papansinin ni CASS. klara

Sabi mo okay lang sa ’yo.

cass

Okay nga lang sa akin.

klara

Anong problema?

Hihiga ulit si CASS at tatalikod kay KLARA. cass

Pinaglalaruan mo lang ata ako.

klara

Anong pinaglalaruan?

cass Alam mo nararamdaman ko, Klara. Hindi iimik si KLARA nang sandali. Hahawakan ni KLARA ang braso ni CASS ngunit iiwas agad ito.

161 · Franchesca Palattao

klara

Alam mo rin naman nararamdaman ko.

cass

Sabi mo din okay lang sa ’yo. Pero bakit—

klara

Hindi ko pa alam, Cass.

cass

Bakit tayo ganito? Kaibigan pero hindi lang?

klara

Sabi mo okay lang sa ’yo.

cass

Hindi ibig sabihin hahayaan kong mangyari ’to. Nasasaktan din ako, Klara. Sa bawat yakap mo, bawat halik, bawat kwento tungkol sa mga lalaking kinakasama mo. Alam mo ba ’yun?

klara

Wala na akong relasyon sa kanila. Alam mong ikaw lang—

cass

Paano ako makakasigurado? Hindi naman tayo. Wala akong karapatan.

klara

Pero ikaw lang talaga. Sana maniwala ka sa akin.

Tatahimik ang dalawa, at ang tanging maririnig lamang sa kwarto sa sandaling iyon ay kanilang mga hininga. klara

Natatakot ako, Cass. Alam kong hindi lang kaibigan tingin ko sa ’yo pero bakit parang mali?

Haharap si CASS kay KLARA sa kama. cass Sinong nagsasabing mali? klara

Ang lahat.

cass

Sa tingin mo bang mali ’to? heights Seniors Folio 2015 · 162

klara

Ayun na nga, Cass, eh. Alam ko sa loob loob kong hindi ’to mali. Pero—

cass

Ayun lang ang mahalaga. Kaya kong maghintay. Hangga’t sa naniniwala ka nang hindi mali ’to. Hangga’t maging tapat ka na sa sarili mong nararamdaman. Walang mali dito.

klara Sinabi ko rin naman sa ’yo na ayaw kong maghintay ka. Baka unfair sa ’yo. Baka makahanap ka ng iba, at ayaw kong pigilan kasihayan mo. Baka naiipit ka— cass

Ikaw lang. Una pa lang, ikaw lang. Alam mo ’to, Klara.

Hindi iimik si KLARA. cass Sana sabihin mo nalang na ayaw mo talaga sa akin. ’Yun ba ’yun? Talaga bang gusto mo rin sa babae? klara

Ayaw kong magsinungaling sa ’yo.

Haharap si CASS kay KLARA. cass Bakit hindi pwede? klara

Alam mo naman kung bakit.

cass

Padausdos ka parati, Klara. Pwede naman eh. Bakit—

klara

Hindi pwede, Cass. Kahit na gusto ko, hindi pwede. Alam mo ’to. Naiipit din ako.

Hindi iimik ang dalawa. Magkakatinginan sila nang mahabang sandali. cass Wala ka pa ba talagang hinahalikan? 163 · Franchesca Palattao

klara

Wala pa.

cass

Bakit?

klara

Alam mo kung bakit.

Yayakapin ni CASS si KLARA at hahalikan niya ito. cass

Gawin mo na papel mo.

klara

Basta ’wag mo ako tutulugan

cass

Sasabayan kita. telon

heights Seniors Folio 2015 · 164

165 · Reena Pineda

Reena Pineda

bs legal management

Reena Pineda, a proud Taclobanon, considers this as her underlying philosophy for her photography. Hinumduman is a word in her local vernacular that means “remembrance”. It is a concept that resonates with her on a personal level as she’s always been one to dislike constant change. But, as time passed, she understood its inevitability. A realization occured that a good photo is not one that perfectly follows technicalities. Rather, a good photo is one that serves as an effective remembrance for a celebration of life’s moments. People will come and go, situations will never stay stagnant. Whether it is liked or not, everything will evolve. A hinumduman is the only concrete thing one can hold on to to reminisce on what once was— not to stay stuck in the past, but rather to use as a driving force to move forward.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 166

167 · Reena Pineda

Untitled. Digital photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 168

169 · Michaela Gonzales Tiglao

Michaela Gonzales Tiglao

bs psychology

Michaela is finally graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and a Minor in Creative Writing. She was a fellow for fiction in the 22nd Ateneo heights Writers Workshop and was recently conferred the Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts for her fiction. Her short stories and prose pieces have been published in heights Ateneo, where she was formerly Associate English Editor and Editor-at-Large. She is grateful for her family, friends, professors, the Psychology department (special mention to Ma’am Anette), heights Ateneo, the ucla-purc Committee, The Coffeebean and Tea Leaf Katipunan branch, her Christmas playlist, NBC’s The Good Place, Audrey Hepburn, Tony Stark, Shrek, Harry Potter, Pokémon, Mula Sa Buwan, The Phantom of the Opera, Bruno Mars, Lou Rawls, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Jose Rizal, Pablo Neruda, Alfred Tennyson, Alexander Pushkin, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Nick Joaquin, Eliza Victoria, Juliet Marillier, Cassandra Clare, Katherine Arden, Angela Carter, Emily Brontë, Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen—and the love of her life, Rhys (also affectionately called Rhys Hemsworth). heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 170

The Day I Ran Out of Words I ran out of words was the same day Ka Moning’s family returned to Carmona. Though I had only heard about it—I usually rose sometime past eleven o’clock-ish—the sky that morning was purple-pink fair, the air punctured still with the cool breeze from the night before, and Ka Norbing’s chickens freshly stirred from their slumber in his backyard. Ka Moning had kept her Chevy all these years, I was told—a small pickup, the hot orange paint matching perfectly with someone the likes of her. The pickup used to stutter and belch; it stuttered and belched, still, as it halted to a stop in front of the ancestral house of the Montanos, which stood at the end of Carmona, right before Pandi. My mother had clambered for proper clothes and hot chocolate, and I knew if I had risen much earlier—earlier than my usual past-eleven o’clock-ish—she would have dragged me out of bed and ordered me to make my curls more presentable, tongue clucking and lips pointing towards the finest silver tray in our kitchen—to carry the hot chocolate, of course. Myself, I was glad I had not risen earlier, for I would have lost my words earlier than I eventually did. But I am getting ahead of myself. Before everything else, before the afternoon I sat in my usual post in Ate Gemma’s sari-sari store, before my mother had gone berserk that morning she nearly scalded herself boiling water for the hot chocolate, it was necessary to note the last time any of us in Carmona had seen the Montanos was many, many years ago. I was eight, perhaps nine, when they left, too young to pay attention to the details of it, but old enough to remember the party they had hosted in their ancestral house that year, guests spilling into their pebbled driveway, the warm lights pouring out of dozens of windows and looking like beacons in the calm night of Carmona. Mother later filled in my memory: that night had been the celebration of Ka Moning’s second marriage, and the party had been only one of her dinner receptions. the day

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In a way, we all had a certain fixation towards the Montanos. They were a handsome, fashionable family, since as early as Ka Moning’s great-great-grandparents, or so I was told. I had only ever known Ka Moning; she was a few years my mother’s senior, and both her parents had passed away before I was born. There were no siblings. I thought, whether or not she had, it wouldn’t have mattered—Ka Moning would have had our unwavering loyalty anyway. She was elegant, poised, and stylish, but she was also warm, goofy, and adventurous. She knew the names of everyone who lived in and visited Carmona. She told us never to apologize for eating chocolates. To us girls, she was a starlet, a queen, president of the country. We would have pledged ourselves to her cause, become the handmaidens to her huntress Diana. Ka Moning had laughed at that; Mother had mentioned it playfully, in passing, myself sitting next to her in the Montanos’ large sala, cheeks burning in embarrassment. “None of that,” Ka Moning had admonished, eyes bright with mischief and a little bit of wisdom, “Clarita would make a better huntress than handmaiden. She has a way with words, everyone knows. She will command more than I ever will.” It was a blasphemous declaration if I had ever heard one, though I made sure to keep my mouth shut, for one does not correct her sovereign. Mother had proceeded to patting my unruly curls affectionately, the corners of her mouth tipped upwards into a knowing smile, a smile that everyone in my family knew all too well. If the Montanos were famous in Carmona for their self-possession, our family was famous for our words. These were how things worked in Carmona: the Delgados had their prized chickens, the Salvadors had their funny-looking ears, the Gonzaleses could multiply to ten digits, and the Estebans, of course, had their way with words. It was as simple as that in our little town, and we all prided ourselves for it. Father taught words, and the rules behind them, to the local elementary school just a few blocks from where we lived, and my elder sister Elena could argue her way into a bargain, even if it would take her all day in the market or Sunday bazaar. Our youngest, Benjamin, wrote stories in his little journal, whenever struck with inspiration, and heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 172

