Puso koy huwag masyadong pahirapan
Baka bukas ay hindi na ito makalaban.
Kung nagkasala may ako nay patawarin,
Mga alaala huwag sana tulayang limutin.

Sitting on the passenger's seat
While the radio is playing my fave song.
Street light reflects on his glass skin,
Our drive will not be that long.

I tried staring at him for a long time,
But he stares at me back.
I could not help but to giggle,
Making my heart flutter is his knack.

We stop somewhere near the shore,
I could hear the sound of the waves.
I walk in a distance to feel the cold breeze
Then he finally give me what I crave.

Fave song still playing back in my head
He grab my waist, preparing me to dance.
Under this moonlight and playful night sky,
Every stars knew this is my only chance.

Unom ka itom nga tuldok,
Nipilit sa lain laing parte sa akong lawas.
Dala ni ini atung mga kalipay,
Og mga kaguol para ingnung patas.

Ikaw ang itom nga tuldok,
Nga nagunitan sa akong kamot.
Usahay mubuhi kay nabatyag
Nimo akong dala nga kaalimoot.

Ikaw ang itom nga tuldok,
Nga uban permi sa akong kumagko.
Nagpamatood nga bisan asa ko maabot,
Ikaw ra gyud ako kuyug.

Ikaw ang itom nga tuldok,
Nga anaa dapit sa akong ilong.
Agi anan sa akong mga luha,
Ug magkaboang atung relasyon.

Ikaw ang itom nga tuldok,
Nga nagdumili mu biya.
Apan plinastik manang imoha,
Di ka kahibaw ug kanus-a ka mupahawa.

Ikaw ang itom nga tuldok,
Naglaroy laroy sa akong utok.
Manaog ka usahay sa liog,
Para ako matuok.

Ikaw ra gyud unta ang itom nga tuldok,
Nga grabeg pilit sa akong dughan.
Apan karon, gamay nalang nga tulod,
Para ikaw akong buhian.

Hushed noise,
flowing river.
Hushed lust,
flowing love.

Frozen thoughts,
watered emotions.
Frozen truths,
watered lies.

Dusted iron,
sinking vessel.
Dusted keys,
sinking heart.

Maybe that is the saddest part of your story

He just waited for you to leave, to give up, to lose hope.

But you didn't. You will not.

But he already thought you finally did.

Thought you found home when you finally anchored your heart to his, but you only found wilderness inside an empty forest lost long time ago.

I met a man while I am moving on from my past. He was moving on also from his own little heartbreak. Whenever I am with him, I taught myself to never love a man's soul while his heart is aching for someone else's. But he taught me the other way, obliviously.

The ricochet comes. He can't love me back when he wants to. He can't take risks the way I do. He can't choose me when the universe give us the chance.

The ricochet hits me and I am supposed to be dead. But no, I was hit but was never putted into death. I was only shattered into pieces.

My little hopes and biggest fears will chase me to dreams and I have no escape. Nightmares will come every sleep and anxiety will attack me every waking up.

I will stare blankly in a dead air that used to give life to my existence before.

I am shredding tears for no certain reason and my heart is pulled down into the bottom of the sea.

I am loss. I am not found. If hope doesn't exist, then there is no chance I will be found deep down here.

I never had a heart, but when I found this empty long lost forest, when I took the risk when he can't, when I love him despite all his insecurities and incertitude, when I choose him when the universe gave me dozens of choices, I don't have a choice but to have one. For him and only for him.

Boy, I only have one heart but it is still hitched to yours and I don't have any plans to unhitch it.

The long wait is over. The big fish is finally in my hands. It is not really something worth for a cry but it isn't also something worth for laughter. It is something that brings peace in my mind, a moment of solitude. That big fish is an acceptance - a reality. The only reality that makes my heart heavy but at the same time, halfhearted.

How can be something brought you silently in pathos and in equal time, brutally in felicity?

I dared to dream about hoping for more. I dared to dream for a bigger picture of us. I dared to dream of having you beside me. I dared to dream for everything for us. But I did not dare to dream for a reality, all I dream was an exaggeration of my own fantasy.

Now, I don't want to know the price I'm gonna pay for dreaming that way, cause this reality and pain is enough. Or maybe for now it isn't, but I hope it is.

I hope you wouldn't feel the same way like I do.

I hope no one will leave you in the mid air while you are falling endlessly on the little things she did for you. I hope you will not doubt all the signals she sent to you. I hope you will not sleep at night overthinking the what ifs that could possibly happen. I hope your dreams will be pure dreams and that fear of losing her in reality won't come hunting you there. I hope you will not take risk if she doesn't have any plans to be in danger, because most likely, you will end up being alone in that danger. I hope her past won't make you feel any envious because you can give her love and all the past just gave her a different bunches of anger and madness and bitterness. Remember, you can give her love more than any other man could.

