WAIT IT OUT
by Juan Carlos Felipe G. Montenegro
I
t is August 2021. Rain has become more frequent. And you have been unemployed for 16 months. None of the job openings you find agree with you. None of them are what you were looking for. That is, when you were looking. What is it going to be this time? Last time it was because you were still scared of crowded places. No, this time it is the torrential rains that interfere with your network. The same rains that have made commutes even more impossible. Despite this, you wonder how rain can feel like refuge despite being a calamity—how it can turn baptism into slaughter— turning droughted streets into a basin of mistakes. The last time God had sent forth that kind of rain it was to make a clean slate, but how come it happens seasonally for us? You are luckier than most. A roof on your head and a steady provision of food means you can focus on inflating your other worries. Everyone is leaving, and you have nothing to say. The rain can speak more honesty than you can muster, spilling itself another half-dozen confessions of its own regret, unapologetic for its intrusion, leaking wood-stained tears into your walls. But you accept and give refuge for it all the same. I want to be good for you. But what you mean by that is you can’t bear the silence, the brief exchange of hellos and nothing afterwards. Even in that exchange, there’s still latency. Artificial, too. You hate that you’re becoming accustomed to it, and when the time comes HINTAYAN
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