PAPERWEIGHT

Small Fiction Wina Puangco 1

This is a MoarBooks publication. For more information, head over to www.moarmoarmoar.com or tweet us @moarmoarbooks. Each of the artists contributing to Paperweight retain all the rights to their own work. Paperweight (all stories) 2012 Wina Puangco Cover & Illustrations 2012 Trizha Ko Edited by Erika Carreon

All content from this book may not be republished without the consent of the author/illustrator.
Printed at Pro Digital Image Works, Inc. Connecticut Street, San Juan City, Metro Manila

CONTENTS
A Note to Reader
Fuck Geography {6} Speculating the End {8} Cesar {14} Cigarette After Cigarette {17} Fourteen Weeks {19} Catching Up {21} In Retrospect {30} Tracing Maps {32} Invented City {34}

Acknowledgements

A Note to the Reader

This is all (indeed, as the title suggests) fiction. True, it has been set-up from the clay of real life but the thing molded is something entirely different. So, yeahif I know you and you are speculating your contribution and/or fictionalization in this humble compilation, then perhaps I borrowed a smile or something you said but please know that these sentiments are not geared toward anyone of flesh and blood. These characters or personas arent you, anymore than they are me but they are made of us in that you are schemamatter from retrospect and not living, breathing material that I have put into writing. If I werent me, I would probably not have put this tiny caveat up but in my brief experience as a prose staffer for the school folio, Ive learned that a) people like to assume things if you dont confront them and b) you will be forced to apologize for it later, whether or not there is anything to apologize for. So, yesthe fiction in this volume is not for or about you but this little note is.

Fuck Geography
Take the train, you say to me, like it is the simplest thing in the world. Take the train and I will meet you at the station. But I am terrified of train rides. There have been too many hands held, too many bruised limbs, too many bodies pressed against one another. I have grown tired of standing elbow-toelbow with strangers on steel boats. I live my life on buses, tucking tickets into seat covers and crossing my arms over my chest. Where you live walled in by cement, the MRT runs through everythingcoliseums, strip malls, motels. You step outside your gate and there is somewhere to do whatever you want: eat, smoke, fuck. You send me a message, tracing the path from city to suburb and thinking immediately of the concrete river that hums through everything you know. Take the train, you tell me in a text message. I will meet you at the station. The train does not reach here. Where I am, the only word I can find for everything is sprawling. My neighbors garden does not sit, it sprawls. Childrens toys are littered on their lawn and from my bedroom window I can see their son on his inflatable boat, dipping his hand into the water of their swimming pool. There is nowhere nearby to buy anything. The cigarettes I smoke have braved highways and are consumed behind grottos in deserted parks, their butts carried home as secrets slipped into my pockets.

I want to fuck you, you whispered in my ear last time I saw you. A bead of sweat trickled down your temple and last night, alone in bed I wiped it away; I am a child dipping her hand into water. Fuck geography and meet me at the station. I want to carry our smoked secrets home in my pockets. I want to tuck you into me and cross your arms over my chest. I want to fuck your geographythe hidden paths from here to there, your sprawling chest, the distance I have traveled on this train to you.

Speculating The End

I imagine Mrs. Robinson sitting in the sun porch, an electronic cigarette hanging from between two fingers. She sits reclined on the animal-print leather couch, her legs crossed at the ankles. The drapes are drawn and a blanket has been thrown over the mirror behind the bar. In this darkness, the heat is oppressive. The only light in the room comes from the television, which is on mute. An electric blue scarf is tied around her head, the gray of her hair stark against the cobalt fabric. She keeps her eyebrows drawn on with black liner, perpetually arched as if questioning something someone has said. She checks the time on the cellular phone sitting on the end table a gift from her daughter Elaine, now living across the country it is 11 oclock in the morning on a day in September, 2012. Taking a drag from what she has begun to think of as her fauxcigarette, she does the math in her mind. 2012 that would make her 85. She weighs the words in her mind, slowly translating figure into fact: eighty-five, eighty-five. Reaching over to pick up the sweating glass on the end table, she finds it empty and glances up at the bar where two bottles sit: one for bourbon, another for scotch. The two or so meters from her sofa to the counter seem to stretch themselves into a kilometer, so she rings the small bell sitting next to her empty glass. There is rustling in the next room. It takes about five minutes for her nurse aid to appear in the doorway, one of her earphones still plugged in. The girl asks, Yes, Mrs. Robinson? More than anything, Mrs. Robinson wishes people would stop calling her that. She had not been Mrs. Robinson for more than forty years. In her mind, she sees his facethat boy, only twenty then, saying it over and over again as they fumbled for each other in the dark. Mrs. Robinson, he would say while pleasing her.