which he religiously brought with him everywhere he went the same way our Lola Blanca used to carry her rosary. My Lola Blanca, Mother had told me, had her own special way with words: she could finish crossword puzzles in minutes and was often consulted by the people of Carmona for definitions of words, dubbing her a walking dictionary of some sort. Mother’s words soothed. Mine was closer to hers: my words could touch anyone who read or heard them, but most of the time I could make someone fall in love through a composition or two. The latter was a bit tricky to explain: Mother said when it came to what we could do, empathy was surely involved, for us to touch people the way we could with our words. While Mother could soothe, I could ignite a long-buried passion, or awaken one. I understood it best in this phrasing. Our gifts were not without consequences—“Our words can be easily taken from us,” Mother had told us during dinner, when we had bombarded her with one question after another. “For example, when I met your father, I ran out of words.” This brought out an enraged sound from my sister Elena. “What do you mean, you ran out of words?” Father looked embarrassed, but Mother laughed. “It is the way we love. My words were not returned to me until your father reciprocated. Your Lola Blanca was able to get her words back herself.” Elena had spent the rest of dinner fuming over the unfairness of it all, while Benjamin brought out his journal to jot down this detail, perhaps to make a story out of it. Myself, I had shaken my head, hoping it never came to it in the future. Regardless of Mother’s warning, mine was a gift I had learned as a child to be both wary and curious of—it had started, after all, sometime during the summer I turned twelve, when I had had nothing to do because I was deemed too old to join our parish’s free arts-and-crafts class, which was most assuredly a grave injustice, and which Elena had been more than willing to argue on my behalf, had she not been persuaded otherwise by our father. So it was I found myself idle that summer, and had found myself in Ate Gemma’s.

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Ate Gemma’s sari-store was in the middle of Carmona, between the parish church and the Montanos’ house. It was a medium-sized, homely hut; its canopied roof was built out of straw, which allowed both shade and access to the breeze outside, and a few tables and chairs were set up before the open window because Ate Gemma cooked merienda in the afternoons, which was a brief respite from her staple of chips, crackers, bubble gums, and Coke in plastic bags. The sari-sari store was cornered on either sides by large duhat trees. I had been sitting on one of the stools by the window when Mang Ador dragged himself onto the stool next to mine, pleasant features somber for a change. “Ate Gemma,” he called out, still in that somberly, dragging voice. “Load, please. Just thirty.” Ate Gemma was a no-nonsense young woman; her family was known for this no-nonsense-ness in Carmona. She was ten years older than my sister Elena and wore a perpetual look of judgment on her face, perhaps because she could not understand why people made things complicated for themselves. “Write your number, here,” said Ate Gemma, handing him some scratch paper. “And what’s with that voice? Are you in mourning?” “No, no,” said Mang Ador. “I am only broken-hearted.” “Why so?” “Bah! Because I go here almost every week and you still do not know my number!” At Ate Gemma’s stoic gaze, Mang Ador gulped slowly. “Alright. You remember that girl I told you about, from Tarlac? My pen-pal?” “Fely?” “Yes, Fely. She does not think her mother will approve of me and as such has cut off all ties with me. How cruel, no! To think I could be easily deterred from love!” “It is not you, but Fely.” Ate Gemma chuckled at that, which only made Mang Ador sink deeper into his stool. “If you do not mind po,” I found myself interjecting. Both adults whirled around, surprised I had been there all along. “Perhaps I could give some advice po? It seems to me you have spent more time wooing this pen-pal of yours than her mother. Of course, you would need to heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 174

befriend the mother first. It is like climbing the duhat tree before you can eat the duhat—if you forego the climbing and wait for the duhat to fall, it will crush on its landing and taste less sweet than it normally does. Such will be the state of your union without her mother’s blessing.” And at that I had pointed at the duhat trees around us. “If you do not mind my advice po.” Mang Ador and Ate Gemma stared in bewilderment at that, wondering perhaps how a 12-year-old child whose chin was dribbling with red food coloring, curls askew from the summer heat, looking every bit wild and out of place in the situation, had much advice to share to begin with. “Your name is Clara Esteban, right?” Ate Gemma finally said. I nodded. “Wonderful, then. Just what you need, eh, Mang Ador? Someone who can write and woo for you. I really don’t understand why you make things complicated for yourself.” So it was I found myself a kind of fixture in Ate Gemma’s sari-sari store. From then on she had placed a chair for me inside the hut, beside her, so I could give love advice and offer the service of my words. She took none of the payments the people of Carmona gave me; in exchange, I was only to help her manage the store, but most importantly deal with the lovesick customers who flocked to her hut and thought that by doing so their problems would magically disappear. For the longest time, Ate Gemma had been trying to shoo them away—“To no success, evidently,” she’d sighed. Thus it was a transaction that suited us both. The day I ran out of words, I had been sitting in my usual chair and entertaining a line of my own customers. Business was slow. Still, I liked what I did even if I didn’t reach my daily quota; there was a different kind of fulfillment in being able to change the course of one’s life forever. That, and I liked how my name sounded when it was whispered around Carmona, as if I were some kind of seer or shaman, able to impart divine teaching. At 15, I also knew enough by now how to ensure safe transactions—I will only open the doors to your opportunities, I would tell this to all of my customers in my firmest voice. Beyond that, I will not intervene, not to strengthen your beloved’s feelings or 175 · Michaela Gonzales Tiglao

to change them when they have given their ultimatum. This last one had to be emphasized often, or I would get in trouble. Now, I need a down payment of a hundred pesos. “A hundred pesos!” My last customer for the day exclaimed. He was not from Carmona, but had only come from Sta. Maria and had heard about me through word of mouth; nobody from Carmona would dare complain about my services because they knew I did my job well. “You are just a child. How could you know better?” “Then why come all this way?” Ate Gemma intervened, rolling her eyes. “Off, now; you’re wasting not only the girl’s time but mine as well. Shoo!” I slumped back in my chair beside Ate Gemma, feeling a little bit disheartened. “Now, now, Clara,” said Ate Gemma, “he knew nothing better, obviously, if he had decided to come all this way to Carmona. He was only surprised to see you were much younger, that’s all. He got embarrassed. Plus he’s a cheapskate.” “Anyone would be suspicious,” said Aaron, who sat at the small kitchen table at the far end of the sari-sari store. He was Ate Gemma’s nephew, just a year above me, though he thought he was far superior than the rest of us because he would be transferring to a high school in Manila by the end of summer. Now, he was finishing up on his reading list. “Why would a child know better than a grown man? We must seem like quack doctors to him.” On most days, Ate Gemma would agree; after all, her nephew was as no-nonsense as she was, perhaps more so. Now, she only walked up to him and slapped him in the arm. “Don’t you have something to finish?” “It’s not my loss, anyway,” I said, feeling the need to speak for myself. “He will not have the privilege of my words.” “Is it really a privilege?” Aaron said. He ducked just before I could pinch him. “Uh, er, excuse me?” a voice called from the window. “Knock it off, both of you.” Ate Gemma directed this to us before turning towards her newest customer. Aaron went back to his book; I peered over his shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of the words. I knew better than to ask him about his books—I did not think my pride could heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 176

handle that. Sometimes, when Aaron was not around, Ate Gemma would give me the books he had recently finished reading, or that had been sitting around in their house for years now untouched, which I would then hand to my brother Benjamin, or sometimes keep to myself. If Ate Gemma got his permission or she just took them whenever he wasn’t around, I wouldn’t know. It was Ate Gemma’s laugh that drew me back to the present. There was something quite different about that laugh, and it forced both me and Aaron to look up. In the woman’s face was a smile so huge it was nearly terrifying. When had Ate Gemma ever smiled like that? Surely never in our presence. “Oh, nonsense, it’s no trouble!” she told her customer. “How has she been doing?” The customer was a boy who couldn’t have been much older than me, and there was something deeply familiar about him besides. He was tall and wore a polo shirt, which no boy in Carmona wore unless there was a great occasion or unless you were the mayor or vice-mayor. His skin was fair, as though it had never encountered the sun before, though he was saved from looking sickly because of the soft muscles lining his shoulders and arms. His face was a different matter altogether—I didn’t think I’d seen such an exquisite face before. Patrician nose, a pair of dimples, and deep-set black eyes stark against dark brown hair. “She’s wonderful,” said the boy, “and happy to be back. We both are; it’s been years.” “Well, you tell Ka Moning I said hi, alright? I might pay a visit, too. Ay, how handsome you’ve become, Miguel!” Miguel? As in Miguel Montano? I thought, mortified. She must be mistaken. Miguel Montano is rail-thin and pale as a vampire—not some grown boy who looks as if he could star in Hollywood movies. Why, the last time I saw him—when we were nine, ten, during Ka Moning’s second wedding—surely he was the one hiding behind his mother’s skirts, unable to look his stepfather in the eyes? Ate Gemma must be mistaken! “Do you remember Aaron and Clara?” Ate Gemma asked. “You played with them when you were younger.” 177 · Michaela Gonzales Tiglao

