She tried writing the letter herself. There was a long debate with the nib of her pen whether it was appropriate to begin with “dear.” There had to be an easier way to explain “outgrowing you,” a more palatable phrase to replace “I am unhappy.”

In a bookstore, she lingered away from the shelves of old literature. The weight of timeless love did not help. Past the pens and stationery, she headed for a rack with birthday cakes and confetti, church bells, pumpkins, stars and puppies. She found a card with a drawing of a heart. She opened it and it was empty.

18 May 2012  •  22 notes

cards pilar

She keeps dreaming of him. Of tattoos, of covering her skin with swirling lines, colors. Of open doors and barging in. Of falling tarot cards. Burning photographs. 

She has forgotten how to read fortunes. She draws the Empress, inverted. She draws the Fool. She does not remember what the Ace of Cups means, or why she stopped reading in the first place. 

It had something to do with futures and haze. It had something to do with closing her eyes, with not knowing. It had something to do with truth and how she was never sure she wasn’t making it all up.

14 May 2012  •  3 notes

cards RM

What if I told you I was in love with someone else, she thinks but doesn’t say. The truth threatens to spill, she keeps her mouth shut and closes her eyes. Pretend to sleep, she tells herself, and then it will happen. Sooner or later, it does. And then she wakes up, relieved to have made it through another night. Terrified at the thought of having to do it again. She wonders if running away will be better, a simple disappearance with no tearful goodbye, no begging to stay. No vague letter, no box of things from the past. If anything, perhaps a blank postcard with a picture of somewhere that is anywhere but here.

11 May 2012  •  4 notes

cards Melay

Anonymous asked: Your writings are amazing. :) Are you from the Philippines?

Thank you, kind stranger! Yes, indeed we are. Four Filipino girls scrib-scribbling away :)

9 May 2012  •  6 notes

I picked the queen of hearts. And I was so amazed. It was perfect. And the restaurant magician lapped it up like it was something he could pat himself on the back for. Like it was something he had done so many times before, picking the right card in the lucky audience member’s mind. 

A week later, I had taken my friends to the same restaurant wanting to show them the amazing time that I had had with the restaurant magician and the free tricks. It was a trick right? He had gotten it right though, my card. He came around the table after the meal was done, for the mini-magic show for the happy guests full of wonderful food. He picked one of us, a girl on the other side of the table who hadn’t seen the trick yet. Asked her to pick a card which he would then pull out of the top of his deck. He got it wrong, she guessed the two of spades. He looks down, truly amazed, and then tells the table that wow, women usually pick the queen of hearts. And men aces or kings. 

I felt horrible even if I knew it was a trick. I realized that I thought like every other girl out there, picking the queen of hearts. I wanted to explain to myself that I picked the queen of hearts because Alice in Wonderland was my favorite. Because I felt like shouting off with your head. Because I thought that would make me different. As it turns out though, I’m just like every other girl, wanting to be the queen of hearts, wanting to think I was special in a strange city with strange people from everywhere else, that I had a better reason for going about things. But not really, apparently. Not as much as I would like to think. I sat back into the fake leather seat and thought, no, not at all.

9 May 2012  •  4 notes

cards antonette

Your sentences are always too short. They end before I learn the color of your boyhood bicycle, the taste of birthday cake where you grew up, or how you felt the first time you saw a mountain. When I ask about your day and you say okay, I do not know if you mean it was okay like the dinner at your mother’s house, or okay like the lady in the yellow dress at the bar, or the okay kind of okay that means you don’t want to talk about it. Your silence sends me on archaeological trips where I dig for words you do not say. Your sadness, I learned, is the equivalent of the same silence used to describe your feelings about the past and the future, your plans and fears.

I wonder if the longer we stay together the more words you will forget to use. 

How do we last if we don’t have conversations worth remembering, no stories to serve as landmarks—if, at the absence of words to preserve us, there will be nothing to retell? “I love you,” you say every night but why do you even have to say it? We are the ghost of a memory self-erased: a clock with numbers but no hands, a window without glass, a map with no street names.

29 April 2012  •  116 notes

maps pilar

This morning I woke up and I looked for you. It took a while before I realized the sheets were not the blue-green ones on your bed, rumpled like the ocean, rumpled after we clung to each other as if we’d drown otherwise. I looked for you because in my dream it was afternoon, soft dusty light spilling through the windows while we kissed, forgetting to breathe, forgetting to remember to save something for the swim back. I think I must have forgotten something else, a map, maybe, or an anchor, or a rope, these small things, pebbles to guide me back home after floating in a haze of what I wanted to be more than it turned out to be.

28 April 2012  •  2 notes

maps melay

Tíng, tíng, tíng!, she yells to the cab driver. He’s been taking her around in circles and once she finally saw her door, she just wanted to get out. It’s about four a.m. and the cab driver has managed to get the cab to a ridiculously expensive fare. She doesn’t care. She just wishes she had brought that stupid Mandarin-English dictionary so she’d at least have the words to tell him that he’s a cheat while throwing the strange bills at him. Or maybe she should’ve gone home earlier. Or maybe taken that guidebook in her purse and walked home. Not like there are many rapists on the main streets of Shanghai. Yeah, maybe she should have. 

Why did she even come out in the first place? It’s not like the music is good or the drinks strong enough. But no the company will be great, she said to herself a few hours earlier. The people will be fun and she’s not exactly in the position to pass up friends in a strange city. 

She curses the wind that makes the cold seep into her bones. Stupid skirt, stupid heels. The music was way too loud and the people too touchy. Maybe they’ll be friendly in class the next day. Nicer even. Her heart is pumping at all the wrong beats. Fucking keys won’t work. The ringing stings her ears as she leans on the door to make the world stay still. 

22 April 2012  •  1 note

maps antonette

Girls should come with maps. He says. With directions. 

Like, kiss her here by the curve of her shoulder. Snuggle only when waking. At night she kicks the covers off. Prefers honey with tea. Puts lemon in everything. Likes lavender, peas, Spanish wine. Hates flowers, chocolate, bad dreams. Will wear heels until her feet hurt or she is too wasted to walk, whichever comes first.

I’d like to know, cause nothing makes me feel more like a dork then the first time I touch a girl: what bruises one soothes another. So if you fall off the edge of her earth you get a warning. Here there be monsters. Islands of old lovers, ‘ware the hidden reefs that sink the ships. This is true north. This is. 

Or something. He says. Otherwise all I ever am is lost.

19 April 2012  •  15 notes

RM maps rosemarie

You look good, you tell me. I nod, thank you, thinking you’re obliged to say things like that. I hate it.

I hate the puffed sleeves that remind me too much of Snow White, red, blue and yellow like the Philippine flag. I remember, because those were my favorite crayons in kindergarten. I must have been thirty pounds or so. These days I don’t even want to know. I tug at the garter, trying to make it loose so it doesn’t pinch so much at the arms. I feel like a marshmallow, without the powdery sweetness.

Here, you say, pulling at a loose thread. I tug until it all comes apart, the sleeves are comfortable now, no more fairytale puffs, just free like wings or something, and the only evidence is reddish marks on my arms, like I got bitten by tiny, tiny teeth.

2 April 2012  •  1 note

thread melay