This tale is for Mark Brownrigg
It had been a strange week in this village on top of the Antipolo hills. The days were cool, and night hid itself beneath a thick, blanket of wool.
But I liked this change in the weather, so different...
“The past is not the past. The future doesn’t exist. It’s a made-up idea. Every mapping what we do of the future is a fabrication of our imagination.” – Patrick Somerville
Marielle Gaston—fourth square on the third of many rows of faces staring back...
For months following the death of his father, the boy did not sleep. Not a single wink for a single hour, every day, every week, every month for almost a year.
No doctor or hospital could help six-year-old Rico, and every time the doctors...
It was two p.m. on a weekday, and she was in the city, in leather shoes that pinched, a hot polyester acrylic blend blouse that was tight at the armpits, and dark pants. The pants were the only thing that fit her fine....
They were killing us softly it hurt so bad.
Softly, slowly, exceedingly painful. Think of an open wound left to rot under the sun. Dust and dirt, soil and sand blowing over, exacerbating, not reducing the pain.
The killers, with neither heart nor mercy, came early...
“Did you get it?” Tobi asked, though he already knew the answer just by the look on Jimwel’s face.
“Three baggies, one for each of us,” the younger boy said.“Your mother won’t notice?” Greg asked.
“I fudged the numbers on her records,” Jimwel said. “Even...
I
So in a fit of righteous anger
I washed the pots pans
plates bowls knives spoons glasses
even cleaned the kitchen sink and the drawers,
which I haven’t...
YOU NEVER FELT so secure before…. Hovering above the now-unshackled pristine and fertile triangular island of 1566 Bamban were familiar crimson cumulus clouds. Fresh...