The boy—Miguel—looked us up and down; beside me, I felt Aaron straighten, the way boys do when trying to assert their dominance— why did these things matter to boys anyways? Myself, I was still caught between reconciling the past Miguel Montano from the one standing before me; for a certainty, I knew I looked like a floundering fish. “How could I forget?” Miguel Montano grinned. “You and I used to play basketball every Saturday in the court across from the parish, yes?” Aaron hesitated, then nodded, looking a little put out—disappointed, even—by the warm reception. Then to me, Miguel Montano said, “And you are the daughter of my mother’s best friend, yes? The one who gives love advice? Ka Eileen would not stop talking about you.” That sounds like Mother, I wanted to say, but for some reason I nodded, half-unaware of the act, still with the same baffled expression, and anyways Ate Gemma had steered the conversation elsewhere. “Ay, how long will you be staying in Carmona?” she asked excitedly. I didn’t think I had ever seen her excited before; I didn’t think anybody had. “Is Ka Raymond here, too? How is he?” “It’s just me and mother. Mother says we might stay here even after summer ends.” “After summer! Then you will be staying for good? And you will be continuing your studies here, in Carmona? What year are you in? You must be sixteen, like Aaron.” “He is younger,” said Aaron defensively. “I’m fifteen po.” “Clara’s year, then!” Ate Gemma patted my head. “Won’t that be great, Clarita? With Aaron moving to Manila, you won’t be so lonely anymore. You will have a new classmate.” Clarita? I didn’t think Ate Gemma had ever called me by my pet name. This was the Montano effect! I opened my mouth—I will not be lonely, Ate Gemma; I have the girls in my grade; Aaron doesn’t even talk to me in school. And Clarita?—I would say in admonishment—you have never called me Clarita before and you had better stop now; I am fifteen and too old for a little girl’s pet name. But the words did not come out. Ate Gemma and Aaron and Miguel Montano stared at me: my mouth was open and they had seen my look heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 178

of admonishment—but no words had come out. I blinked. Licked my lips; rubbed my throat. I will not be lonely, Ate Gemma—why couldn’t I hear myself? I will not be lonely, Ate Gemma—My mouth had stiffened around the edges, teeth going numb, as though someone was plastering cement all over them—I will not be lonely—I will not—The words wouldn’t get out, the mouth wouldn’t move—The wretched words were nowhere to be found—I could feel warmth tickle my eyes, frustration and bewilderment forcing me to look around wildly, beseechingly, as though someone in the sari-sari store must know why I had suddenly lost all of my words. “Clarita, what is wrong?” asked Ate Gemma, straightening, as concern flooded her features. I can’t—Where are—? “Ate Gemma,” said Miguel Montano, looking as alarmed, “do you have a glass of water?” Ate Gemma had gone to fetch the glass of water; Miguel Montano was suddenly inside the hut, rubbing my back, but keeping a polite distance, still, as he did so. “It’s alright, Clarita—Clara, right? Would you prefer Clarita or Clara?” I didn’t know if I had nodded or shook my head, if anyone had spoken or answered on my behalf; quickly the glass of water was there, Ate Gemma and Miguel Montano ensuring I kept a steady hand as I took my gulps. By the time I had calmed, Mother arrived with Ka Moning in tow, who had gone to speak with her son in a corner of the sari-sari store. My tongue was dry and my head throbbed a little—I wanted nothing more in that moment than to leave straightaway for home, which Mother thankfully understood. It didn’t take long, afterwards, until I was overcome with a wave of embarrassment—to have caused a fuss in front of the Montanos! There was no judgment on Ka Moning’s face, which was as glamorous as I remembered it to be, nor was there any on her son’s; still, it bruised my ego to have been seen thus. In that moment I had been a girl—whose words were known throughout Carmona—for once at a loss for them. “What happened earlier, Clarita?” Mother asked sometime afterwards. Thankfully, Elena wasn’t around, for if there was anyone 179 · Michaela Gonzales Tiglao

I hoped wouldn’t hear of the embarrassing event that had transpired, it would be my outspoken elder sister. I took my time forming my words. I didn’t want to risk the idea of losing them for being in a hurry. Although the longer I had calmed down, the more my mouth was losing its stiffness. “I ran out of words, mama,” I was able to say, “but I don’t know why.” I told her what happened: about the customer who had come all the way to Carmona from Sta. Maria, about the arrival of Miguel Montano, about the inevitable loss of words, even about the relief I felt when Mother finally came to fetch me. “Oh,” said Mother, the sound both soft and surprised. Nervousness roiled in my stomach. “It must be Ka Moning’s son,” I said. “It is his fault. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t arrived.” “Oh.” “Mama, what should I do?” “Oh, dear heart,” said Mother. “You must brave through it.” That night, I dreamt I was in the Montanos’ ancestral house, there at the end of Carmona, just before Pandi. I dreamt it was nightfall, and the narra trees around the house were bursting with foliage, and the wind whistled through their leaves, singing a sweet tune. I dreamt I stood on one of the balconies, and a warm light poured from behind, and I turned to see the outline of somebody—a boy?—though I couldn’t see his features, for he stood against the only source of illumination. I woke with a start, heart beating frantically, sweat covering my forehead, and my mouth stiff and aching. For the next few days Mother would insist I pay a visit to the Montanos’—after all, before anything else, Ka Moning was almost family, and she had asked Mother to bring me along. I imagined if I had received this invitation in my childhood, I would have run around Carmona knocking doors and boasting about it to the rest of the girls. An invitation from the queen! A feast in my name! But it was the thought of Miguel Montano that would dampen the fanfare, that would send the same stinging pain through my mouth. I was torn between curiosity and hatred for Ka Moning’s son—the former, for I had never heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 180

felt anything like it and curiosity had always been a sin of mine; the latter because I could not believe my words could be stolen from me as easily as that. I imagined what Elena would do—she would find a way to break her own curse, of course, like our Lola Blanca. Elena would wield her words like armor, use rationality to rule over sentiment. On the other hand, I didn’t know what use my words could do against this unexpected force. I did think about a way to put an end to it all: for was I not the prophetess of Love in the town of Carmona, my words sealed in passion, my Cupid’s arrows nocked true? Had I not ignited dozens of other loves in Carmona? If I could not speak, it would be just as easy to write a letter of my own, as though I were writing for somebody else; it would be just as easy to craft and weave the words that would seal my and Miguel Montano’s fate forever. And, I thought, heart beating at the idea, I would have my words back, I would have coherence, logic, and harmony back, I could take back the life I had before the Montanos arrived and altered it drastically. I learned that so long I was far, far away from Miguel Montano, I was more like myself, logical and clear-minded, and words were easier to call on. So it was that I sat in my writing desk one day, intent on composing the greatest love letter of all love letters. I willed everything onto my piece of paper: the summary of all the love letters I had ever written, my own fabrications and claims of adoration, songs, poetry, television lines. I cannot stop thinking about you, Miguel Montano, I scribbled furiously. That wasn’t fabrication. You have bewitched me, body and soul…That was plagiarism, but it was, admittedly, a very good line, and I was sure, regardless of his own preference, the boy would be flattered. How is it possible that I, who must write love letters for others, who has plotted the union of others, cannot seem to find the proper words to tell to you? You do not mean to be puzzling—I know firsthand of your kindness—I wonder, though, if steady hands such as yours, which have aided me with a simple glass of water, will be as steady as if I told you my feelings for you—I wonder if I will want them to be steady, or something else entirely—

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I crumpled another sheet of paper, tossing it furiously across my bedroom. How pretentious words could be! How angry I suddenly was at my own task! I couldn’t even articulate how I felt, I wanted to articulate them, I wanted my words back, I wanted nothing to do with Miguel Montano, I wanted to speak to him, just once, to give him a piece of my mind, I wanted to tell him I never lost my calm around anyone before, especially around a Montano! “There is a storm cloud hovering about you,” Ate Gemma told me a week after the incident. I had finally braved her sari-sari store. “I didn’t think you of all people would make things complicated for yourself.” “Her job is complicated,” came Aaron’s voice. He leaned against the store’s open window, restlessly rearranging candies into glass jars. Ate Gemma told me he had already finished his reading list. I bit back any questions of whether or not he was planning to lend me some of his books. “She must exaggerate to win the hearts of her clients. She must lie, and her conscience is finally catching up to her.” “I do not lie,” I retorted. “I garnish.” “That’s almost the same. Try using simpler words for a change.” “You haven’t been the same ever since,” said Ate Gemma. I am in love, Ate Gemma! I wanted to scream in frustration. Nobody told me love is this complicated! “Has Miguel Montano passed by since?” I said instead. “Why do you ask?” “Nothing.” I ignored Aaron’s eyes, which were as narrow as a hawk’s zooming in on its prey. “He is going to be my classmate.” “Shouldn’t you have seen him by now? Your mother is always over at Ka Moning’s.” “I don’t want to intrude.” “Sure you don’t.” Aaron scoffed. “Anyway, I’m leaving now.” “Hoy, where are you going?” Ate Gemma asked. “Ka Norbing’s. Kevin wants to show us the computer system he salvaged from the junk shop.” “Alright.” His aunt relented. For someone as no-nonsense as she was, she didn’t like admitting she hated being left alone. “Take care.” “You, too,” said Aaron, and I looked away, for this was as close heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 182

