Author: admin

I Wasn’t There

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Sheilfa B. Alojamiento

She said marriage is a trap. Comfortable at first, but after a while, you’d get numb dumb from the repetitiousness of it. She just turned 50. I recall how, when we were both in our twenties, we already had a thousand reviews that went like that.

And him. I do remember him. A younger him, maybe, but older already, having walked through hell as a construction worker in KSA, jobless at some point and had to convert to Islam, then found succor in the hands of tougher women whom he had to repay with love and sex and respect despite himself. That was the working-class credentials that made her choose him over the middle-class doctor-suitors she knew.

She said what he wanted from her was a son. He said to her he was not getting any younger, and so was she. But at the time they were seeing each other, she was not yet finished with her internship, so she made sure she would not get pregnant. I had by then shipped my own ersatz daughter to my sister’s in-laws in La Union. It kind of irked me when she said, You will feel something after all.

Feel what?

If you bled when you should be gestating?

Gestating oh my God. But I kept quiet. I was thinking, she will marry. She will have a son and I just lost a daughter, and she’s going with him. She will go to Saudi Arabia and they will make a lot of money and I will have no one.

Then he came over. That was the first time I saw him. Also, the first time I saw them together. He was handsome and kind in an unburdened and uncommitted way and he never tried talking to me. Just smiled politely and uncondescendingly. It puzzled me somewhat. Like, did he know it was my friend he was taking from me? For he didn’t seem aware of it. Like he wasn’t the taker. But there he was, as if he was just there to take her out to the park or to a movie downtown, nothing to it that would hurt nobody, only that it was something good to do since he never thought of it before and never had the opportunity.

A couple of years later, she did give him a son. The boy was her replica. I was kind of distraught. I have this idea that when men ask for a son, it’s because they want something to look like them that would reflect them. Something they can mark out as theirs that would proclaim their progeny long after they are dead. A genetic conceit, could be, and with him you can understand that: he is good-looking and a kind man besides. She wasn’t bad-looking either, just a little fat and shapeless, as though whoever made her made sure that no bones jutted out. And that’s what she gave him: more of her.

We used to joke a lot about couples we knew. Friends we saw who married beneath them. What happened to her? She got lonely? Couldn’t find another? But now there was no joke. For he wasn’t so bad though neither a doctor nor a poet nor an intellectual. Now I couldn’t say to her, What went wrong? You panicked?

I gathered that the three of them, and especially father and son, get along fine. Like they’re friends, buddies, now that they’re all grown-up. So, I said to her, It happens everywhere, you should not take it against yourself or against anyone.

Then they showed up in my house. God, they looked awful. A neighbor said a red car was around looking for me. I was in Green Meadows then, in this house, a spacious airy house with light furniture and a low makeshift shelf full of books. She must have noticed that when she got inside: no lumpy couches that bumped against one’s knees, no JVC, no coffeemaker no dining set no fancy paintings decking the walls.

They sat there on the big rattan chair. I could see that the two of them were having a little quarrel, like the husband had been commandeered against his wishes to drive, from downtown Davao to outskirt Mintal just to look for this crazy friend from way back in his wife’s youth. He didn’t even try to hide his resentment at getting seated there in that poor rattan chair which by his standards must be nothing but ragtag poor, including the uncurtained jalousies and the sagging bamboo gate that greeted them outside.

I suppose I wasn’t so welcoming either. I don’t even remember hugging her, which was our way, always hugging, and I didn’t even offer them a drink, not even biscuits, as there was none, just water and more water inside the nice tall Condura fridge which I bought for eight a year and a half back but would be carted off by a neighbor friend for two by and by in several months’ installments. What I can remember saying was how the two of them were growing thick in the middle and he didn’t even respond to that, not with a smirk or a glance up at me, and she didn’t return the compliment by saying how consumptive sick I looked, just laughed a little and said, Yes, it’s the iced tea. I had to smile a bit at the reminder, for it was an addiction she had passed on to me for a little while.

Then she went over to the refrigerator. She stood there and opened it like it belonged to her, the way she used to when we shared a house and a kitchen, standing back and looking down without even bending a little, because there was nothing inside except bottles and bottles of cold water. And then she turned to me saying could I go with them or could I see her, was it the day after, say at Victoria Plaza or was it to visit her in her Mom’s house in Marawi, and I don’t remember if the husband excused himself and went to the waiting car outside as we talked, but she managed to quip in one thing or another, that he wanted to go to his friends, college pals he roomed with when he was a college boy at UM, friends from his bachelor days to drink and party with or have a reunion, and she kind of dragged him in another direction that spoiled all his joys.

