**i'm surprised that i wrote this when i was 25.
that was four years ago... wow!
i wonder how much could have changed now...

Tomatoes and Celery


We talked about power clitoris over breakfast table.

I like looking at how skillful your fingers are painstakingly skinning the squid. Offshore squid, you said. I prepared the celery. Use your finger. Its better to nip the celery with your bare fingers.

Thin slices of tomato. I delight at how you battle with the angry cooking oil protesting the landing of the bread crumbs on the skillet.

I don't like Malangs women. They have the same faces. But I love Pacunayens portrait of a woman. Her face caught by the artists brush so unaware yet, looking so knowing, knowing about herself. Unlike Malangs women, the aloneness of Pacunayens woman is a temptation to survey every curve and angle of her face; a temptation to wonder, just wonder how it is to be cast at by her eyes...

You have gone around every hotel asking for quotes in time for your man to arrive.

I have started marking the calendar checking the number of days before my next period sets in.

We smoked. We laughed. We talked of our men. Men have the privilege to be promiscuous. Not only that, they can bear as many children as possible even in old age.

I saw you at the hotel lobby. It has been a long time. I saw you at the grocery store two months ago at the grocery store. You were walking a somnabulist walk, carrying the basket. I dread crossing path with you.

I pressed your hand. We are two women. We commune.

We stole buttercups because we needed at least ten stems to fill our grills. I stole rocks for the bromeliad.

Take your pick. Pindakaka, Pakpak sa Lawin, Dama de Noche, the name of the rooms, the rooms are perfectly kept in the middle of the garden. You fret about how thin the walls are. We have prepared the rooms, but where are our men ?

The sun hardly showed herself up today. I never got to appreciate my cherry red lipstick until I saw you put it on your lips.

My ran stockings, black, dark brown, beige. I wonder why they keep on running down. There must be something about me when I use it, when I walk around.

I have already attacked the seatbed of the cockroaches. I have planted the celery, too in the yard near the vine which I had clung over the male papaya standing erect on our otherwise barren yard for almost two years now.

Its always good to go home early in the morning when all the people are just getting out for work. I slept over somebodys house last night to discuss the workplan for a project. The streets are quiet. The air is fresh and everyone in the jeepney seemed intent in their own thoughts - perhaps just wondering what the day holds for them.

Cheese, eggs, celery (make sure you get the long stalks, you said and made sure I got them), wheat bread, mushrooms - Ive taken them out of the grocery bag and have dutifully arranged them in the cupboards already. You insisted on coffee especially ground by the monks up in one of those mountains in Bukidnon.

Ive taken to wearing socks to bed. Our mornings are starting to be always rainy..

Were middle class... were middle age, Jonis singing over the radio. And Mrs. Millers' "Tiptoe through the Tulips always makes our day.

We have taken to posting our needs right on our very door, screaming to every man who dare set their foot through it. If only they start dissociating themselves with the thought, that hey, you are not about to be made prey... Come in, I am a prey as much as you are. We are potential preys of this predator screaming for salvation in a world that could have been otherwise as humdrum as the doormats we place on our doorsteps had it been devoid of love. Love! We wanted to fill the world with love... No matter how abstract and arbitrary the definitions we attach to our feelings may be, I could not really care less.... IM AFTER THE RUSH. In fact, Id kill for the rush...

wanted : A husband who hands me money for grocery every week;
who wouldnt mind if I go home very late at night or early dawn bringing another guy or a chick;
who wouldnt mind if I break plates and glasses or bang kettles and casseroles once in a while;
who wouldnt mind if I shout in the middle of the night
or muffle a cry under the pillow;
who wont get panic if I stare blankly into space,
or even laugh alone in the garden;
who will accept the fact that insanity is inherent in my genes;
who, despite knowing all these things,
still keeps me warm at night.


I am disconsolate in thinking of myself as a clay mold moving in a pretty even keel with no one, not a single soul willing to lay a hand on it and make sense of its being.