Yes, do you like that Mrs. Robinson, he would say and keep doing what he was doing regardless of her response. He cried it out as he spilled himself on her stomach, as if reminding both himself and her of who she was and who she was to him. Mrs. Robinson? Realizing that she hadnt said a word to the girl, whose eyebrows were now furrowed in concern, she holds out her glass. Moisture from the surface runs down the cold body and drips onto the carpeted floor. Get me a drink, will you, she tells the girl. She turns her head back to the silent television and half-listens to the girl telling her she has been seduced by alcohol again and it wouldnt do to keep doing this every morning, it just wouldnt. There is the sound of liquid rushing against ice against glass and she hopes that the girl has poured the right drink bourbon, she could hear herself thinking. Not the scotch, the bourbon. She hears her drink land on the granite side table and picks it up almost without thinking. The girl informs her that lunch will be served in thirty minutes. She nods and the girl leaves the room. Mrs. Robinson watches the girl put the plugs back into her ears as she walks awayback to whatever it was people did these days. Mrs. Robinson swirls the ice around in her glass and takes a sip. She can feel the alcohol trickle down her throat and she almost smiles; she hardly notices the scotch. A sliver of what the girl has said lingers in her mind. That was a word she hadnt heard in a whileseduced. Half-smiling, she feels sentiment snaking its way through her memories. She remembers sitting in his bedroom, and making the decision. He looked so lonely like that: sitting in the dark, the

only illumination coming from the aquarium he was staring past. There was something pathetic about how seriously he seemed to take himself; it was almost as if he still truly believed that the rest of his life was a matter of importance. Lighting a cigarette, shed seen her reflection in the tank and understood how he felt. Shed wanted to either kiss him or hit him and had decided then and there that the former would be easier to explain. Hearing her husband drive off in the car, getting off to whoknew-what, shed decided she would have himBenjamin Braddock, she said again in her mind. Take me home.

In 2009, I sat in my car and watched rainwater wash over the windshield. Outside, flood-waves were lapping against the length of my sedan and slowly, murky water was starting to seep in through the tiny crevice between the metal door and its rubber lining. Deciding to try and call you again, I dialed your number without looking. When you didnt pick up, I decided to turn my phone off in the hopes of saving battery for when I needed it. Leaning against the white, sweating leather of the seat, I imagined you hearing about me on the news: a girl drowned in her car, northbound. In my mind, you sit in the kitchen of your 14th-floor apartment, eating cereal out of the box when you hear the report on the small, black and white television sitting on your counter. The newscaster begins the story with the make of the car a maroon Honda Civic, found bent against the skyway railing, dragged up and under by the rain-propelled current. Slowly, the image of my car parked in front of your building crawls across

your mind and you turn the volume up. Not looking at the screen, you turn your attention to the empty bowl you havent used and concentrate on looking for the milk to fill it. While you fumble through the contents of your refrigerator, items are describeda wallet, a pack of cigarettes, a cellphone turned off. You look at your mobile and convince yourself it cant be me. The numerous missed calls on your homescreen prove that; my phone must obviously be turned on. You decide to stay home for the day; you wouldnt want to end up the way that girl haddrowned by the highway with all her things floating around her for everyone to see. For a split-second, you picture my car rippling like a metal accordion and you think of calling me but cannot bear the thought of listening to my voice dripping with resentment and need. Just to be sure and to avoid further guilt, you send me a message tha t says U ok? You make sure to choose the littlest words possible, just in case I am safe at home. At Message Sent, they mention my name. You see the plate number in your minds eye as the woman on TV spells it out. As hard as I tried, I found I couldnt imagine for you an expression of grief or longing because it was something Id never seen. The rain stopped a few hours later and while we still couldnt move, I was relieved that the water had at least stopped rising. I watched a man on a bicycle slither his way past all of our parked carssitting like ice cubes at the bottom of a nearempty glass. It seems to Mrs. Robinson that everyone has gone on without her. Today, I imagine her sitting up, a cold drink in her hand, reading the paper. The color of todays scarf is burgundy, like dried blood.

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The newspaper is turned to the obituaries and there she sees his name in the grimmest of typefaces: Times New Roman in grayscale on newsprint. Her eyes trace the paper tombstone and take in other details: loving husband, caring father, and the numbers that summed up a life 1947-2012. At the age of 65, hed fallen asleep in the bathtub and had never awoken. Her cellular phone sits at her elbow. Its three in the afternoon and the phone still hasnt rung. The obituary she is reading is a day old. Thinking back to her daughters weddingthe first one, where shed been presentshe remembers the eagerness with which shed watched the vows. Relief washed over her as the minister pronounced her daughter and that fellow whose name she couldnt recall man and wife. This would tie her down. This would anchor her to a life. But her daughter was not her. Elaine didnt sit in a big house alone for years, drinking by herself. She didnt watch her husband head off to the club ev ery evening and clamber out of his car and into the house at dawn. She didnt wait for the tiny quakes to create spaces between them first dividing their bed and eventually their home. In her minds eye, Mrs. Robinson can still see Elaine in her wedding dress, making for the doorMrs. Robinson had slapped her and held onto the veil with both her hands but she slipped away anyway. She has since stopped trying to lasso clouds. Mrs. Robinson turns on the television and watches news reports about earthquakes and floods elsewhere in the world. Speculating the end, she takes another swig from her glass of bourbon and waits for the phone to ring.