And while the butterflies in your stomach make creepy sounds while she stares at you, I hope you will not remember my eyes the first time you fell in love with me.

And while you heart flutters  because you make her laugh at the jokes you used to tell me, I hope you will not remember the smile I plastered on my face and how my dimpled cheeks becomes more rounded when you did all the little things to make me fall in love with you.

I hope she will choose you over and over again--the thing that you never did to me.

But if she won't, I hope you wouldn't feel the same way like I do.

My mind wanders,
Still, he is in it.
My heart race faster,
His name is shouted
Beat by beat

And just like any other nights
I am missing him, still.
When morning comes,
He is the kind of hope
I wanna steal.

Between what you want and what you need, you always choose to leave me behind.

Nothing's more creepier than a dream becoming real each passing day.

Three am and I woke up gasping for air to breathe while tears streaming down in my chubby cheeks. For the first time, I don't know what is real and what is fake, and what is wrongly perceived by my senses.

As I struggled to convince myself the idea of it that it did not happened, the more I was compelled to believe that it really did. The way I cried in the dream is the way I wailed tonight. Every plot of the dream turns to be more authentic than it ever did. The vivid details of my dream are coming like a kaleidoscope of horror movies I've watched as I continue to growl in agony.

And there is nothing I can do, but to continue watching myself.

Three am and I woke up gasping for air to breathe while tears streaming down in my chubby cheeks. For the first time, I don't know what is real and what is fake, and what is wrongly perceived by my senses.

Reality felt like a little less real.

From then on, I'm becoming less much in reality and I'm becoming more in my dreams. Everything I see around in this world looks faker and faker each breathe that I take.

He once kissed me on my forehead,
A kiss that I know won't last.
He once held my waist when he tightly hugged me,
The best feeling yet he loosened me so fast.

Unmutual feelings filled the empty room,
He was staring right into my brown eyes.
T'was a birth of chance yet also a doom,
My heart is in agony and it cries.

I should have never hope for more,
But it was everything I asked before.
Yet, I hold on and I am sorry if I did,
Even though I know it was the kind of love
That the moon will never forbid.

Her brown eyes and long lashes makes the scene perfect as she blankly stare the air, it's as if she's staring the eyes of her lover.

But her lover wasn't there. She is just staring a blank dead air. She then throw her gaze at me and a tear had fallen.

I sit in front of her.

"How are you?", I asked. Her mouth is shut so she prefers to answer me with another tear.

She must be really terribly broken. Being brokenhearted is not new to her. She already had bad experiences in love but, this pretty worst.

I noticed her new haircut and new hair color. I noticed how she carelessly put her blush on and lipstick. I noticed the thick books she brought with her, desperate in putting herself in the world of thoughts of the authors. I noticed how she terribly dressed herself. I noticed her cheekbones and her swollen eyes.

She looks so terrible but a new one-a new version of herself. But her silence and her mourning brown eyes say it all-that she is not new, just a terrible version of herself.

Maybe she had come to think that if she doesn't look like the girl who fall in love with him, maybe she wouldn't feel the same way like that girl.

But she's wrong. Her state right now is a realization that she can't change her heart nor can fool it. She can't easily erase her feelings for him nor can forget it. So she will still end up-the girl who hopelessly fall in love with her lover.

I can never escaped a hundred of bullets of pain, a 175000 lbs-rocket ship of tears, a 3-tank of long nights and a hydrogen bomb of memories, I said to myself in the mirror.

So I’m gonna let them hit me one at a time and, at all cost, I will savor each ache and bruise. In this way, I will heal.

Because this is the beauty of pain and this is how I define love.

I still care too much for a shadow that had once loved me.

I was never interested, I realized.

I ran, chased every tick of the clock afraid of not getting there on time, smiled at the person I just met, and answered the grammar exam like it was my quiz in Mathematics. I was even shaking during the typing exam. I was nervous during interview.

But I was never interested.

It feels weird though. The moment I heard about the company, all I thought was to get a resume and send it there. I never did a background check about the company, nor checking the possible salary I will be getting, and even the nationality of the students never came into my mind not until today.

After the HR congratulated me, I realized I don't want to have job nor the idea of getting this job or not.

And it hit me.

All the days I kept coming back in that building, running, smiling, hoping to give a shot, were all meant to be that way. I made those efforts because I should. But not because I wanted to work there.

It was because of the eagerness of emptying one's mind-- my mind. I was athirst of vacating all the thoughts inside my head, but the only way to null it is to fill it with thoughts I am not interested with.

Hopeless, as you see, unconsciously doing the things I never wanted to do just to forget the whole existence of this misery.