I felt sorry. Suddenly, now that she was taking leave, I wanted her to stay. But I just nodded. Maybe because I could see that the two of them were really harried and were on their way elsewhere and her Mommy and some of both families were downtown waiting with the little son, and so we said goodbye. But I was thinking, why didn’t she take the jeep why didn’t she drive she could have brought with her the son and the yaya. Then I remembered they didn’t allow women to drive cars in KSA and I thought, but they’re in the Philippines now why enforce a physical closeness with another fellow when the two of you thought differently why force oneself into a physical dependence on one who perhaps did not have a strong need to be needed to fix the door to drive the car and look after folks and such.

Oh. I was just jealous. Petro-dollars, a six-digit salary on top of a second-hand dream red car from a carnapper in Marawi, perhaps a drug dealer, and that knot of family and friends surrounding her admiring her. I recalled though that just sometime back she was messaging me and cussing her husband, calling him imbecile, cussing the mutawas, the Islamic police in KSA, where you could not go out alone, where there was nothing that you could do outside your house that would not mark you as a prostitute. Notes from hell, I called them, to a deeper hell where at the time of her visit I didn’t want to show her the cracks of, but I could bet she saw it in the empty cold crypt of an unransacked refrigerator.

After she moved to another country, or to two other countries, she wasn’t so angry anymore. No more Islamic police to bedevil her, and so she kind of regained composure. And then she started self-analyzing again, post-morteming her husband, our friends, anyone she found fault with. But I wasn’t sure anymore. It might have been my own unvented anger I was projecting on her all along. For we had parted ways for a long time, and not just she and I; there were ugly fights here and there, between family and between erstwhile comrades and friends. You could say we’d stopped following each other now to know where the other was, geographically, politically.

I have had so many other thoughts since I last thought of her. Found other friends. Loves big and small. Some with hells so much vaster than mine, and some dying there, unhelped, as mostly, mostly, I wasn’t there, too.

On July Twenty-Five

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Sittie Raihanah Macaager

(For Ina, my grandmother)

When did you arrive?
Have you eaten yet?
Where are you?

You used to ask me those questions
like they were part of breathing.
Now I ask the wind,
and it answers with nothing.

You died right after I graduated.
Right after the one moment
you waited your whole life for.

I wore that gown with pride.
Now it feels cursed.
Heavy with the silence of
what I never got to say.

I didn’t even get to tell you I made it.
That I did it for you.

Why does love stay so long,
only to tear itself away
in one violent second?

You were beautiful,
not in a delicate, storybook way.
You were beautiful in how you stayed.
Through hunger.
Through illness.
Through whispered prayers
when the world forgot to listen.

And now you’re gone.

I cry when no one’s watching.
Not to be seen,
but as if the ache
might bring you back.

Instead, it soaks my chest in salt,
chokes my throat with
everything I never said.

The tears are heavy,
not because I’m weak,
but because
you took a part of me with you.
And I didn’t get to choose.

You gave love
that asked for nothing.
Unconditional. Unshaken.
And all I gave you
was a goodbye you never heard.

I saw you leave,
not just the body,
but your soul
slipping out
like breath in winter air.

And I just stood there,
alive,
but empty.

They buried you,
as if any grave
could hold what you were.
But no grave is deep enough
for this kind of love.
This kind of loss.

If love could raise the dead,
I’d scream it into the sky
until my voice shattered.

But you’re not coming back.
And I am left
with a hundred memories,
a thousand regrets,
and a silence too loud to name.

I miss you in ways
language cannot carry.
And it hurts
more than anything I’ve ever known.

Ina, this is my ode to you.

My gown,
the one you longed to see.
My success,
your ever dream.

I got it.
I did it.
And it was all for you.

 

Pass the baton

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Raihana K. Lamalan

Every time na mag-sine ako, I always bring my mini blanket with me.

Sa among kultura, we call it malong—my cousin used to call it “lulababay”, something that doesn’t have a direct translation; but it means something along the lines of a mother’s warmth that brings you comfort. Malong is widely known for our traditional clothing and dances, but technically, we also have malong where we use it for sleep. We pull the end of our malong, step in the center to wear it like a tube skirt until it reaches our chest or shoulder or depending on our liking, then wrap ourselves in it. We almost look like we’re vermiculated—but at least it feels like a warm hug from our mother, or grandmother. My cousin, she further explained how her lulababay has its own unique and specific texture compared to other malong we carry in our bed. The chill seeps in her skin yet there’s an impeccable warmth that soothes her to sleep.

It feels like home.