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Today, I am stranded on the fourteenth floor. Im sitting by the big window in your living room and it overlooks this little catastrophethey say this will be the year. Small cars are beginning to float and I can see children in bright raincoats scampering onto the sidewalks. Some of them wade out to the other end of the street and begin to race each other as the water rises. Our city is drowning againstill sudden, but no longer unexpected. I can hear the non-silence of your slumber in the other room. I keep the TV on mute as I make coffee. Bottles of empty booze sit on top of your refrigeratormy trophies of persuasion. Mrs. Robinson comes to mind again. In the other room, I suppose you are sleeping a heavy, mouth-open, saliva-trickle type sleep. Pressing the grains into the coffeemaker, I pour water in and watch the little crevice flood. I wait.

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Cesar
I. Your name means head of hairhair for a mother to stroke, for a lover to hold, for me to run my fingers through when I am afraid in the middle of the night. There is no hair on your head or on your arms or on your knuckles. You were my favorite stonesmooth, sharp and cold, the bulge and cut of muscle the only thing I had to hold onto with slippery hands. I tried to keep you close, holding you to my chest like a mother would a child but my skin cut on the corner of your shoulder, on the edge of your jaw and my clumsy hands let go. Afraid you would shatter like a ceramic figurine, I reached out and braced myself for the crash with which you would hit the floor. You met the ground with a thud of recognitiona high-five between old friends. They found stones in your kidneys. Little by little, your body was becoming unable to filter wastethe salt from chips, the malt from beer. Your body was failing to cleanse you of your favorite things. II. Your name is not yours, but your maternal grandfathers. When you think of him, you imagine dried bones decaying under a slab of marble. When they laid you out on the table, they said opening you up was the only measure left to take. Human flesh is a marvelous thing, the doctor saidit heals itself. Soon there will be nothing but a scar as thin as a strand of hair. There is no hair on your chest or on the bend of your pelvis or the insides of your thighs.

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You stopped eating. Your breath began to smell like rot and slowly, your body like a rock sank back into the skinny frame of a boy whose mother used to beat him until his body was spotted with violet kisses. After they put you back together I reached for your hand, offering the warmth of a lover and my hands turned blue from the cold. There was blood in your urine. Red bled into the toilet water like a warning: it was just a matter of time. III. We called him doctor even if there were no certificates hanging from the walls in the tiny room. You had your palm open on his desk atop yellowing sheets of paper. I watched him trace the lines and nod, as if he could see inside you. I wanted to ask what your heart looked like. In my mind, it was as big as your fist and just as heavy: a paperweight. Anger is problem, the stooped-over man said in his sing-song accent. If angerhold in dirty blood, death. He left out the other tiny words we use to tinker with news to make it bearable. Convinced the only way to let anger out was to become its object, I did things you hated: spilling coffee in the morning so that we were covered chest-down in bitterness, leaving doors unlocked so that anyone could get in, leaning into you so that your shirts were creased. Youre angry and thats the problem, I kept saying. Pressing an iron to your soaked shirt and listening to the hiss of heat against your silence, I wondered why we so often say you when we mean I.

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IV. I said your name in my mind all the ways I could while watching the time tick on a digital clock in another mans car 12:30, 12:31. 12:32he was done. I thought the heat would last longer. I thought that would do the trick. Prepared to hear the sound of ceramic shattering, I looked and you were only looking at the ground. Your silence was opaque and there was no way into it. I said his name over and over and overnothing. My palm hit your cheek and I watched the skin begin to bruise as I hit you again. I wanted the violet to give up its blue and turn red; concrete cannot bleed. My hand curled into a fist and I felt your grip on my wrists, tight like shackles. You pushed me away and my wet palms scraped against asphalt. The stones were too large to be extracted. You are unable to filter wastethe pain from your mothers beatings, the loneliness buried in your grandfathers bones, the love I could not cut you with. Some nights I wonder if you are still alive. I reach over in the dark and put a hand over a pillow, searching for a heartbeat.

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Cigarette After Cigarette

I should stop smoking, you are always telling me, that cough waiting in your chest. I nod because I dont think we can keep doing this forever having cigarette after cigarette, our stomachs empty except for the cup of coffee that lasts us three hours without refills. Until we stop smoking, I suppose we will always be supposing that we should. On days when we are sitting side by side and I am about to light one up, I think of my dad sitting alone in our backyard. He always had a cigarette between his lips as he struggled with the daily crossword puzzle, searching for letters to fill the gaps in words that were never said and were always only hinted at. Whenever his chain smoking is brought up, my mothers mouth becomes a coin in her round face as she mutters something about how he should have stopped long before he turned sixty. She rambles on about facts and figures I hear emphysema, George Harrison, thirty percent chances. When she is through, we look down at our feet and there is silence like breath held in a closed coffin. I like watching you breathe. Your inhale and exhale are colored silver in that lapse between the minute the smoke slips out of your lips and the second it spreads itself back into vapor. I never want to forget that I breathe and that you breathe and that one day, that will not be the case. When I ask for a light, I am asking you to remind me that we are still breathing and that we are breathing together. When I hear that cough work its way up your chest and into your throat, I know what you are going to say next and already,