as anyone in Carmona got to a declaration of love between aunt and nephew, and it felt a little like intruding. I did eventually see Miguel Montano. The Saturday of the second week since the Montanos’ arrival, we Esteban children were heading to the parish church to drop off our youngest Benjamin for the weekly arts-and-crafts class. Myself, I was taming the expression on my face in front of the parish priest, for it would not do well to show any lingering resentment. Just as Elena and I had bidden our goodbyes to Benjamin, we heard a clamor not far off: the scuffling of feet on asphalt, the hard thud of something bouncing, and the groans and huffs associated with rough play. True enough, there, across from the parish church, were boys in the throes of basketball, skin glistening under the scorching sun and shirts stuck to their backs with sweat. They were an assortment of boys of different ages: there was Carlo, from my section, as well as Inigo and RJ; there was Aaron and Kevin and other of his friends from the batch above; there was Miguel Montano, who stood out because he was one of the taller ones. The only indication of his fatigue were his rosy cheeks, which were flush against his fairness. There was something fascinating about the way Miguel Montano moved; his tallness made him look awkward, his hyper-extensions distracting, though it was the expression in his eyes that drew attention: intently focused, as though he held in him a quiet confidence and the sureness of a victory. He looked older and more mature, I thought, than any of the older boys playing with him. “You’re staring.” Elena grinned. “I am not.” “He’s handsome, Clarita.” “He’s not,” I said, furiously and nervously, but it was too late—I must have been too loud because some of the boys looked over to where we stood from across the court. My classmates waved enthusiastically; Aaron frowned because of the distraction. We had begun to walk away when a voice called from behind us: “Wait! Ate Elena, Clara—wait.” Miguel Montano came to a halt, panting. Myself, I wanted to flee far, far away, as far as I could get from Miguel Montano. Already my mouth was stiffening. 183 · Michaela Gonzales Tiglao

“What is it?” asked my sister. “My mother is inviting your family for dinner tonight. We have not been complete yet.” Miguel Montano turned to me. “She has been longing to see you, Clara, but Ka Eileen—your mother—says you haven’t been feeling well.” At this, his brows furrowed in concern. “Are you better now?” How I wished, more than anything, to have been able to respond in that moment, but it was by fate that my mouth was insistent in keeping shut. I relied on my eyes; I hoped he could see the thanks of his concern, of the aid he had offered long ago with his steady hands; I hoped he saw I was better even if I was miserable. Miguel Montano stood, embarrassed, as he waited. “She is fine,” Elena finally said. “Thank you, Miguel. We will see you at dinner.” I was thankful Elena mentioned nothing about what had transpired on our walk back home, and I was even gladder she mentioned nothing when she saw me take extra precaution with my curls that evening, myself ensuring there were no cowlicks, going so far as to pin some locks into place. If she had realized anything from our encounter with Miguel Montano earlier that afternoon, my sister only kept her words to herself. Ka Moning looked as radiant as ever. In the early days of my childhood, I had had little to no words to describe her aside from the metaphors I had thought would suffice—now, her resemblance to her son was as clear as day. Ka Moning had aristocratic features, though her skin was darker, like ours, and her eyes round; Miguel Montano must have gotten his fairness from his father, whom I was told was a halfsomething. Ka Moning had gotten thinner over the years, too, and she donned a fabulous dress of psychedelic colors as well as an assortment of different jewelry. She looked like a retired movie star now more than ever, or perhaps she had become an empress to a fashion line. In any case, in her presence I felt the child in me resurface, the child that had once promised to pledge to her cause and become her most loyal handmaiden. Ka Moning studied me with her usual mischief, and I knew she was remembering the same. heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 184

“How lovely you’ve become, Clarita,” said Ka Moning, releasing me from her embrace. I had come to terms that my words would not be with me tonight; I smiled graciously instead. “Miguelito, come here; you stand there beside Clarita for the pictures. Eileen, do you not think they make a good-looking couple? We must sound the church bells.” Mother choked on her glass of water. “I never know when you are joking, Moning.” “Hah. They are young, they have plenty of time to know one another.” “I’m sorry about that,” whispered Miguel Montano, his fair cheeks aflame. I smiled politely. I thought of my dream throughout the course of that dinner—the dream that I was in the Montanos’ ancestral house, the trees swaying in the night breeze and the lights pouring from inside. I thought, This must be it, surely; this was when our fates would be sealed and tied for eternity. I thought, How serendipitous this will be—I will not be Ka Moning’s handmaiden, but her daughter after all. It was what she had been trying to tell me all these years, myself being too stubborn to hear it. Miguel Montano offered smiles to me the whole night and remained patient despite my lack of words. I thought about how lucky I was I did not need words, after all, to make him come to love me—soon enough, he would. When the night came to its inevitable end, Ka Moning told her son to escort us past the front door and into the driveway; in the meantime, Mother had moved to the side to speak with Ka Moning—they spoke in low, serious tones, and I gave them a wide berth for their sake. Miguel stood next to me, features soft and gentle underneath the moonlight. “That was fun,” he said. I smiled. “You don’t speak much, do you?” He asked this politely, curiously. I shook my head. “Anyway, there’s nothing wrong about being shy.” Shy! I wanted to exclaim. After Elena, I perhaps had the most to say. 185 · Michaela Gonzales Tiglao

Miguel watched me nervously. I thought I must have looked dismayed, and so schooled my features into calmness and composure. “Thank you for coming again.” Ka Moning approached us, Mother following right behind. Ka Moning brushed back her son’s hair affectionately. “We always enjoy the company.” “It is no problem at all,” said Mother. “You know we are here for you.” I didn’t know what to expect to that—surely not the glisten in Ka Moning’s eyes, or the sudden solemnness in Miguel’s posture. It might have been a trick of the moonlight, though, for Ka Moning eventually broke out into a brilliant smile. “Thank you, Eileen.” Mother was quiet for the remainder of the trip back home. On the driver’s seat, Father massaged her hand, while Benjamin slept soundly in the back, head resting on Elena’s lap. These were the other moments in our family, when we had no more words to spare, and we each had our own little, secret worlds. Mother was deep in thought; though I did not know what, I reached forward anyways to lean on her shoulder. She leaned in, and I felt rather heard the unspoken gratitude she passed onto me. I went with Mother to Ka Moning’s since then, hoping to chance upon Miguel, whom I eventually learned spent most of his summer at their ancestral home, sometimes reading, most of the time watching films in the living room with Ka Moning, who knitted. The knitting was odd, to me; I did not think someone with Ka Moning’s personality would spend hours on what I thought was an idle activity. When our mothers were speaking in hushed voices, Miguel and I would walk around the back garden of their house, or sometimes we would converse in the odd language we had both come up with, one in which I nodded a couple of times and he would guess what I was telling him. We moved at a painstakingly slow pace, but it was progress, still. I began to realize, in those moments, the kind of relationship I had with Ka Moning’s son. At times I felt we were both in the limbo of courtship, but it had become more natural now to feel as though we were long-lost friends, as though I was suddenly remembering the rail-thin, pale vampire of a boy from years ago, and the tall, fair one was only my imagination; or perhaps Miguel was still both, and interacting with heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 186

him was like meeting someone new and remembering someone from the past all at the same time. Perhaps I had not even known the past Miguel at all. And though he still had great difficulty understanding me, he laughed when I was around; there was color to his cheeks; he spoke more fervently about his day. Mother would smile at me from across their large living room—I would feel a kind of happiness rush through my body, a familiar kind of contentment. I found as well, to my surprise, that the stiffening in my mouth had begun to subside. I wondered if this meant Miguel had begun to reciprocate my feelings. I waited, then, for another rush of happiness, or a joy so profound it would be felt in the same magnitude as all the words that had been lost and finally returned to me. Instead I felt more or less like myself from weeks before, from before the Montanos had even arrived; there was no terrible sadness, too. I wondered if this was what Lola Blanca felt when she had gotten her words back herself. I had not realized the gravity of what I had been tasked to do until one fateful evening. Miguel and I had been playing Snakes & Ladders in the living room and I had been explaining to him how the ladders functioned when we heard a crash come from upstairs. Across from me, Miguel paled—he excused himself, half-distractedly and halfurgently, from our game. Mother was not there; she had only dropped me off that evening because she had already visited the Montanos the day before. Unsure, I abandoned the board game as well, and made to follow upstairs after Miguel. I had only reached the top of the staircase when I heard it: a cry that seemed to have come from deep within a well of pain. It was followed by the crack of someone’s voice—Miguel’s, surely, for I had come to learn his voice as well as my own—and was answered by keen of despair. My hands had begun to shake; I did not dare present myself. I rushed downstairs, towards the phone in the kitchen, and called for Mother—it was for the Montanos as much as it was for my trembling self. Mother arrived as quickly as she could; she stopped abruptly, seeing how rattled I was. She combed back my curls. “Get some air, Clarita,” said Mother softly. “I asked somebody to bring you home. You don’t have to wait for me.” 187 · Michaela Gonzales Tiglao