Dada, my father, once stitched from one end of our malong to another. As someone who’s taller in our household, Dada feared that I might catch a cold, so he often kept my feet warm—hence, lengthening the blanket. But since the fabric was too soft, and the scent too familiar—no matter how desperate he tried to wash it away he couldn’t resist the haunting familiarity lingering around him, I wasn’t surprised when he took the malong for himself. I thought that maybe he missed his old home before us—maybe his Ina, too. I can see how he longs for her, the way he melts down when we run out of bigas, or buys the whole ice drop (as what he calls the ice candy) from a manlalako that reminded him of his father, a principal who also vended ice drop during his childhood. I can smell the child in him; it’s rotting, writhing in agony as he hugs his new favorite malong around him, longing for a parent’s love.

Dada used to say na pinaglihi ako sa depresyon.

Because when Mama was pregnant with me, their Ama lay among our ancestors. She hated dogs and cats—and anything that came down with rabies—which was the cause of Ama Lukés’ death; something I resented about her when growing up. I was a child who nurtured the simple things around me and it broke my heart knowing I couldn’t shelter them all. To think that the model I should look up to was a complete opposite of who I am and who I’m going to be was… disappointing. It all rooted back to when Dada said I was “born under a cloud of depression,” because after Ama Lukés passed away, less than six months later, her Ina passed on too. In a way, it seems to me that the first thing I inherited from Mama was her deep, aching longing beyond her fingertips.

Dada mentioned that no amount of bulawan would make her happy. I find it almost impossible, because Mama will be happy to receive gifts from her husband (as any woman raised in a rural area would be). Having to grew up in around the Red Sea, I knew gold wasn’t impossible to buy as a gift—but with our financial struggles, her pregnancy with me, and the recent loss of her parents, these burdens became overwhelming for her. It was under these circumstances that Dada said I was an unplanned child, almost the unwanted one. And I couldn’t blame him. I was too difficult during my teenage years as to why he suddenly blurted that out. He once told me that no one could possibly fathom the way I am—that I am not meant for weak hands. Each pulse a verse, each would wound a different line, and I beat in language that no weak minds can utter.

As time goes by, I’m in awe of how mama never gave up.

Instead, she would wrap herself in malong and think of it as her Ina’s embrace, her Ama’s comfort. She would wipe her tears on it; the same way I muffled the sound of my silent sobs nowadays. The piece of fabric that held together assures her their presence despite being worlds apart from each other. And it makes me wonder, as to how I’m able to understand what she was going through. I long for our parents’ presence though they are right beside me, preparing our meals or reckoning our budget for tomorrow’s allowance. It sickens me. To watch them inhabit the life that owes them more. Then, guilt consumes me; I reckon my childhood that watches them doing the math all over again, the same picture I’m witnessing today. At that age, I couldn’t name the feeling—but now I recognize it as grief. Maybe I was pinaglihi sa sama ng loob, I was born with my Mama’s vulnerability, her fear of losing, her longingness. I was born with my Mama’s wistful sentimental yearning, sometimes it eats me alive—wondering whether it’s a gift or a curse.

In the same line, my cousin is on her malong’s five hundred and ninth sew. She said, her lulababay is on the brink of scraps—in fact, it’s almost beyond repair, “sukong-suko na nga,” she quotes. For some reason, her malong is dripped in memory, it was her handomanan from her Ina Lukés that was passed down to her, so she keeps it close to her even if it has a five hundred ninth jagged tear all over the seam.

Because it does feel like home.

So, I always bring my malong with me every time I watch cinema and, the thing is, I hate being inside the theater. It’s frustrating when you don’t hold the power to take a pause and search for the symbol’s implication, or to replay the scene because the humor was outrageous, or when you realize the importance of easter eggs from previous movies, series, and theories. It feels silly, whimsical even. These two unrelated rituals carry the same architecture of memory. The cinema is a dark room that suspends the world, it helps me escape for the next 2 hours from my lifelong painstaking responsibilities. Malong is threaded to pull my family into that silence. It’s a reminder that despite the moments for entertainment, there’s a story beneath my skin that still wants to be held. Cinema helps me forget, but the malong brings me back to who I am.

The movie was playing before me but the scene wouldn’t register in my mind, all I could hear was my Mama’s silence. My Dada’s stitching. The ache I inherited from them. There was a pang of guilt as I held my malong closer to me, lifted my feet from the ground and kissed my knees as it reached my chin. It’s nostalgic. Pagdamdam gani, ana sila. They passed me the baton I carry from my mother’s fears and my father’s grief, and all the quiet things they never said, but stitched into me anyway.