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I find myself fumbling for the lighter. Let us smoke until we cannot, I want to say. When we are old, let us collapse togetherlungs onto a weighing scale, two corpses in a casket. When they cut us open after we are dead, let our insides be rotten and charred, knowing that every cigarette was for me and you because we still could. It was for my father look, Dad Im not breathing alone. It was for your nicotine -stained fingers, the ash on my pants and the unfinished crossword puzzles in your back pocket. I light one up and know that also, it is for those I love who never learned to breathe with anyone else.

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14 Weeks
I. This way is the easiestonly three years and youre done. My lung x-ray is clear and Ive dropped the check at the cashier so its time to make myself someone. Id been told that my future begins here, in this place where you can be whoever you want: doctor, engineer, beauty pageant winner. Things go by in a flash. Time doesnt tick and tock during the Trimester, it titockswe skip over syllables that other people cant afford to drop. We are for minimum effort and maximum resultstheres no time to have our IDs read so they beep at the gate , we dont need to waste paper to see our grades because the system never fails. We are for the transformative: who needs lectures that explain things when we can huddle in groups and do the googling ourselves. I was not raised to waste time. At sixteen, I figure theres so much to do: books to read, lists to make, buckets of beer to order and boys to kiss. Ive got too many cigarettes to smoke and way too many classes to miss. II. People have begun to disappearI cant find my classmate with the skewed glasses and the girl who wears her make-up too thick. But I try not to worry because Blocks have just been dissolved and there still so many people to meet. I could walk and talk all day, making friends who Id have no obligation to see again.

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I can join Org1 and meet a nice boy who Id date right after the guy in Org2 who listens to the same music I do. I could change my mind tomorrow about that song, but for now me and these guys get along. So when they ask me to skip Trig first for some drinks and then a gig, I wonder who I am to say no. Fourteen weeks is a long timeI suppose Ill start on homework when I get home early tomorrow. Midterm grades have been released. Its been seven weeks already? I hold a small protest and ask the teacher to reevaluate this, please. When the numbers add up to my carefully drawn 0.0, I wonder how it is that so many little numbers can equate to nothing. III. Its this class againthere are only fifteen of us in the room. The professor calls me out and tells me to plot points on the blackboard. I draw the graph with shaky hands and hope that the line Ive made is straight enough. Theres only so much you can expect someone to learn in three weeks. The girl who recites after me walks up to the board, wracked with hesitation. When her answer is wrong the professor calls her out by ID number and she is revealedfourteen weeks is forever. After class, I get my x-ray done and hope no one notices that the photograph burns whiter than it did last year. As I fill in forms, I feel myself cringing as I write down my agewhen the next school year comes in, I will be 18.

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Catching Up
The girl in the electric blue sweater is seated by the wall-length window, looking out at people as they pass by she watches highschool girls in ankle-length plaid skirts walk past the restaurant, chattering away about something she cannot hear through the glass. As their mouths open and close, she is reminded of the reddish-brown fish in her brothers aquarium. If they could speak, she wonders what they would say. Beside her, the boy with the dark, plastic-rimmed glasses and zit-speckled face whom she hasnt seen in months continues talking. His hands gesture like he is fortune-tellingor else rubbing a giantess boob. She wishes he wouldn t do that but he goes at it as he speaks, as if unconscious of the action. Ive created this world, he tells her, almost matter-of-factly. The concept of this high fantasy post-modern type novel Im working on is that its set in a dystopian future. This is, of coursehe pauses here and she waits for a word she feels she is supposed to know to come to mind but it doesnt; she instead finds herself thinking after eating after eating after eating. post-Zombie Apocalypse, he finishes just as she is about to venture a guess. Anyway, so the concept of what Im writing is that theres this guy whos a complete nerd but is absolutely awesome. Hes awkward but has the power of legendary passion. And his friends are amazing: one of them is a lesbian with a metal vaj so she can literally not be raped haha see what I did there, totes standing up for female rightsand the other one is this completely new-age cancer patient guy with a magical chemoblaster.

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What the fuck is a chemoblaster? The words and the critical tone they are bathed in slip out of her mouth without her thinking and as soon as theyre out there, she wishes she could take them back. He stops for only an instant but it lasts long enough for her to see an expression of hurt flicker across his face. His mouth drops open and he jerks away from her a little. Just as she is about to apologize, the look disappears and he has regained momentumstraightening up as if he has convinced himself he is not just an awkward boy with too many pimples and too much time but an emissary of this huge story he feels he has to tell the world via his unwritten novel. You dont get it? he asks, his eyebrows raised so high they are lost in his mess of a fringe. She takes in the sight of him in: his eyes wide and his limbs awkwardly jutting out from himself. His left hand is reaching toward her and within seconds, is an inch from her arm. Wondering if he is going to shake her if she does not reply, she offers, The enemy is Yes! The enemy is cancer! Get it? Zombies? Cancer? Disease? BOOM, metaphor! He claps his hands together loudly and his voice starts to rise in his throat in a manner that she almost cant stand. Feeling a stab of guilt for truly wanting to smack him over the head with the empty cup of coffee in her hands, she instead licks her lips and says, Cool.