I paced around the large house of the Montanos. I had thrown the windows wide open. There came the whistling voice of the trees outside, as though beckoning; I pushed forward blindly, emerging into the balcony. The night breeze was cool on my arms. “Clara?” A voice asked from behind. I turned—to see Aaron, standing tentatively in the doorway of the balcony, features thrown in shadow, though I would know his voice, too, of course, from all those years before. “Ka Eileen sent me.” “You?” I asked, stunned. “Ate Elena is not yet home and your father stayed behind to watch your brother. Ka Eileen called my aunt, but I offered to get you myself.” “Oh.” “Come inside,” he said. “You’ll catch a cold.” We didn’t wait for Mother, as I had promised. Instead we rode Aaron’s motorcycle home, the entire journey quiet. When we finally stopped by the familiar gates of my house, I handed him back his helmet. “Will you be alright?” Aaron asked me. I could not find the words; I kept quiet, worry for the Montanos and my own mother coursing through me. “Hey, don’t worry. They’ll be fine. Ka Eileen is there.” I left my mother. No one is helping her, I wanted to say. “You’ll help your mother if you stay home and rest.” I nodded. Aaron waited until I stepped through the front door; I heard the stutter of his motorcycle as he started its engine. Then he was gone. Mother arrived an hour later. She looked exhausted. “Will Ka Moning be alright?” “I hope so. Sometimes that is all we can do.” “What happened?” There was a pause. “Ka Moning isn’t the same as before, Clarita. That’s not always a bad thing, though. Sometimes life is full of unexpected encounters and experiences—it’s only that some people have different ways of dealing with them. Ka Moning is no exception.” “That’s why you’re always visiting her.” “Somewhat. She is also my best friend.” heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 188

“And Miguel?” “Miguel is too young. Admittedly, that’s why Ka Moning wanted you to visit. She says she knows your words will make him feel better.” I kept quiet. “I hope he feels better.” “Dear heart, I’m sure he does. He will just need his own time, too.” That night, it was difficult to sleep; again and again I repeated what Mother had told me Ka Moning had said. I hoped—shutting my eyes, as though in prayer—my words had changed something in Miguel Montano’s life. Before my visit to the Montanos the next morning, I made sure to pass by Ate Gemma’s sari-sari store. How odd, I thought, studying the hut and its surrounding duhat trees, How odd that this place seems as though it were part of a different life. Mother waited for me by the sidewalk; I made for one of the stools outside the open window, seating myself. Aaron sat in the kitchen table at the far end of the hut, eyes staring elsewhere, the lines of his mouth drawn tight. “Where is Ate Gemma?” I asked. Aaron jerked upright; he hadn’t noticed I was there. “Buying more stock.” “Oh,” I said. “Can you tell her I won’t be able to pass by for a few more days? And to tell my clients I am on vacation?” Aaron fought back a smile. “Sure, a vacation. How are you feeling?” “Much better.” A pause. “Thank you, again, for the ride home.” “It’s no problem, Clara.” “Mother says you were the one who called for her last time. When I couldn’t speak. Thank you for that, too.” “It’s alright.” “And the books,” I added. “Before you leave, you need to know about your books Ate Gemma keeps giving me without your knowledge.” “I know about that.” Aaron smiled. “I tell her to give them to you.” “Oh.” “Yeah. It’s no problem.” “Well. I’m going now.” I stepped down from the stool. I turned around, towards the sidewalk and towards Mother, who waited for me. “Clara,” Aaron said. “Take care.” 189 · Michaela Gonzales Tiglao

I felt my tongue dry up—in surprise or pleasure, it was difficult to tell. “You, too,” I said, quickly, before I missed any other words, darting away from the sari-sari store, and running towards Mother, all the while restraining the urge to smile.

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191 · Frances To

Frances To

bfa information design

Frances To is both a ux designer and illustrator. She loves building digital products by day and crafting visual narratives at night. While her designs aim to deliver delightful experiences, her illustrations aim to tell a story through color, texture, and various backgrounds. Her childhood memories and her travels abroad often influence her work. During her free time, she curates her Instagram feed and writes about illustration and design on her Medium blog. You can view her works on her Instagram account, francescto, or read her articles on medium.com/@francesto927

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193 · Frances To

Following the Map. Digital.

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195 · Loreben Tuquero

Loreben Tuquero

ab communication

Si Loreben ay isang manunulat na nangangarap maging mamamahayag para sa bayan. Lagi-laging nanunuod, nakikinig, at nakikialam. Maaari niyong subaybayan ang kanyang mga karanasan sa Twitter (@grrrtaire) at sa ig (@lorebenjolras).

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197 · Loreben Tuquero

Babalutin ng pula ang malapit na panahon, kaya tumakas o hayaang pumintig pa ang damdamin. Ikaw bahala ngunit mag-ingat ka. Paano tatakasan ang mga hiyaw, ang mismong pulso ng sariling puso? Matutong magnilay, at patahimikin ang pagkalansing ng mga barya sa iyong pitaka. Hanggang dito lang ang papakinggan ko. Ang diwang didibdibin: matutong manamit para sa malamig na panahon. Linisin ang iyong kuwartong punong-puno na ng basura. Magsulat ng liham para sa iyong mga kagalit. Magbasâ at makinig; makisama at makialam. Itapon na ang mga sirâ. Kumain ng mga berdeng prutas. Balutin ang sarili sa mga tugtog at salitang dati nang nakakanginig.

Paghahanda

heights Seniors Folio 2019â&#x20AC;&#x201A;Âˇâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;198

Lakasan mo pa. Mas paigtingin pa sa pangkaraniwan, Basagin ang dapat basagin. Buwagin ang pagkahanay ng mga tagahatol na naninirahan sa himpapawid. Maghanda. Halos magkapareho lang naman ang diwa ng pagtakas at pamamalagi. Gumalaw, hindi ayon sa mga bulong ng bituin at pag-ikot ng buwan ngunit sa mga pagitan na dapat lang paglaruan.

199 · Tim Yusingco

Tim Yusingco

bfa creative writing

Tim Yusingco is a bfa Creative Writing graduate. Along the way, he became a Fellow for Fiction in the 15th Ateneo National Writers Workshop, he won a Loyola Schools Award for the Arts for Fiction, and he spent four wonderful years in heights. The most important lesson he learned was that being a writer means having to actually sit down and write. He finds it amusing, in hindsight, that this took him four years to learn. He learned that words fail more often than he would like, but also that stories have an infinite capacity for hope. He believes this deeply, and is aware of how grossly sentimental that makes him. When he isn't lazy, he tries his best, and when he isn't empty, he loves as hard as he can. This is his only work ever published by heights, and quite possibly his last. But we can hope, can't we?

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The Last of Her Stars mommy had a story for how it all began‚ and she would tell it to her son when he was much younger. Long ago, she lived in the sky‚ and shone her silver light down upon the world. Then‚ she fell in love with the sun. They had many wonderful children together‚ and those children were the stars. Her lover wanted to hold their children‚ but so intense was his fire that when he did‚ they would burn down to nothing. She couldn’t let that happen. And so she took her children and ran across the sky‚ night after night. And night after night‚ she grew more and more weary. And one night‚ she grew so weary that she could run no longer‚ and she fell. She came down to the earth in fire and landed in a condominium. Mommy would say that this would be the first of many moonless nights‚ and she would not spent it alone. When she fell‚ she was carrying a child. And when she landed there‚ she gave birth to her son. The last of her stars. Mommy would say she remembered how it felt to lay there‚ bleeding, and holding her youngest child. She knew that she was too weak to carry her son‚ and too weak to run. The sun was about to rise‚ and the story could have ended that way‚ Mommy would say‚ but she could not let her son die. So she hid in the darkest corner she could find‚ and when the sun had left‚ she stood back up. She found an empty unit for them to stay‚ and she painted over all the windows‚ and put thick curtains over them‚ to keep the sun from entering. If they were going to live‚ they would have to live in the dark. And so they lived. And her son grew. And her hair turned silver-white. And all the while, they were waiting. Waiting for the sun to tire of searching for them across the heavens‚ for his light to dim and finally‚ go out. Someday. This story was not yet over.

