and old friend, and a bunch of new ones, tried to introduce me to this strange new place of hidden pleasures derived from street side halo-halo and bingka and sidewalk drinking. a place where the presence of danger has become too commonplace to be noticed, my newfound drinking buddies wanted to describe this place in words that could assure me that i'm somehow safe.

it's been raining for many an afternoons now, something that has trapped me and my listless little brother inside the house. we did not have anything else to do but spend time singing sad songs with my brother and his guitar way into the sunset, with intermittent moments when my silence allows him to sing alone some familiar songs, songs that i may have become too familiar with to even sing without my voice faltering. i watched his fingers strike the exact chords of the guitar and remember...

i remembered telling someone before that i used to like his fingers. they weren't soft, a bit calloused really, with slightly uneven fingers like that of a child's that is used to playing outdoors. those fingers suddenly became the words of my new friends, tracing the outline of this new terrain, like fingertips caressing for the first time the texture of cloth...

yesterday i went out to one of those pulsating places and found out that it no longer caused me as much pain as it used to.

those fingertips tracing the outline of this new terrain, it seems that i have somehow reclaimed lost ground.