She hopes that the drive home will be more bearable. They swerve onto SLEX and are greeted by a horizontal wall of traffic. Looking out at an unmoving sea of red taillights, the girl

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in the electric blue sweater feels her eyes begin to tire and leans back against the passenger seat. So how are you these days? The boy with the dark hair and pimples asks, his hands rested on the steering wheel. Not quite knowing where to begin, the girl in the electric blue sweater who has, over the summer done nothing but read takes her time before answering. Slowly, she strings together a sentence in her mind about how shes stopped and starte d smoking cigarettes twice in the past few months. She wants to explain how shed read that in the smokers mind, cigarettes are friends and thats what it made it hard to quitshe already had so few friends. She thinks carefully about how to tell him she d finally found a way to wean herself off potthese days she spends afternoons looking at things clearly, in real-time. She smiles and wonders what to tell him about first: the fascinating fish that her brother kept in an aquarium in their living room and how she wondered if for creatures that lived underwater, breathing itself was speech or that shed started drawing again and had a strip of comics shed love for him to read if he had the time. So we got back together, by the way. His voice echoes thro ugh the silence in the car. It ripples through the quiet hum like a pebble into a bathtub and she can already feel the ripples wiping away the sentence shed taken so long to construct. Hows that going? Fine, I guess. Its justshes so. Mleh. So?

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Committed? Clingy? God, she keeps telling me all her problems and sometimes its just likewell, everyone has problems; big fucking deal. Well, thats the way she is. You knew that after break-upslash-cool-off number five-zero. Did you confront her about it? What am I supposed to say? I dont think your problems are important? Somehow, I dont think that would work. No, just tell her that she should maybe try dealing with her problems first? Something like that. Or that her problems make you sad? Well. Its just scary. I dont want to you knowend up with her but I just dont want her to feel bad either. Thank goodness thats entirely up to you, then. do you think Im leading her on? Not like I dont like her, I really do plus shes mega sexy and we like the same music and she also likes listening to future novel ideas and her ideas are okay, I suppose. But its just that Im a creative soul you know. I need to get out and seek inspiration and it was really inspiring to be around her for a bit but then fuck. Sometimes I want to say your problems are killing the epicness of my life! and then stab her with a huge, pointed sword of self-esteem. She smiles. Its not that big, you conceited fuck. Hey, shut up. By the way dont ever tell her about you know okay, awkward. Why the hell would I tell anyone about that? Gross. She starts to laugh. Brace face.

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He smiles. Grease hands. Turned out to be a good thing, then. She wiggles her eyebrows. He smiles wider, flashing her his now perfectly straight teeth. The braces didnt turn out so bad either. The girl in the electric blue sweater rolls her eyes. Easy for you to say youre not the one who got a free wax from those things. I swear you are disgusting. I prefer honest. He grins. So, wait. Are you seeing anyone? Maybe at work? Come on. I work for my mother. Who am I going to date thats from work? Is that a no or a yes? She bites her lip to keep from smiling, already recalling the numerous text messages saved in her mobile Inbox from a guy shed met at one of her brothers parties. Struggling to say he was two years younger than herthe same age as he was, come to think of itand that he was really fun to be with, she feels sweat on the back of her neck. Her hands tighten around her purse and she wonders where to beginname and degree and current job or something more personal, maybe a funny anecdote about stealing Skyway cones. Before she can answer, he turns on the radio and an electrorock song starts playing. She opens her mouth to speak but hes started drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and she feels like to talk would be to interrupt a moment he is having

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with himself. Instead, she looks up at the overpass and watches the people who are heading homewomen with shopping bags loaded with lunch kits and small umbrellas intersect with men carrying backpacks, empty water tumblers hanging from the side pockets. Look at all the taillights, he says, lowering the volume on the radio. Uh-huh. Dont you just think its amazing that something as ordinary as a taillight kind of looks like the eyes of a balrog? Oh god. Amazing. Story concept. Like thats where the balrog was hidingin the very machines that we are driving. Fuck. Amazing. It sounds a little bit like Transformers. No, that was completely different. This will be epic, like nothing anyones written before. You know why? She doesnt ask. Because the balrog will be hugeMRT station-sized with truck legs. Who knows, after it gets published Tolkiens son or grandson or whatever might read it and be like Hey this kid from Manila wrote this super duper epic spin-off using the balrog from my lolos trilogy you know? Have you written any of this down? she asks, careful to keep her voice from tottering off the edge of genuine interest and into the waiting glass of reproach. Nah. I will, though. I justhe sighs and leans forward so that his chin is resting on the steering wheel. I have infinite