201 · Tim Yusingco

* The first night of the storm began with the soft patter of the rain on the windows. When he heard it‚ he already knew what he had to do. He headed for the kitchen‚ maneuvering around the hunks of rubble too big to push aside. He opened the cabinet just above the rusted sink‚ and took the small bowls first‚ snatching the cockroach he found in the topmost bowl and stuffing it in his mouth. He moved briskly across the condominium unit‚ chewing on the cockroach and laying down the bowls below the many cracks in the ceiling. When the rain stopped‚ he would throw the water, often turned greyishbrown‚ out the balcony. The rain stopped pattering and began to pour. Right then‚ he could hear his mother begin to wail. It rung in his ears‚ and he clenched his fists. His heartbeat quickened and his breath was caught in his throat. It had been this way for years, and despite it all‚ he knew what he had to do. He forced himself to move towards the kitchen‚ and he brought out the large pails. He was to place them in the balcony‚ so they would have something clean to drink. It was Mommy that stood in his way. Her feet were planted square‚ and she faced the balcony as the howling wind blew in. She was shouting at the storm‚ answering the rain and thunder with screams and threats. It had been this way for years. Every time a storm rolled past‚ Mommy had only one demand of it. “Show me the stars!” she screamed. The storm rumbled in response, but the clouds refused to part. Mommy kept screaming at the clouds, and her son stood, gripping the pails. They needed the water, but he could not risk her noticing him when she was like that. All he could do was make no sound and wait. Soon she would lose her voice and move to the couch to weep. She would not notice him then. All he had to do was wait. And then something burst through the clouds. It was a thing of brightest white‚ so bright they could see it from afar‚ and it grew brighter as it fell‚ and before it even landed‚ it flashed so bright all they heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 202

could see was white. And then it was gone‚ leaving a trail of smoke hanging in the air. Mommy fell silent‚ and her son let the pails fall to the floor in a clatter. Both of them remembered the same thing. Mommy began to tremble‚ from her shoulders to her legs. He felt the curving scar on his left arm begin to prickle and sting. Panic pumped through his body and he threw his arms out to catch his mother just as she was beginning to run to the bedroom. The force of the impact was enough to send both of them to the floor. Mommy was already scrambling to her feet while he was still trying to catch his breath. His hand shot out to grab her arm. “It’s lightning!” She paused then, on her knees. Her eyes were still on the bedroom door‚ but she stayed still. “It’s only lightning‚ Mommy‚” he gasped. “Only lightning. It’s okay‚ Mommy‚ it’s okay. Please stay.” Outside‚ the storm rumbled and the rain continued to pour. Despite the cool air‚ he could feel himself start to sweat. His heart was in his throat and he could count his heartbeats. Slowly‚ she took her eyes off the bedroom door‚ and looked at the floor‚ mumbling things her son could not hear. Then‚ abruptly‚ she stood‚ and walked back towards the balcony. She laid herself down on the floor‚ facing the open balcony window and the purple-grey sky. And when the rise and fall of her shoulders turned steady‚ and she began to softly snore‚ her son breathed a sigh of relief. He ran his right hand over his curved scar until the worst of the prickling stopped‚ taking deep breaths all the while to steady the beat of his heart. Then, when he was ready‚ he picked up the pails and placed them outside. A cool breeze blew in then, and brought the rain past the balcony. The rain settled on Mommy and she began to shiver. He stepped into her view and she did not seem to notice. Her eyes were fixed on something neither of them could see. He looked outside. The rain poured in grey sheets from the dull sky. There was a momentary and silent flash of lightning, real lightning. Still, Mommy did not stir. In that moment‚ his hand gripping her arm‚ lightning was the only thing he could think of. And it was good that he did. He knew what she would attempt if she knew what that light truly was. And for all her son’s hardships‚ he did not want that to happen. 203 · Tim Yusingco

An echo of faraway thunder passed‚ and she did not stir. Still‚ he made sure to keep his breathing quiet and steady. He did not want to break the silence. She was smaller in silence. He watched her shoulders shift with each labored breath. She coughed‚ once. He walked into the bedroom. On her bed‚ undisturbed for years‚ was a pillow‚ a blanket‚ and a bright white robe. The robe was a part of Mommy’s story. When she first showed it to him‚ under candlelight‚ it shimmered. He had gasped then‚ and giggled in delight‚ and she told him that she used it to fly. With it‚ she flew through the heavens‚ with all her children‚ away from the burning sun. And then she would look away‚ and sigh‚ and tell him that that was a long time ago. He took the robe and hid it under his pillow‚ for safekeeping. Then‚ he took the pillow and the blanket off her bed‚ and headed back to her. He stepped towards her‚ slowly. He put the blanket over her still-curled body‚ and gently raised her head and placed it on the pillow. She did not resist‚ nor react. He didn’t know if it made a difference. But the wind died down‚ and the rain shrunk back to the balcony. He would have to wake before dawn‚ to bring in the pails, and close the door‚ and draw the curtains. He headed back to the bedroom. He climbed into bed and hoped he could wake before sunrise. Mommy used to tell him stories before he slept. He used to imagine them playing out in the ceiling above him‚ his mother’s voice a gentle enchantment that filled his imagination with the wars and romances of the old gods‚ the misadventures of wily tricksters Pilandok and Juan Pusong‚ the monstrous appetites of the aswang‚ and the shining serpent that lies imprisoned‚ deep in the black of the sky. When he was younger, he loved all of his mother’s stories. But Mommy’s favorite story was the story of someday. She would take him out early in the night and walk with him down the long flights of stairs to the very bottom of the building that was their home. She would lift him in her arms as they walked down the street‚ and she would point at all the empty buildings. And she would tell him‚ someday‚ when she was strong enough‚ when the sun has burned out‚ she would put on her shimmering white robe and fly back into the sky. She would call all her children to her. She would bring them heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 204

all here. And these buildings would be their home. And at night she would walk along the street and see every window lit with starlight and she would know all her children are safe, and they would never have to fear the sun again. It was a good story. When he first heard that story‚ he dreamt of it once he has drifted off to sleep. He was walking by his mother’s side. He would look up at the windows‚ glowing a soft yellow, and wave. And all his brothers and sisters came tumbling out. They surrounded him‚ giggling‚ asking him what his name was‚ what color he liked best‚ and why he didn’t shine. He paused at the last question‚ but they did not stop asking him. Why didn’t he shine? They laughed and laughed until he pulled himself out of sleep. When he opened his eyes again‚ the storm had quieted‚ and he could see the barest hint of light through the curtained bedroom windows. He had woken up too late. He stumbled outside‚ half asleep‚ to find his mother still there‚ unmoved‚ unable to even crawl towards the couch. The pre-dawn light had already begun to pour in‚ and she was in the light. Her pale skin almost shone‚ but nothing else. The sun did not seem to notice. He did not send fire to burn her down to nothing. She just lay there‚ small and pale‚ and he wondered why this surprised him at all. He looked at himself‚ still in the dark. He was much darker than his mother‚ and for this‚ she had a story too. She said it was because he was born in the dark. Stars needed light to know how to shine‚ but he was born in the dark. But she always told him that she loved him just the same. She always ended the story this way‚ and he believed every word. The light grew stronger with each moment‚ and he had not yet retrieved the pails. They stood‚ three-quarters full‚ on the balcony‚ in the pale half-light of the dawn. He stood, then, at the edge of the light, and slowly‚ put his hand in. The light was so faint‚ it barely made a difference‚ and he turned his hand around just to see how it looked in the light. He wondered why he was so worried. He already knew his mother’s stories weren’t real. Then a pale white hand shot out and gripped his arm. His mother had awoken.

205 · Tim Yusingco

He tried to say something but the words were caught in his throat. He could see the manic fear, the anger‚ twitch its way up his mother’s face‚ watched her features twist into an open-mouthed scowl. All at once‚ he clamped his hands over his ears and yelped‚“The clouds!” A moment passed, and her face softened. He lowered his arms and continued‚ “The clouds cover the sun. The light is too soft to hurt us now. He won’t find us.” She looked at him then‚ her viselike grip unmoving. He looked into her eyes. The largest scar on her forehead held a chunk of grey rock that jutted out like a horn. Another trailed down across her eyebrow. Her left eye was the color of milk and her right was a light brown. It had always been this way, but now the mismatch stirred a familiar fear within him. Still‚ he looked. He learned in a most painful manner that his mother saw things differently. And still‚ he looked. He tried to make her understand. The light would not hurt them. Slowly‚ very slowly‚ she let go of him. Her fingers still showed yellow on his skin. She said nothing‚ only moved to slump into the couch. She sat, hunched over‚ once again looking at the floor. With nothing else to do‚ he went back into the bedroom. It seemed as if the world had calmed‚ gone quiet. And in that silence‚ he could hear his own heartbeat. He breathed slowly‚ in and out. But his heart would not slow. His eyes stung. He realized that‚ somehow‚ though the day had barely begun‚ he was already exhausted. He did not know how long he could convince his mother not to hurt anyone. He knew that bright white falling thing from the night before was not lightning. He had seen it‚ years before. One night‚ he woke up to the sound of Mommy screaming. He ran outside to find her on her knees before the open balcony. And before he could run to her‚ ask her what was wrong, the night sky turned a bright white. And Mommy screamed again‚ and pointed out to the balcony. He looked to find something flaming white‚ falling in the distance. He heard its faint rumbling as it fell across the sky in the moment before Mommy began to scream again. That time‚ her voice found words.

