The Beginning of History

Sometimes, when it all gets too thick to breathe, to think straight (as if the way of the straight will ever set house), i frantically reach for the brake pedals. Now, these brake pedals, jesus, they hide from me, as if taunting me to come play with us, let's try hide and seek this time.

I can't play hide and seek, not at this time! Mind your timing, will you?

Search and search, I must, but amidst the whirlwind of feeling my way through this insufferable thickness, I manage to hear the most faint of laughs. To be exact, they're childish chuckles. (You see, chuckles aren't the domain of the avuncular man in the red suit. Or the knowledgeable book seller whose stall fronts the old Green House in UP.)

Anyway, back to those childish chuckles. Yes, yes, I know, your sounds are meant to taunt. Taunt, as if to say Oh little girl, you always forget to fly. Haven't we reminded over and over that all you have to do is to feel the bedsheets and the blanket? Feel the itch at your nape? Snuggle a few minutes more when Hanna's wide arse bumps against the curve of Catanduanes? Weren't we right, no class that day? Across the board, from preschool tyke to oversleeping postgrad student, the joy of a cancelled class shames the Mastercard ad.

I stop. I feel my way through my present coordinates. I survey the field. My agitated heartbeat slows down.

In the end, it'll just be me. Only me. Certainly, me. Much to my relief, me.