We have worked so much to make ourselves lonelier.

You ought to be lonely...

Sensible men who are not afraid of affection are getting thin on the ground. Meanwhile, a lot of women start getting assertive, unafraid to speak out their thoughts and are getting lonelier.

I have found my own brand of doughnuts. NUTTY MOCCA. Not to sweet. Not bland but NUtty..

Why just when I feel like washing clothes the rain would come playing on my rooftop? I need the sun, bright bright sun to dry my clothes, to make my labor not useless. Wet clothes stuck in the basin- they await the suns coming.

I need to wash my baguio blanket. Desperately need to wash. Its very cold these days. I havent gotten enough sleep because of the cold. I need the sun to come out to dry my blanket for warm nights that I have so long wished.

When you came you instituted a lot of household reforms. Number one, you bought a dish rack. Number two, you bought an oven toaster. Number three, you rearranged the furnitures bringing the dining table to the space which is supposed to be the living room. Number four, you threw away small things, old bottles, old candles, old paper wrappers stocked in the cupboard for ages. It was so far, good.

The vines in our yard have started crawling their way around. Some of the flowers you replanted are starting to take root on earth and hopefully live and blossom.

Adobo, Barbecue, Bistek Tagalog, Hot & Spicy, Sweet & Sour...Take your pick among the tuna in can I bought, I said and you can only exclaim, what a horrible, horrible life youre living! Sorry, thats the only thing I can afford. Besides, fish is so expensive these days... food manufactured, preserved, syntheticized, repacked come cheap than raw, fresh ones these days. But you said, all these in exchange for endangering your fertility!

But we agree about how beautiful the flowers on our table are! And every morning sipping our coffee manufactured by the monks up in one of the mountains of Bukidnon, we would sit around, linger and talk about the monks (who, we bet, are feeling chaste and virginal) and the men who have amused us.

You cook very good crumbled, er, scrambled egg. It takes a skill to roll an omellette while the onions, potatoes and bell pepper are spreading on the inside.

The screw connecting the handle of the heaters cover has become loose. Just a touch of your hands and voila, its fixed!

I admire your ingenuity, your domestic acumen.

One man, a man! has entered the house. Is he captive?

In love, its either, both win or both lose. There is no such thing as one winning and another one getting the other to lose. Otherwise it is not love.

I was gone only for three days and what did you do? You danced great on the dance floor three days ago, and he sure saw how your soul recklessly, unmindfully abandon the body, the self seen by the many. You have a beautiful spirit, I agree!

Hey! I got three two-feet long strands of hair on the floor while sweeping this morning. The hairs are tucked and labeled on the corkboard. For keeps, you know. I do not intend to museumize love. But remembering is all we ever have. Besides, a feel of a strand of hair right right from the flesh to aid memory with would not hurt.

I like your skirt. You look ravishing in those undertone polka dots that you failed to iron this morning because mornings after are always hard to bear. A brush of red on your cheek complements perfectly the sun that had just audaciously come out that morning. How early did he leave?

You chop the garlic, the onions, the bell pepper while I grate the cheese but this time, you asked me to cook the omellette. Establish the egg as a base before you put in the filling and carefully roll it, slowly. Oil is wildly springing from the skillet as I plunge the onions and tomatoes. They hit right through the surface of the calendar Ive marked to establish my 28-day cycle. Its a 28 day cycle! I am sure now. I was afraid it was my first time- to cook your kind of omelette. But then, I did it! The egg was perfect. The coffee was perfect. There are flowers and bananas, and lettuces on the table. French toast, although a little overdone but still good.

Breakfast was good, we all agree. We took part and drink to his glorious hair.

Last nyt, we had supper under the stars and the grass felt so good on our back.
LIFE IS SO GOOD!GOOD, GOOD, we declared!

Should we be guilty doing these while the world is desperately needing more happy people!

We can grow more tomatoes and celeries. The lawn is ours anyway and we can do whatever we want to do with it.

-end -