night skies and never morning

By the time that it was midnight, the roads of España will have stretched into a sea. I’ve thought that
maybe it was the idea of longing that turns the sidewalks into shores. The waves were in traffic, yet the
city was mute. In a small street near the rail tracks in Dapitan, a gunshot wound lulls a child into sleep. A
few houses away, a mother is grieving for her husband’s lover. We cannot please the city of Sampaloc in
a storm, I thought. A wake in a barangay hall is festive. A metro aid is sweeping what she feeds to her
children. A beggar is disguised beside an altar. The waves raging, the moonlight faintly shining on the
waters, the city of Sampaloc is finished crying for its streets.

“How can I cross the water?” I asked myself, my feet perched flat on the concrete pavement of the
sidewalk. I was the only one looking over the other end of the wide street. The sand forming with each
wave. The waters under the unmoving cars and trucks were violent. They welcomed no one else except
for the shore it leaves. It’s late already, and I want to sleep.

I hated to think that she felt no love for me, but I had other things to mourn, other things to grieve, and
other things to accept. The city is in pain, yet no one is calling for a doctor. The waters began rushing to
my feet. The entire road and sidewalk is an ocean now. The long winding stretch of España is nothing but
the sea, and it looked beautiful. The current below the still traffic. I felt a momentary feeling of peace, but
peace is a far away picture in a place that never slept.

It is always midnight when I thought of giving a notebook to tell what I felt. Night skies have always been
more chaotic than mornings, but mornings never come to a long walk by the shore. Let the city decide
what it lost. I stepped forward the waters and felt the coldness of the surface rising higher and higher.
There were only ruins around, scraps and pieces left to be washed by the current. I needed to cross the
water, and I had no other way but to row home.