Fiction

I’ll begin with a crude reduction of La Bruyere’s opening paragraph from Les Characteres: Nothing here is meant to be the first of its kind. This thing itself is a pale and conflated imitation of what I found most resonant in the aphorisms...

No one, least of all her schoolmates at St. Celestina’s Academy, would have pictured Chona Laon Badoy as the Mayor of San Semilla in Negros Occidental. Chona herself had never aspired for political office, but only to public service, as her in-laws loftily...

They connived with the dark shadows, the family who lived in a house full of glass windows and graven saints. Toraja invited me to their family dinner in Baguio City to commemorate their matriarch’s third death anniversary. That morning, five black pigs were...

The train slowed down. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. A middle-aged lady wearing a double-breasted coat told him his stop was near. He sat up from his bunk and readied his 500L backpack, messenger bag, thermal jacket, bonnet, and gloves. The man...

Cicadas talk to each other in loud, prolonged streaks of staccato bursts. For a few minutes before sunset, the insects make sound and give it an almost palpable feel. The upswell of choruses stir the air, and dusk’s fractal lights of brilliant orange...

Charito's pace slowed as she neared Barbara's, the renowned restaurant in Intramuros that is next to the centuries-old San Agustin Church. The cobblestone streets shimmered in the late afternoon sun, their rough edges whispering stories from the past. Horse-drawn carriages passed by, their...