On Sympathy

I don't know if I just lost a friend. If I have, I don't know if I could express this need to go back to the point before I may have lost my friend without sounding too cliché. Not a need to defy death, just a need to rummage for the last normal I can remember.

Losing a friend is a purgatorial experience—from blinking cursors to downward shivers to losing a lot of blood to feeling like a hologram at some mall atrium anyone can pass through.

Some of my writing

in Transit, Issue 6:

    something about the dread I had been feeling at home in 2012, being inadequate for anyone, eczema, and the interchangeability of certain items.

in Plural, Issue 4:

    something about a morphing Cory Aquino, my personal hatred for Vitwater, sleep being the cousin of death, and the song "Sana Dalawa ang Puso Ko",  split into three personas.

in Plural, Issue 3:

    something about talking buildings, self-pity in 2012 observed in a reaction to one particular photograph, fastfood at midnight, an encounter with university police and being eventually spared, and another photograph in 2014 of someone reporting for work.