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concepts, you know? Its like Im a story-making machine but I have difficulty actually writing the story. Its like writers block. She takes a deep breath. Since giving up her afternoon weed sessions, shes begun to think that things like writers block and not knowing what to do were just excuses to do other things or not do things. Wondering how to tell him this without hurting his feelings, she smiles at him instead and pats him on the arm. He flinches. She crosses her arms over her chest. If it helps, I dont believe writers block exists. He raises an eyebrow. Its just that a lot of writing or making stuff comes from tedious work and that can be tiring. So a lot of the time when people say theyre blocked, all they really mean is theyre tired or lazy or dont feel like doing it But I want to do it. Its just that I cant. Well, I made a short comic thing over the summer, she shares. Ive been taking these online drawings course things on YouTube so yeah. Im trying to learn to draw properly again. Oh. Uh-huh. Ill let you read it sometime. How long is it? he asks, without looking at her. Around three pages? Or six, if youre folding it in half like a booklet.

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Six pages, he repeats to himself. Fuck, thats awesome. Now I feel great for you and stuff but god Im so pathetic. I have so many ideas and I cant write them down and you, youre like, what super productive. You disappear for a couple of months and suddenly you have all this work done. Gosh. Okay, Im going to write tomorrow. I will. Ill do it. Cause Im fucking awesome. Youre fucking awesome, self. Youll do it. Why not tonight? Oh, after I drop you off Im heading to a birthday party. He puts his index finger and thumb together and makes like he is holding a straw to his mouth. Theyve got some tsktsk. So excited. Id ask you along but you dont really know these peopleit might be awkward. Its fine. So, he says as they finally start moving. Do you wanna hear another concept? Its about this guy who uses a street lamp as a sort of staff. Anyway, the protagonist is this post-modern guy whose power is writing flash fiction. Like he has the power to write really short one-scene fiction and make it come truebut just that one scene. So theyre battling the enemy who is the legion of darkness god and he suddenly writes flash fiction in the air using his streetlamp staff and it comes true and they win cause he writes about a time when the legion of darkness god doesnt exist. What do you think? The girl in the electric blue sweater says nothing and starts fumbling with her seatbelt. She wonders if he has noticed that she hasnt answered his first question.

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They pull up at her familys house at around 11 pm. The boy with the blemish-peppered face doesnt turn the engine off. Im guessing you dont wanna come in and talk some more? The girl undoes her seatbelt and smoothens her electric blue sweater. I would love to but I have that birthday party thing. Nodding, she opens the door. Thank you for the ride home. It was really great catching up with you, he says. The slamming door punctuates his sentence and she is not yet to the door when he drives away.

In her living room, she turns the light on and sees her brothers aquarium on their living room table. Checking to see if her brother is home, she checks the two hooks by the shoeroom door and notes the absence of his key before hanging hers up. She makes her way into the kitchen and pulls one of the wooden drawers open. Emerging with a container that resembles a salt-shaker (and indeed had once contained iodized salt), she walks over to the small fish tank and sits on her brothers foldable chair. As she sprinkles the tiny pellets of fish food into the water, she notices that one of the fish is slightly redder than the other. The shade it is in reminds her of all those taillights they saw spread across the highway. Putting the ex-salt container down on the coffee table, she sits with her legs folded beneath her. The girl in the electric blue sweater thinks to herself that if theres anything that she likes about taillights, its that theyre the last thing people see before their loved ones disappear.

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In Retrospect
There was no music. We were trying to dance in the street the way wed seen it in moviesslowly and a little too close for comfort. I could feel your breathing on the top of my head and when I looked up all I could see was the way the oil on your skin glistened in the lamplight and how the tiny pink scar above your lip lent your smile something sinister. Your hand hesitated a second too long before landing on my hip. My wrists felt stiff from reaching up to put my hands around your neck. I shifted my weight and tried to settle into the discomfort of holding you. You were too tall and I was a flimsy noose. I closed my eyes and imagined someone elsea man more handsome who read more books and who held me like he knew how. Imagining we would fit into each other like a tongue into a mouth, I pressed myself against you and swayed to smaller noises: the sound of cars obeying traffic lights. Focusing on the handsome idea, I ignored the asthmatic wheezing of your breath and tried even harder not to hear the thumping right beneath me: ear pressed to the track, I didnt want to hear what was coming. The wedding is in September and it looks like rain. In the background, my aunt is insisting that we are being showered with blessings, her frantic sentences punctuated by the distant rumbling of thunder. The first dance is announced. We fall into well-choreographed steps. The music starts to swell, a piano playing a sentimental tune in the background. You reach out and pull me to you. Just firmly enough, you put your hand on my waist. A bead of sweat trickles down my back, free to roll in that centimeter between cloister-dress and skin. Hand on your chest, the ring is slippery with sweat on my ring finger. I lean against you and find myself praying for the downpour.

