- a hold
There is a thing that will never lose its traces on my body; a thing that tears and scars my flesh into a wounded mesh.
- backbone
Sunday afternoons too, my father grabs the thing on my desk drawer.
I watch him pace around my room. His hands point and shoot words into the hoops of my eardrums. In lilt and logic, he plays out all the alternate routes of my poverty mindset and the stack of moral values I lack.
On days like this, he says that the world will keep turning. “You need to learn how to pray,” he continues, “you must repent, repent, repent!”
Now, he’s trying to coax me into a confession. When you told your friends, did they help? Are they really your friends? Remember, Anak, when you talk about the multiple little fractures that fall down your back, they will wait until your ribs can’t keep it all locked in anymore.
When it hits me, be a man, he says. The world was turning.
- pag-aatang
I never imagined this to remind me of communion.
Sometimes I’d spend Saturday nights getting baptized in the sour water of an inflatable pool on a rooftop dip. Sunday mornings too, when I snuck around and took the bread and drank the juice in secret. The other day, it crossed my mind that the Savior had dinner with his disciples even if he knew one of them would betray him.
Before it happens, my father looks around before finally picking up the closest thing.
On days like this, because there will always be days like this, my father said to pray, read scripture, and always be grateful. Close your eyes and repent, repent, and repent. I bow my head and repeat after him.
I know all my apologies will never reach the shadow of my grandmother doing back-breaking work in an Ifugao field, nor will my pleas for forgiveness reverse my sister’s two-hour-sleeps. I know I could never repay my brother’s precision planning to prepare me for whatever may come. Do I give up everything for peace?
iii. plan b
When he hit me, I didn’t know until later what it was that he hit me with. I waited for wire-thin or a belt buckle and a sting.
I could never imagine it would be a book. I never imagined this book to be so bruising, that the book backhanded would be so heavy-handed.
I studied that book, I wanted to say. I didn’t say that I learned a father was pleased to bruise his son. The father grieved because the son was meant to be wounded for somebody else’s sins.
I’m saying that I didn’t know that a Bible could be used that way.
- failure
I have a heartbreak scheduled in 60 minutes.
So, I’m going to clean up my room. Then, I’ll go to the kitchen to wash all the dishes. I'll even put the laundry in the washer to start the cleansing. I will bleach the grime off the tiles and sweep away stray dirt. Then, I’ll say that I will stop putting it all off till tomorrow.
Before it hits me, I'll breathe a prayer before the end arrives.
After my father seizes the thing on my desk drawer, my mother will chase me down the street and incriminate me for hammering a nail down his back, drinking his blood, and wishing him death. “Look at your father,” she says, “why aren’t you working as hard?” The least you can do is earn and help your family. This will shut me up.
I see myself in front of the mirror. My ear drops a red bloom on my shirt.
There are things that never erase their traces on my body. Things that tear and scar flesh into a wounded mesh; like self-loathing and letters that rhyme with ‘savior’ and start with an F.
