6 Filipinos With Swoon-Worthy Handwriting You’ll Meet at the Manila Pen Show 2023
Everyone’s most formative memories have to do with learning to write in script. The satisfaction of looking at your immaculate, handwritten notes is something everyone can relate to even today, in the advent of technology that has taken us away from the simple act of...
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 30: “five years.”
I celebrate 5 years with my lover and the time feels surreal, still. A tumultuous couple of years was enough for us to understand that ‘no matter what’ are empty words until you have buckled under the weight of such a promise. It was the first time we didn’t think the...
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 29: “sometimes love is not enough to pull yourself together.”
I read a story recently that broke my heart. A man yearns for his — friend? ex-lover? they never quite figured it out — paralyzed by the realization of his persisting fondness. His friend asks him what went wrong. ‘It wasn’t what he wanted. Or so I thought. Maybe it...
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 28: “untitled.”
I want to be disappointed, but I am not surprised — and for that alone I am disappointed. Feeling let down by my own inability to finish something when it’s due, when it’s something I wanted for myself, not for anyone else. My brain screams for words to put on paper....
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 27: “three a.m.”
I’ve found that I am ill-prepared for tragedy—whether big or small. My brain stops functioning and my throat seizes up and all my frail body could do is call someone—anyone—to tell me what to do. I’ve found that I am useless and panicked and overcome with ferocious...
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 26: “the long-lost roommate. (fiction)”
The girl I once loved fled our dorm room in the dead of night with nothing but a golden harmonica and a film camera around her neck. I went through months of interrogations from the police until they decided this case was just of another young dreamer who’s yet to...
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 25: “thanksgiving. (fiction)”
It was difficult to have an underground cannibal as your father, and even more difficult to digest the stuffed barber that was laid across our dinner table all because he had trimmed my father’s beard a centimeter too short.
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 24: “this poem is about gratitude.”
Sun blazes through the sheer blinds of my cold bedroom. Breakfast comes in a plate of toast, butter, & fruit. Lukewarm coffee sits inside a pot. Phone comes alive with news & follow-ups & tags & requests. To-do lists shape the pages of my desk diary. I...
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 23: “not everything can be written.”
On nights like this, I remember how easy it is to love. How rightly we fit in each other’s empty space, your voice gently stoking the embers of the hearth burning brightly beneath my heart. On nights like this, I find it hardest to write. What more can be said about...
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 22: “the fall of icarus.”
When Icarus flew too close to the sun, was anyone there to catch him? When the wax, the feathers, and the sticks from his arms melted away to nothingness, who was there to hear him scream? I hope that wherever he fell—whether deep ocean blue or tides of sand or...
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 21: “mantra of a working millennial in the last month of 2022.”
I will not allow myself to be overwhelmed. I will not break my body to fit the boxes of my to-do list that crawls from diary page to diary page. I will not sink into the blue halo of the monitor from the tight latch of emails that echo endlessly with...
NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 20: “you say it will get better.”
I hope it does. When this tired flesh & bone sinks deep into the covers I want dams to be built to contain the rivers of my eyes. I want to learn how to hold my hand without strangling it. I want all this fury wound tightly around my jaw to dissipate so my cheek...