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I imagined we would crash into one another like the ocean onto the shoreviolently and with no space for doubt, the tongue of water rushing over the lip of land. But you still kiss without tongue. Gentlemanly, you lift my corset from my torso. It looks so much like a cast that for a moment, Im terrified at the thought of finding my body tender from un-use. You plant kisses on my neck, small and calculated. You push me onto the bed and tell me not to worry. We will fit. We have danced this before and you know we will fit. At the height of it, I am buried under your weight. I can no longer ignore your breathing as you lower yourself onto me. In the space between our ribcages, I wait for the trickling of sweat and it does not come. You enter me like a car into tunnelin all the breathing room, I am in danger of floating away. I put a hand up against your chest and you mistake it for desire. Watching your handsome face, I close my eyes and look for someone else: maybe someone a little less striking, with rougher hands. I look for almost anyone else and press myself to you, waiting for the storm that does not come.

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Tracing Maps
You were, literally, a golden boy. With hair like a sunrise people wanted to follow you wherever you went. In grade school, you led back-of-the-bus riots and we sang pop songs at the top of our lungs, undeterred by the plastic-melt heat or the rotten smell of our uneaten lunches seeping out from our colorful lunchboxes. You were a sniper with a straw for a gunhitting the enemy with small sago balls for 10 pesos a barrel, we were as thick as thievesI would hold up my notebooks plastic cover in your defense and when the enemys ammunition caught in my hair, you would spend the rest of the ride home combing the sticky bullets out with your fingers. Sixth grade was the last time we held hands. It was the last day of class and we were eating orange popsicles in the van that we called a school bus. This was our day off: the lady selling tapioca ammo was off for the summer and so we settled for ice drops and the backdrop of the summer to come. Our houses were the last two stops and on that home stretch, I was thinking about the next year and how gradeschool was coming to an end. I imagined us in grown-up uniform: me with a necktie instead of a ribbon, you in black pants instead of brown shorts. We would use paper with more lines and smaller spaces, ink instead of graphite. You put your hand over mine and I fit my tiny fingers into the air in between yours. Warm and wet from sweat and sunshine, our palms stayed pressed together for the rest of the ride. Upon arriving at your house I said goodbye and you said see you soon. Jumping off the van, you waved and tossed your popsicle stick into the gutter. I wonder if it felt like falling to you. Since the news, I have lived many a nightmare in your shoes. Forty floors up and feet against the ledge, I feel my heart beating in my throatthere is

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only one way this ends. I put my palms in front of me and know they are yoursthey are large, the lifeline sprawling from below your pointer finger to just above the wrist. You look out across the suburban landscape and see everything: the mall where you first saw Jurassic Park, the parking lot where you lost your virginity, the red roof of your empty house and across the main road, the blue gradeschool where you learned to draw stars and read maps. You watch the roads intersect and hear the distant honking of cars. You know that that yellow dot could be a traffic enforcer and that that far-away pop-and-hiss could be gunfire. You know that the orange blotch could be a home consumed by flames and that the blue spot could be a pool where unwatched, a little boy is drowning. Roads intersect and there are too many lines and not enough spaces. There is nowhere left to leave your mark so this is where you make it and dive onto the asphalt like a pushpin onto a corkboard I was here. Waking up, I never know what to reach for. I have nothing of yoursno cards, no empty plastic cup mementos or straws left over from our sniper days. There is no evidence of you here. I walk to my study table, turn on the desk lamp and look at a spread I have pulled out of an atlas. A couple of blue pins are pushed in to plot the places Ive been. I trace this map and wish it were your palm. There is still so much space, here.

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Invented City
I thought I was at least sure that the overpass was a rusted blue, the metal cracking open in increments like a scraped cerulean knee. I remember watching your trainer-clad feet pound soundlessly against the metal as you made your way up the bridge and over the street, your figure receding as the bus I was on started to move away. But today for the first time in a long while, I sat in my seat by the window and as we rambled along the highway and came to a stop by the Coastal Mall, I noticed the crossing was gray, the corrosion peeking out from under the old paint. When we were nineteen, we used to take the bus together and this was your stop. Youd hop off and wave to me before starting the trek up the stairs to the terminal on the other side. Once I got to Zapote, half-way between school and my parents house, I would receive a text message from you saying that youd made it home. Sitting hunched over by the window in your bedroom on the second floor, still in commuting clothes, bag still slung over a thick shoulder, youd pull your phone out of your pocket and let me know you were safe. Looking out at the view of the tenement houses over the trees and the strip of road, youd put your bag down on your desk littered with rap metal CDs and computer partsall the shrapnel of you I never understood and get ready for dinner, its smell making its way up the stairs from the marble-tiled kitchen with the red island. This afternoon, the parking lot Id for so long, labeled terminal in my head was emptynot a jeep or a collorum shuttle van in site. The intersection between Coastal Road and the Magsaysay

