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Fiction

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...

Eight Legs Is All

It’s unfair. With small bodies, they move in all directions. Once a leg gets broken—which usually happens when they resist to be caught—they have seven more to spare. No difference. They still move like they used to. Kuya Ping is one of the tikri...

Random Pickings

Fence Sitter

THE SWEETEST RAMBUTAN she had ever tasted grew on their neighbor’s tree. When it was in season, the tree brimmed with loose hanging clusters...

The Long Road to Capiz

The dawn had barely broken, the rooster was still asleep, and stillness enveloped the sleepy village of Casanayan. There was no moonbeam for now...

“Smartphone Arguments”

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...

Giving Lives

Josefina found the kitten under one of the rose bushes one Sunday morning, cowering from the black Labrador that belonged to their next door...