Early in the morning
You prepare to face the world
Like the mall
Or school
Or the mall
You face the mirror,
Just a piece of glass
With a dark background
You’ve deified
Ooh! You need eye make-up
You reach for your eyeliner
Max Factor’s finest
And open your eyes
Forcibly
Like some deer caught in the
Stage lights
Now, you begin to line your eyes with a swipe
A million children’s stomachs growling for zilch
Swipe
Mosquito-infested mothers digging for lunch at Payatas
Swipe
Cuts on a little knee from scrap metal
Swipe
Oh look! You’re tearing up
Liquid fake crystal
Forming on the dusty window to your soul
Feel it form in the corner of your eye
Feel it drip like cloud-seed rain
Feel it streak your powdered, masked face
Oh wait! You can’t feel it
You’ve gone numb
But those tears fall and fall
Perfect! Just the way you wanted

You walk into a supermarket
The one with the
Fake
No wait! This sounds better!
Faux
British name
And look at the candy display
For Christmas
With the Styrofoam snow
You see the big
Self-important sign for
Raisinets, which is sold for thirty pesos
And say to yourself,
“Sounds god!
I mean good!”
You get your wallet and pay
Dismissing cheaper alternatives
That are equally tasty
And not reading the back of your Raisinets
To see where it’s manufacturing
Was outsourced
Without blinking
Without questions
Without batting an eyelash
Without thinking it’s unreasonable
Without realizing Raisinets
Is just chocolate-covered raisins
The kind you buy at some
Random movie counter
(A value of fourteen pesos a bag)
Given a classier name