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Highway was crowded with people. I wondered where they were all going. I remember you mentioning taking a jeep herebut to where? I realized I have no idea where you live. I craned my neck and tried to see if there were subdivisions or condominiums behind the malls and embassies but all I saw was the sea. These days, my time is spent in in-betweens: I meet people between appointments, make appointments between classes, I go to classes between shifts. A friend tells me she is heading to work and I know the buildinga high-rise along Quezon Avenue. My brother tells me he has to go to class and we part at the University entrance: Taft corner Vito Cruz. At five-thirty, a co-worker tells me she is heading home and I know she is headed to her house with a blue gate in Las Pias. My father calls to say that fried chicken is for dinner and I know hes sitting at the crimson dining set in our kitchen and warning me to make the trip from Manila to Muntinlupa a quick one. I dont even know the name of your city . Pasay? Malate? Cavite? I would ship your things over if I knew where to send them. I would scribble From An Old Friend onto the packaging and hope that you are not disappointed once you see my familiar hand-writing. Id like to know where to address the parts of you I still havean old t-shirt, a Megadeath record, a key to a door Ive never seen. When you left, you said you were heading home. I saw you driving in your car with the plastic Jesus swaying back and forth on the bridge that fastens the rearview mirror. Big hands on the steering wheel, you pulled out onto the main road and rolled your window down to feel the wind against your scalp. You could smell the sea as you made your way home. About an hour later, you pulled up in the driveway of a duplex you shared

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with your brothers and unlocked the big, varnished wooden door. You headed to your room on the second floor and lay down with your hands behind your head. It was in the safety of that house with the hard-wood floors and beautiful windows that looked out onto the blinking lights that you fell asleep and dreamt of forgetting. In the distance, one of the people in the public housing units turned on their lamp and stepped out onto the brittle terrace for a cigarette. Now, years later, I realize that is a place Id only invented for you.

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Acknowledgements
There are so many people to whom Im grateful for the publishing of this book and its a shame that I only have a couple of pages to fill for this partIll do my best to thank everyone. First and foremost, thank you to Trizha Komy soulmate and one of the most talented graphic artists I know. Thank you for all the support and for being one of the only people with whom I can constantly share rants about the difficulties of being human: the war that is always going on between the impulse to be vicious and the desire to be virtuous. Im forever grateful to Erika Carreonboth editor (since 2008, whatwhat) and dear friend. Thank you for teaching me to care about the nuisances of language and punctuation. Thank you for always having a good story recommendation up your sleeve and for being one of the only people I know who can give excellent criticism without being a critic. Ron Recto, thank you for your kindness and friendship. Francine Yulo, thank you for always reminding me that its okay to assert myself when need be. A huge thanks is also owed to Keavin Mutuc: on top of everything (and I mean everything) Id like to thank you for being kind-hearted and patient with me. Youre my favorite person in the worldbut you already knew that. Id also like to extend my gratitude to Antonette Mendoza who never lets oceans get between us.

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Thank you to Marz Llaveboth bestfriend and business partneras well as Trish Magsaysay & Joy Vidad, who my life would be terribly lonely without. Thank you to Joelle Pantig for all the support and for being the anti-thesis to loneliness. Thanks to all my awkward boy (space) friends as well, who never cease to make me feel weird via bombarding me with new ideas: Noel Villa, Christopher Sum, Nico Elicano, Carlo Atendido. Thank you to all the WinaWonders readers; I dont think I wouldve gotten the confidence to do this without you guys. Im also extremely grateful to the following establishments/organizations: MoarBooks, Komikon, Blogger, Pro Digital Image Works, Amazon.com & Blurb, Exile On Mainstreet. Thank you to my family. I also feel I owe a huge part of this to Ms. Ella Mallabo Mutas, who taught me first year highschool English & Literature and believed in me enough to get me into The Manresan not exactly the most prestigious stint ever, but it was a start. Last but definitely not the least, thank you to you who are reading this. I hope you enjoy this book and that its been worth your time, money and effort. I will hopefully see you next time.

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About the Author

Wina Puangco is, for the most part a typical girlshe likes music, movies
and books. If there is anything special about her it is that she has very curly hair. She used to be the Prose Editor for her University folio and has a DLSU Lit Award under her belt. She also keeps up a (very) personal blog, www.winawonders.com; you can also follow her on Twitter @winapuangco. She really hopes you enjoy(ed) these stories.

About the Illustrator

Trizha Ko aka TKo is currently working on her comics Androphobia (updates
on deathbyassociation.tumblr.com), releasing a biannual comic series calledConfused (order at moarmoarmoar.com) and is in want of a personal assistant willing to work (pro bono) and tolerate occasional babbling fits and slight verbal abuse. Don't worry, I apologize after. However, if you are male and not Chinese with an aquiline nose, corpse-like pallid complexion, thin and long bones like Hamilton Morris and strong loins with an interest in exotic or controversial studies or is an inventor. I can negotiate--the fits and certain employee benefits.

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