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“My baby!” she screamed. And she wailed in agony as the white light faded into nothing‚ leaving only its trace of smoke. He was too young to understand then, but he held her anyway. He cried too‚ because it hurt to see his mother cry. It hurt to not know what to do. All he could do, and all he did‚ was hold her‚ even as her sobs faded into silence‚ and the night grew quiet. They slept there‚ together. And after that‚ nothing was ever the same. She stopped telling him stories before he slept. She refused to even come back to bed. She began to sleep on the couch‚ or the floor‚ anywhere‚ as long as she could see out the balcony‚ every night. He would ask her to come back‚ every night. He no longer cared about the stories. He only wanted her to make things normal again‚ to sleep next to him‚ to say something to him‚ to look at anything except what little sky she could see from the balcony. One night‚ Mommy finally showed him why she could not go back. She grabbed him with both hands, and lifted him up in the air. He was still small enough to be lifted‚ that night. She walked to the balcony and swung him onto the railing. Look at the stars‚ she had said. They were his brothers and sisters and she loved them all. But she could not go back to them without leaving him behind. She had to watch one of her children die‚ but she could not even try to save them. “Because of you‚” she had said, and there was venom in that last word like nothing he had ever heard. She told him that she could not miss anything more. She said to him that she would not let it happen again. She had to know that all of them were safe. All of them‚ she said. She had to count them all‚ to know they were still there. She could not lose sight of any of them. She could not lose any more of them to the sun. By then she had lifted her son clear off the railing. He could feel her nails dig into his shoulders‚ even as he writhed and screamed‚ his legs kicking at nothing‚ thirty stories up. After what could have been moments or years‚ she dragged him back in‚ and left him on the ground‚ shivering. She walked off then, while he gasped and reeled on the floor with visions of the faraway ground. When she returned‚ she held a knife. 207 · Tim Yusingco

This was Mommy’s most painful story‚ and it is the one her son wishes he could forget. When the sun caught one of the stars‚ Mommy told him‚ his arm in her grip‚ he would not always burn them down to nothing. Sometimes‚ he would play with them first. He would tear them into pieces and throw them to the ground. When Mommy told this story‚ she ended with a demonstration. His arm still in her iron grip‚ unfazed by his screams‚ she brought the knife‚ almost gently, to his skin. He could not tell then‚ or even afterwards‚ how long it had taken. It was long enough for him to become deaf to his own screams. It was long enough for Mommy to cut what became his crescent-shaped scar. It only ended when he thought to apologize. She stared at him then, with her mismatched eyes, and saying nothing more‚ dropped the knife and walked back to the balcony. When she let go of his arm‚ he fell to the ground. He had soiled himself by then‚ and he laid there clutching his bleeding arm‚ and whatever sounds he made‚ his mother did not listen. All he could think of was that he did not know what he did wrong. He did not know what he had done to deserve this. That day‚ he learned the importance of knowing what Mommy wanted to hear‚ and saying it before she decided to get the knife. Afterwards‚ he no longer asked her to come back to bed. He found that she did not mind him if he did not mind her. He took on the tasks of finding food and water‚ for it seemed then that all Mommy could do was count her stars. It only became difficult when it rained‚ and the clouds covered the sky‚ and Mommy had nothing to count‚ so she could only scream. He realized that he had forgotten to bring the pails inside. He stood up‚ and then hesitated. She was still awake. His scar prickled at the thought. But he needed to bring them in before something else fell into the water. His heart began to quicken, but he moved anyway. The sun was already setting, though its light remained pale and strained. He walked to the balcony and brought the pails to the kitchen‚ one by one. Mommy sat on the couch‚ her eyes still set on the floor. Then‚ as he brought the last pail in, she spoke. “Thirsty.” He paused‚ looking at her. She did not look back at him. Still‚ he heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 208

lifted the pail and brought it to her side. Only then did her gaze shift to the water‚ and she pooled water in her cupped hands and gulped it down. He stood over her‚ waiting until she stopped. “You’ve been taking care of me‚” she said suddenly. He paused. He did not know what to say. “Yes‚” he said. “Yes‚ I have.” He moved to lift the pail again‚ and she reached out to grasp his arm. He gasped. The pail thumped back down on the floor. The water inside sloshed about. Her gaze had drifted to his arm‚ and she pulled it towards her, gently. She ran her fingers across his crescent scar. She traced the path it took along his skin‚ and by the time she reached its end‚ she had arrived at something. She looked up at him‚ tears in her mismatched eyes. “I did this.” She began to softly weep. His scar prickled‚ and his hands began to shake. He stood up and walked to the bedroom. He sat down on his bed‚ once more trying to massage away the prickling of his scar. His eyes began to sting‚ and he hated himself for it. It seemed that‚ even after everything‚ it still hurt to see his mother cry. “Why?” asked his mother‚ standing in the doorway. “Why would you stay with me? Why would you take care of me?” The tears fell freely from his eyes now‚ and though it pained him to know the truth‚ the answer had been the same from the moment he was born. “Because you’re my mommy‚” he finally said. “I love you.” “Oh‚ pangga‚” she said‚ “Oh‚ my star.” And she sat down beside him‚ and wrapped her arms around him. In that moment‚ it was as if a great weight had been lifted off both of their shoulders. He was tired‚ all of a sudden‚ and moved to lie down. And his mother followed suit. And just before he drifted off to sleep‚ he pulled out his mother’s shimmering white robe, and lay it over the both of them like a blanket‚ like his mother did‚ on the night he was born. For the first time in years‚ mother and son slept peacefully. They were woken by an immense sound. The windows caved in‚ and the wind blew through the bedroom. Jolted awake‚ Mommy dashed out towards the balcony‚ her son stumbling behind her. This time‚ the trail of smoke traced into the night sky was unmistakable. 209 · Tim Yusingco

And even if it were‚ as they watched‚ another bright light descended from the clouds. Mommy ran back to the bedroom before her son could even react. In the moment she was gone‚ he wondered why the stars would not allow him peace. The bedroom door burst open‚ and Mommy ran straight for the balcony‚ in her white robe. Her son threw himself‚ arms first‚ in her direction. He grabbed a fistful of her robe‚ and she stopped in her trackes‚ leashed to the balcony by her son’s grip on her robe. She turned to face him. “I’ll come back for you!” she shouted‚ tugging at her robe. “I’ll come back‚ I promise‚ pangga‚ please‚ please let me go!” “No!” he shouted‚ struggling to keep his grip strong. “Please!” His arms‚ his whole body strained against hers‚ until finally he shouted‚“It’s not real!” She stopped‚ then‚ and her expression fell away‚ leaving only confusion. “What?” “The robe won’t let you fly‚ Mommy. The sun doesn’t hurt us. The stars aren’t my siblings. None of the stories are real!” Her voice was barely a whisper above the roar of the rain. “No.” “Please‚ Mommy‚ I don’t want you to get hurt. Please. Can we go back to the bedroom?” And then there was a moment where‚ perhaps‚ Mommy might have considered. But the white light flashed its brightest‚ and she screamed. She lunged towards the edge of the balcony‚ but her son kept his iron grip‚ and when the light had faded to nothing‚ they found the robe torn in two. Mommy screamed then‚ in rage and grief. Her son could only fall to his knees‚ his will spent. He did not resist when she lifted him off the floor. He barely noticed the pain on her face as she threw him into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. He was on the floor‚ then. And he thought to himself‚ at least this time she didn’t use the knife. Thunder rumbled and the wind howled through the broken windows. He looked at the darkness of the heights Seniors Folio 2019 · 210

ceiling, and he decided to make a wish. He knew now that nothing would come of wishing things would go back to normal. And so‚ instead‚ he wished‚ deeply and truly‚ with all of his heart‚ that he could believe Mommy’s stories again. And then everything turned to white. When his senses came back to him‚ he saw that the ceiling was gone. He could see the stormy sky‚ he could taste the rain. He heard nothing but a monotonous ringing‚ and when he looked down on himself‚ he saw that his legs were crushed underneath hunks of rubble. And there, only a few steps away, was a crater. A star had fallen. A blackened husk was all that was left of it. It hissed‚ sizzling with heat, and it sounded like a whisper. Before darkness overcame him‚ he asked for his mother. When he came to his senses again‚ his mother was trying to lay him on the couch. He looked down on himself again and dully registered that his legs were still attached‚ albeit at odd angles. Mommy was weeping‚ and her mouth was moving in the shape of words‚ but the ringing had yet to stop. She said something that might have been an apology‚ and he watched tears fall from her mismatched eyes. Even then‚ after everything‚ he hated to see her cry. He found‚ in that moment, that he was incredibly tired. But he had a story to tell his mother‚ and he would tell it before he drifted off to sleep. He beckoned her closer. “I saw a star‚ Mommy‚” he said. “He fell into the room. He was looking for you‚ Mommy. He wanted to tell you something before he died‚ and he told me‚ so I could tell you. They forgive you‚ Mommy. All of them. He forgives you. I forgive you. Mommy‚ do you think you can forgive yourself?” He let his head recline then‚ and he set his eyes to the ceiling above him. His vision began to blur‚ and his eyes closed. His mother was silent. When he woke up‚ his mother was nowhere to be found. The balcony was open, and the storm had passed. The sky was the light blue of the time before dawn. He found himself wrapped in what was left of his mother’s blanket. He did not know where Mommy went. 211 · Tim Yusingco

He pulled himself off the couch. Ignoring the pain‚ he dragged his body to the balcony and saw that the sky was clear. The view from the balcony had changed. The buildings below were smoking‚ and some had crumbled entirely. But this seemed to matter little to the sky‚ which grew lighter with every moment passed. The storm was gone‚ and the light before the dawn gave the city colors like the night never could. The sun was about to rise. Soon‚ he would see everything in a new light. He sat there‚ on the balcony‚ and waited. He decided then that this is how his story would begin. It was going to be a beautiful day.

