Fiction

Jun was squatting over a burrow hollowed out by an old acacia’s jutting roots, wary of creepers that might crawl on him as he defecated. He was in a shitty mood. The dewy weeds tickled his extremities, and every now and then he...

The rains have been pouring for more than seven years now. The clouds have always been dark. I can only remember of how much I surveyed the blue skies before the rains started. It feels like detaching a splinter—just to remember what the world...

  My parents have a rather unconventional setup. They may be living separate lives now, but during the past three years or so, Dad has been coming back to our house in Cubao to have lunch. He drops by every Friday, the day when almost...

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 a sledgehammer crushed on disgruntled drivers and pitiful passengers. The wind was accelerating like a developing mental disorder. A...

In a Chinese restaurant, a mother and father tapped away on their smartphones, ignoring the three children in between them. If someone was writing a story about us, Anna thought, then dismissed the possibility. No one in the restaurant was even looking at her...

“Rosebud… A girl’s name? You wouldn’t think that a man in his dying breath would mention someone’s name out of the blue after fifty years, would you?” “Well…you’re pretty young, Mr. Thompson. A fellow would remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d...