(In which everything is washed away.)
***
Judah has been complaining about the heat since the start of the season. I can’t blame him. To live with snow (and four seasons) all your life and then be sent to the Philippines in the summer is a torment. But for some reason and perhaps for the first time, I have loved summer. The dry feeling and the scorching heat are reminders that I am still living. And the refreshing, albeit short, kiss of the wind tells me hope still exists. When I walk under the sun, I try to slow my pace, not minding that people are running for shade. The sun gives me life. And the burning sensation of its rays revives my senses. I’m alive.
This morning I wake up under an overcast sky. I looked at the clock on my phone. Nine o’clock. I am automatically aware that I’ve set the clock thirty-five minutes ahead of the real time. I remembered my sister’s reminder; that it’s not Time who should adjust with me but the other way around. I feel stupid every time I conduct a time check since I have to read it thirty-five minutes backwards. Maybe that’s why it never works. I am always late for work.
I got up feeling heavy, as if all the week’s pains were tolled on this day. I’ve been out of myself lately. But it’s today that I feel the most broken. Tomorrow, the truths will all be laid out and our lives will shatter once again. I am not sure if the remaining pieces of us are big enough to be reshattered. Perhaps it will feel more of a grinding than a shattering. We’ve always been broken. Just as we thought it’s time to emerge, we have to face being broken once more.
As I sat on the hard cushion of the public van my thoughts wander. I do not mind what’s around me, though I am aware. I am aware of my cocky seatmate who bragged of him being a driver as if I care. I did not give a damn when he keeps on looking at me smiling and sometimes laughing. Then his curiosity and ill manners got the best of him and asked me random questions to which I gave one-word answers with the “po” and a poker face. But when he asked me why I was serious, I did not speak nor look at his rough, rugged face that looks like an acre of the moon’s surface. I have done my very best to be polite and civil even to the least deserving like him. It’s his turn to do me a favor and shut up.
It was drizzling. Cold air and crystal droplets disturb me. The grayness of the landscape before me seems alien, even threatening. I have been used to a long, hot season before the chains of rains and typhoons blow the heat away, signaling that time has underwent a new phase. It was just March, early summer. And here comes a drizzle, the start of a shower and a downpour. The soft showering of crystals is a blessing to those waiting for a break from the sun’s embrace. But for me it resembles my current emotional state. In the onset of a beautiful, sunny day of our lives, rain comes in to ruin a promise of happiness. And we are now warned of the darkness lurking in the corners, ready to drown us in its anger.