What do I expect? Sadness comes when you think you have almost escaped it. But fleeing is ephemeral. When sadness knocks your brain, you will always let it in, let it **** the hopes inside your head until there is only an ounce left for tomorrow. That is how it always goes.

Naaalala mo ba
Sa twing umuulan
Minsan mo akong pinayungan
At hinatid sa sakayan?

Naaalala mo ba
Sa twing mag aalas singko
Minsan mo rin akong nilibre
At pinakain sa McDo?

Naaalala mo ba
Sa twing pupunta ka sa opisina
Andon ako, nag aantay
Habang tumutugtog ng gitara?

Naaalala mo ba
Ang mga ngiting aking ipinipinta
Sa aking labi sa twing
Ikay nakikita?

Tanong ko lang
Naaalala mo kaya ako?
Dahil ni minsan
Di ka pa kasi umaalis sa isip ko.

"Everyone is leaving the past, and you want me to stay?" I asked.

Standing alone,
strangers stared at me.
Confused of what to buy,
my heart is starting to get heavy.

Keep on walking,
as if something is going on.
But my mind wanders,
it is not in its right rhythm or tone.

Until I felt getting exhausted,
for no apparent reason.
I am not certain,
if I should really buy some crayons.

Twenty minutes later,
I have not chosen  anything.
Thirty minutes later,
I did not see any shadows of you coming.

I ran outside  the mall,
Someone called my nickname.
I stopped for a moment,
but only to feel tame.

Standing alone,
strangers stared at me.
Confused of what to feel,
my eyes burst into tears my baby.

I never had a heart, but you exist, so I don't have a choice but to have one.

It's been months since the last time we saw each other. I'm stuck inside our house, feeling contented of our chats and late night conversations. Some days, we fought over small things, and most of it, we enjoy our company together. At least, that is how I figured it out.

I wish this would last.

I want to laugh and love with you up until the sun will be seen in the east. But then I realized, you are my moon, and as long as you are there---sitting plainly in my own night sky, it is okay not to have the sun for the rest of my life.

There are days when I overthink, if not too much, just enough for me to suffer for an hour or two.

I overthink about the things we could have been if we never said our confusing feelings. I overthink the kind of person you could have been without me.

I am afraid that you will choose to forget me one day. I am afraid you will lose me, you will lose me in the process.

Loving you is not as risky as jumping off a 700-meter cliff, but to love you more each day is.

And every time I think about all the fears inside my head, I wish my mind would leave me.

Every time I think about all the fears inside my head, you will always come out alive, smiling. There is you.

And on this very day, when I open the door, there is really you.

One day, you will find yourself standing alone on the same street you were standing with him few months ago and it will hurt less this time. And you will realize that he wasn't even there with you in the first place.

So then I asked, "why does one's heart beat faster for one but behave normally for the rest?"

Maybe I'm just gonna chase the wind;

The wind that heisted the happiness from us,
The wind that created the storms,
and prompted waves immense in form.

The wind that desolated every laugh,
The wind that once gave life to something not enough.
And the wind that blew our feelings away.
Maybe it could bring us back on that very first day.

When he left, it was never new to you. There was no such thing such as shredding of tears. There was no kaleidoscope of memories. There was no hopes urging you to pull him back. There was no poem written in your notebooks. There was no entry in your diary. There was no wishful thinking while waiting for the wishing stars. There was no such thing like trying to talk to him and discuss what and where did you go wrong, because you knew from the very beginning, everything was wrong.

And then you dated him. You talked about your recent scores in your quizzes while eating ice cream with him. You celebrated your 19th birthday with him, and it was magical, the nicest feeling you never felt for so long. You had long conversations at night with him that you even dared to each other who sleeps first must treat the other. You have shared about the little things that made your day happy. You both have prayed for true love you thought you both once have. You found yourself motivating him through rousing words and so he does the same way to you.You say every single good night every dozing off moments at 2 or 3 am. And while the rest of your family was in dreams, you were there beneath your blankets giggling at his corny jokes while yawning. Your smiles to each other was in utmost real when you bumped each other on the busy hallways at school. When everyone stares at you both because of your weird chemistry, you could not give a **** care at all. You realize you don't want the whole world, just him in it.

And when he left, right after your 19th birthday, it was never new to you. There was no such thing such as shredding of tears. There was no kaleidoscope of memories. There was no hopes urging you to pull him back. There was no poem written in your notebooks. There was no entry in your diary. There was no wishful thinking while waiting for the wishing stars. There was no such thing like trying to talk to him and discuss what and where did you go wrong, because you knew from the very beginning, everything was wrong.

With no throe in your heart, you accepted everything--the way you used to.