gareb

i have quite a number of stories to tell.
for example:
finding and fighting fire in your new-born eyes.
fierce in their lack of surprise.

there was the cost of pride and precious choice.
someone sifting through sand to find stars.
everyone oblivious to the obliging monsters circling up above
and creeping down below the bowels of this city.
an absence that poses as a cure for uncertainty.

someone was planting flames on windy

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She appeared out of nowhere one day and slowly installed herself as a permanent fixture in the busy public market without anybody noticing. All we knew was that here was another addition to the vagrants that roam the marketplace day in and day out; an addition to the "nalisu-an ug pangisip" (loose minded) in formal terms. But everybody commonly referred to her as another "bag-ong nabuang" (who just recently went nuts).

But what made her remarkable was the way she

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there is nothing like near-disasters, the kind that lets you perch on the edge for days, even months, to let you know how fragile life stories can become, like a free-falling snow globe wondering if there would be something soft to break its fall.

and the secret trysts with lifeforms too different to be unreal, but real enough to touch. they become bits of increasing insanity, a creature growing more grotesque, but more alluring, more seductive the longer your mind dwells on it.

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stranger,

no matter how small i think this city is, i know that i must concede certain secret corners, many dark alleys and many of those faces that prowl its streets, to the unknown. this city might be small, but still, it is large enough that i sometimes find myself lost in one of its criss-crossing streets. and sometimes in the eyes of someone like you.

like many in this city, we have unknowingly managed to skirt past each other's consciousness not knowing each other

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once again the city is awash in the glittering lights that signal the season. nobody can escape but be somehow moved. there is something in the dance of those colors each time the sun goes down that everyone anticipates.

perhaps it is that promise of joy, since the season seems to be always heralded by high hopes. everything seems to look, sound and feel better. everyone talks about the spirit of the season. everybody sings about snow-cold weather in the middle of the broiling Philippine

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