March 17, 2011
Written 4 am
Pscyh Call Room
At this particular hour, had I still been moonlighting at a local hospital in my home town, counting the hours and anticipating the end of my tour of duty, I would be sitting cross legged on a broken-down bench in the hospital's laundry area, sharing jokes, yokes and smokes with the manong orderlies and manong guards and the occasional "bosses". In the mornings, there would be coffee, boiled over a makeshift stove made from a metal Minola Oil container. In the afternoons, there would be the local radio drama "Provincial Jail" on the pm radio, where the protagonist is a moral-bound cop whose father is the most notorious criminal of the land. The manongs relate to them, I suppose. They call the place, the “Bat Cave” and Provincial Jail is already a veteran to the Bat Cave when I came in.
I don't know why I'm suddenly thinking of that aspect of home. Maybe it's because it's 2 hours to freedom and nicotine has been a stranger for more than half a year now and I'm wide awake with nothing but a computer screen to keep me company. Don't get me wrong. Nicotine was like a best friend for a while... A long while... But we were the kind of best friends who were seeped in deceit and beneath-the-surface betrayal. She made me believe I was breathing in good calming air in those times of terrible distress while she poisoned my blood with her witchcraft the kind that made my fingertips tingle deliciously with life, making me wonder sometimes if they were still my own. And I, having spent four years of medical knowledge on her brand of smokey seduction, took advantage of that knowledge, sucked her dry one stick at a time, fooling us both... But when weighed against the things that truly mattered, I dropped her like a hot potato without batting an eyelash. I'd see her wave at me from every corner of the streets. But I ignored her like I have never met her before in my life.
My first sacrifice for someone who has no idea how much she is already loved.
“Are you sure?”
“about what?”
“About us.”
“Yes.”
Without hesitation.
Yes.
Despite everything.
Yes.
Maya Angelou is my teacher.
Words don't have to be complicated to convey exactly how one feels.
“But they went home...” was all she had to write. And already the page was full of brimming emptiness.
“Yes” was all I had to say. And already the room was congested with hope, suffused with the musk of promises never made but already kept.
Time is ticking. Like a bomb. And I have nothing in my shelter but his hand securely holding mine through all of this. Everyday I get dressed for work with a different purpose now. It used to be for new clothes or a new set of cosmetics or a week long supply of nicotine for transforming my lungs into ash.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
But not anymore. Everything I do is geared to seeing her face. A different kind of infatuation.
“She's making you beautiful. More than I ever had...”
And I blush a Maya Angelou blush. Dark, uncomplicated and barely there, but oh-so-there like the line of punctuations after a contemplative phrase.
“What about the Light you left behind?...” I ask him in my mind. And he doesn't hear me. Because he's not ready for that yet. To reopen wounds that may not have yet healed. I pray one day he will be. I pray one day we will be. Because somewhere down the roads we all have taken, there is a Light we all had to leave behind. Not because we wanted to. But because the sun has risen, the night is over, or because we have reached the end of the cave. And sometimes we must not travel with too many lanterns...it blinds us, you see... Too much brightness forced against the reality of the sun.
It was an escape. The Bat Cave and Provincial Jail. To talk about fictional characters rather than our true to life problems. To hide the smoke. Or more likely, to hide in the smoke. For people like me who are afraid of clarity. For cowards who are afraid to see beyond the haze.
“After the smoke has cleared, I still know how I feel about you...”
So maybe I didn't want the smoke to clear because then, I'd have to face the reality of that sentence you have etched in my subconscious. The reality of you being exactly who you are. The reality of my having to accept everything about you including the Darkness that came with the Light.
And perhaps maybe even Maya Angelou is an escape. A beautiful, beautiful escape from a wordless turmoil deep inside of the self to simple, uncomplicated poetry that is tangible and can be shut closed and stowed away in a shelf when the mind and heart has been supersaturated by it all. Transformed into mush and slush. Slides down your throat like milkshake, but would slip through your fingers when you try to grasp it in your hands.
A bouquet of pencils.
A notepad filled with poetry.
A song here and there.
A whisper next to my belly button as though that's where my ears are.
All of it, a plea for forgiveness on bended knee.
A stepping out from the clearing of the smoke.
The Bat Cave is far away.
Nicotine, a friend long ignored. She will never be my maid of honor.
Maya Angelou right now is my floater.
But I will let go of her too.
Soon.
I need to know how to swim with my own limbs now.
And that means having to let go of something I may have been allowed to hang on to when I was merely floating aimlessly: another useless lantern, I guess. No use forcing it against the reality of the sun.
I think that's what you've been trying to tell me when you threw away your own life vest.
It was not a challenge...
It was a question....
And my answer is
Yes...
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