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Fiction

Long before Darkness, Or, The Night Ileana Fell in Love

She had lived in the shadows all her life. Literally this meant the shadows of the mountains in the rural town where she was born and where she spent the earliest years of her childhood. Then came the shadows of the skyscrapers that...

The X-Ray Tech’s Love Story

We began speaking Filipino when we learned we were both from the Philippines. I had gone to him for x-rays ordered by my primary care physician, who heard a murmur in my chest while listening with his stethoscope. The technician’s name was Andy, a...

Household Melodies

A dragging sound of slippers, slow and heavy. It was my father’s footsteps, for he had never walked as if he were in a rush, even though he always was. Perhaps his weight dragged him slowly; perhaps it was the whole world on...

ENRIQUE 1521

PASKANG paita kining kahimtang namo dinhi sa Trinidad. Upat ka bulan na me sa barko, nag-antos diri sa dagat Pacifico. Paskang lapara, paskang layu-a jud. Walay kaon. Walay tubig. Daghan nakasakit, nangamatay. Animal jud ni si Ferdinand Magellan. I don’t know how we lasted...

Caught in the Eye of Durarakit

The black piglet trotted along the edge of the backyard with his nose down sensing the soil following the scent of urine and chicken dung scattered on his property. Its black stiff hairs are greasy, its back arched and its small belly almost...

The Summoner

Muriela stopped at a cliff as she watched the calm sea turn to purple. It was violet as the blanket on her late aunt’s flower-ringed body amidst the scents of candles, cheap coffee, and decaying rose wreaths, a sight and smell Muriela went...

Random Pickings

Red Is the River that Runs

Blood has a peculiar, coppery taste in the mouth. Carmen smells it first, a familiar metallic tang from rusted iron reminiscent of white sartin...

Blood and Gold in Benguet

The Rising Sun bus left Baguio City quickly with a thick dust on its way while the morning mist hovered around the tall buildings...

Sometimes when shadows walk ahead

We were in front of the Aristocrat’s Restaurant, where the malignant bone of Ermita and Malate in Manila breaks into two. Traffic was like...

Numbers

She was not like the other little girls. She did not run or shout or jump or play. The world, to her, was too...