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Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts 2019 Creative Writing: Fiction Sophia Alicia S. Bonoan, bfa creative writing Lukas Miguel A. Santiago, bfa creative writing Timothy Eric Vincent J. Yusingco, bfa creative writing Creative Writing: Nonfiction Karl Lorenzo S. Estuart, ab philosophy Gabrielle Frances R. Leung, bs physics Camille G. Ong, bfa creative writing Creative Writing: Poetry

Carissa Natalia D. Baconguis, bfa creative writing Gabrielle Frances R. Leung, bs physics Dance: Choreography and Performance

Maria Josefina M. Concio, ab humanities Ethan Dominic C. Lim, bs management Music: Arrangement

Kaela Aleeah D. Leyretana, bs psychology Jose Gabrielle A. Teotico, ab interdisciplinary studies Music: Composition

Michael Arjay E. Heraldo, psychology Music: Performance Pia Regina T. Casing, ab management engineering Maia Agnes R. Dapul, ab communication Selena Marie S. So, ab management engineering

Theater Arts: Performance

Chrisse Joy N. Delos Santos, bfa theater arts Visual Arts: Mixed Media Celline Marge Z. Mercado, bfa information design and bfa art management Visual Arts: Illustration Danielle A. Arceno, bfa information design Sophia Lorraine G. Demanawa, bfa information design Gianne Delphine P. Encarnacion, bfa information design Ninna D. Lebrilla, bfa information design Angela Pauline G. Tiausas, bfa information design Ariane T. Lee, bfa information design Visual Arts: Photography Marianne Louise B. Antonio, bs life sciences Genesis R. Gamilong, bs legal management Zachary Brian G. Garcia, bs management Visual Arts: Graphic Design Victor Leocadio N. Datu, bfa information design Diana F. David, bfa information design Martina Reina L. De Vera, bfa information design Patricia Rose S. Sangalang, bfa information design Dyan Louise N. Villegas, bfa information design Ariane T. Lee, bfa information design

The members of the Awards for the Arts Committee:

Alexis Augusto L. Abola Christine S. Bellen, Ph.D. Mark Joseph T. Calano, Ph.D. Gianne Erika A. Cruz Allan Alberto N. Derain Alberto L. Dimarucut Joi Marie Angelica M. Indias Skilty C. Labastilla Miguel Antonio A.V. Luarca Melissa Vera M. Maramara Maria Gabriela P. Martin Glenn S. Mas Ma. Inez Angela Z. Ponce De Leon, Ph.D. Allan J. Pastrana Allan C. Popa Jerry C. Respeto, Ph.D. Jose Angelo D. Supangco Martin V. Villanueva Analyn L. Yap Alvin B. Yapan, Ph.D.

Acknowledgements Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin, sj and the Office of the President Dr. Maria Luz C. Vilches and the Office of the Vice President for the Loyola Schools Dr. Roberto Conrado Guevara and the Office of the Associate Dean for Student Affairs Dr. Josefina D. HofileĂąa and the Office of the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Dr. Jonathan Chua and the Office of the Dean, School of Humanities Dr. Isabel Pefianco Martin and the English Department Mr. Martin V. Villanueva and the Department of Fine Arts Dr. J. Pilapil Jacobo and the Kagawaran ng Filipino Mr. Allan Popa and the Ateneo Institute of the Literary Arts and Practices (ailap) Mr. Ralph Jacinto A. Quiblat and the Office of Student Activities Ms. Marie Joy R. Salita and the Office of Associate Dean for the Student and Administrative Services Ms. Liberty Santos and the Central Accounting Office Mr. Regidor Macaraig and the Purchasing Office Dr. Vernon R. Totanes and the Rizal Library Ms. Carina C. Samaniego and the University Archives Ms. Ma. Victoria T. Herrera and the Ateneo Art Gallery The mvp Maintenance and the Security Personnel Dr. Vincenz Serrano and the Kritika Kultura Ms. Geming Andrea A. Alonzo, Executive Director of sos clans and Mr. Allan de Vera, President of Tunay na Alyansa ng Bayan Alay sa Katutubo (tabak Phils) Ms. Michelle Abad and The GUIDON Ms. Jessica Gayo and the Matanglawin Ang Sanggunian ng Mag-aaral ng Ateneo de Manila, and the Council of Organizations of the Ateneo And to those who have been keeping art and literature alive in the community by continuously submitting their works and supporting the endeavors of heights

Editorial Board Editor - in - Chief Martina M. Herras [ab lit (eng) 2020] Associate Editor Catherine Lianza A. Aquino [ab lit (eng), bfa cw 2021] Managing Editor for External Affairs Jamie Anne B. Gutierrez [ab is 2019] for Internal Affairs Sandra Nicole V. Añonuevo [ab dip ir 2019] for Finance Ryan Gabriel C. Molen [bs lfsci 2019] Art Editor Fernando Miguel U. Lofranco [ab ec 2020] Associate Art Editor Aisha Dominique Q. Causing [ab com, bfa am 2020] Design Editor Diana F. David [bfa id 2019] Associate Design Editor Justine Gabriella A. Daquioag [bfa id 2020] English Editor Nigel Renzo C. Yu [bs cs dgdd 2021] Associate English Editor Patricia Sarmiento [ab lit (eng) 2020] Filipino Editor Dorothy Claire G. Parungao [bs ch-mse 2020] Associate Filipino Editor Carissa Natalia DT. Baconguis [bfa cw 2019] Production Manager Charles Bernard J. Yuchioco [ab lit (eng) 2021] Associate Production Manager Brianna Louise M. Cayetano [ab com 2021] Heights Online Editor Tamia Gloria F. Reodica [ab com 2021] Associate Heights Online Editor Zoe Arianna T. Andin [ab is 2021]

Head Moderator and Moderator for English Martin V. Villanueva Moderator for Art Yael A. Buencamino Moderator for Filipino Allan Popa Moderator for Design Tanya Lea Francesca M. Mallillin Moderator for Production Enrique Jaime S. Soriano Moderator for Heights Online Regine Miren D. Cabato

Staff Art

Zofia Lyne R. Agama, Jude Buendia, Enrico Cruz, Antonio Rafael Florida, Genesis Gamilong, Pilar Gonzalez, Celline Marge Mercado, Aquirine Ong, Jayvee del Rosario, Caitlin Ann Sioson, Yuri Ysabel Tan, Clare Bianca Tantoco, Julienne Uy, Justine Valdez, Katherine Sophia Wong, Dexter L. Yu, Charles Bernard Yuchioco

Design

JJ Agcaoili, Eli Alconis, Liaa Austria, Kat Batara, Jana Codera, Valerie Cobankiat, Enrico Cruz, Casey del Rosario, Pilar Gonzalez, Ninna Lebrilla, Arien M. Lim, Giulia Lopez, Juancho Luna, Anya Nellas, Gabby Segovia, Moira Swann, Tash Parayno

English

Nathan Myles U. Lim, Ariana Gabrielle S. Domingo, Gabrielle Leung, Sophia Bonoan, Elissa Joy C. Ofilada, Ma. Arianne Aleta, Ana Martina R. Nevada, Aleiana Zelin T. Duque, Justine Psyche B.Villanueva, Andy Reysio-Cruz, Tim Yusingco, Mikaela C. Regis, Trishia Fernandez, Mika Alexei G. Tan, Madeleine Sy,Karl Estuart, Michaela Gonzales Tiglao, Miguel Santiago, Lia Pauline P. Paderon, Sofia Ysabel I. Bernedo, Trisha Anne K. Reyes, Danielle Michelle Cabahug, Ignacio Lorenzo C. Villareal

Filipino Paulo Alviar, Winslet Anne Bartolome, Ignacio Bunag, Reesha Marion, Cata-al, Alyssa Gewell Llorin, Cymon Kayle Lubangco, Jose Alfonso Ignacio Mirabueno, Jelmer Jon Ochoa, Mikaela Adrianne Regis, Nina Lyan Romero, Aubreylaine Salazar, Maria Isabel Santiago, Loreben Tuquero, Josemaria Villareal Production

Hanna Mabel Ypil, Alicia Pavia, Seph Tamayo, Sam Arnaldo, Robert Kwan Laurel, Hanna Alyne Ypil, Daniel Manguerra, Luigi Reyes, Alexis Ferreras, Julia Abella, Jacinta Maria Jocson, Pauline Baterna, Shelby O. Parlade, Ma. Camille Alessandra J. De Luna, Louise Dimalanta, Giane Ysabell Butalid, Justin Barbara, Zianne Agustin, Anicia Guanlao, Cesar Miguel V. Fabro, Louis Anton Dominic M. Molina, Sofia Andrea K. Guanzon, Rich Labao, Justine Psyche Villanueva

Heights Online

Ticia Almazan, Marianne Antonio, Angela Arguelles, Billy Caluag, Julia Carpio, Andrea Gerada, Micah Avry Guiao, Luisa C. Jocson, Hazel Lam, Ice Macatangay, Maiko Aira Ng, Kayla Ocampo, Aga Olympia, Aletha Payawal, Carla Reyes, Arnold Manuel Rillorta, Ryo Rodas, Ada Tabanao, Miguel Tarrosa, Sam Wong