The sea is their home

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Fatimah Rafeeda Tajeer

Allaw pasakat muwan danta ma kalumaan ma Tawi-Tawi. The morning sun rose slowly over the sea and spread its light across the small Sama village floating quietly along the coast of Tawi-Tawi.

Tahik masi, sussi toongan a tandah leh ta deng ma reyoh kalumaan. The water was still, clear enough to see the fish gliding beneath the bamboo houses, while narrow wooden boats swayed gently, as if breathing with the tide.

Tima sat at the edge of their hut, her feet swaying in mid-air above the water. She was fourteen and infinitely curious about everything. Her family was Sama Dilaut, or Badjao – people of the sea. To them, the ocean was not a frontier, but home.

Her father, Akbar, prepared his small lepa, a slender boat carved from a single tree. He checked the fishing nets with practiced hands. Inside, her mother, Sitti, was boiling panggi, that’s what they call cassava, while humming a lullaby she had learned from her grandmother. Life was simple yet steady, like the rhythm of the waves below their home.

Tima loved mornings like this. Men paddling into deeper waters, disappearing against the endless blue; women behind, mending nets, washing clothes, or taking care of small children. The village smelled of salt and coconut-husk smoke, and though the world beyond the horizon felt far, their floating community felt complete.

Still, Tima often wondered what lay beyond the line where sea met sky. She saw kappal or bigger ships passing by filled with traders, visitors, or families leaving for city life.

“A pabalik bahah sigiya?’ Do they ever look back? She once asked her mother.

Sitti smiled softly. “Sampurahan a pabalik, sampurahan a maha na. Damikiyan, tahik mag pa saplag bang amin ingga sigiya.” Some do, some don’t. But the sea always remembers who belongs to her.

That answer stayed with Tima. The sea was gentle but could be cruel. Many villagers carried quiet stories of loss, like a father who never returned, a home destroyed in storms, a child taken by sickness when no doctor was near. Yet the Sama people endured, as they always had.

One afternoon, dark clouds gathered over the horizon. The once calm water shifted into restless waves. Akbar recognized the signs. “A ilu na baliyu. Engkotan bi lepa bi. A pasod bi kaanakan ni jalom.” A storm is coming. Tie the boats. Bring everyone inside.

Rain pounded upon the roofs of nipa and bamboo. The waves lashed at te stilts of their houses. Tima clung to her mother while thunder rumbled above. Outside, she heard her father giving commands as he battled the wind, securing their boat. Then a towering wave crashed into the side of their house, shaking it violently. Wood cracked. Sitti screamed for Akbar.

“Akbar! Akbar!!” But when the storm finally passed, he was nowhere to be found.

The sea was grey and dolorous for two days. Men searched coves nearby, calling his name. Only his small lepa was found half-broken, washed up among mangrove roots. The village grieved in silence. The Sama people never cried loudly, only praying in hushed tones, their eyes reflecting a pain each of them knew well. They lived with the sea, knowing the perils.

Tima sat by the shore, staring at the horizon beyond which her father once crossed. The water glittered under the sun, beautiful yet unforgiving.

“Anggay leh nu nga amah ku?” Why did the sea take him? She whispered. Sitti rested a hand on her shoulder.

“Halam bay ah leh tahik.” The sea never takes, she said softly. “A leh na ngalaynganan lang pabalik anu bay min iya.” It only calls back what has always been part of her.

In the weeks that followed, Tima helped her mother fish near the shallows. She had learned to steer the lepa and read the tide, and listen to the sea’s quiet warnings. The work was tiring, yet its rhythm soothed her. With every pull of the paddle came the soft splash of water. At such moments, she felt her father nearby, guiding her through the currents. At night, stars reflected on the water like scattered pearls. Tima thought of how her people had lived this way for centuries. The Sama Dilaut were born on the sea, lived on the sea, and returned to it. Their stories told of islands that lay afar, of storms that were survived, of love found between waves.

The sea was home and the teacher. It wanted patience and modesty. And, little by little, Tima understood that each tide carried not only sorrow but also strength. Months passed, and she grew into her role. Few girls her age could dive as fearlessly as she did, her body moving through the water like the fish she chased. She gathered shells and sea cucumbers to sell or barter for rice in the Bongao market. People said she had her father’s courage and her mother’s heart.

One evening, at sunset over the sea, Tima stood outside their home. The call to prayer floated from the small masjid, mingling with the soft slosh of water beneath the houses. Sitti joined her with a surian lantern.

“Amah nu war pamung na hadja na tahik bateh kaulluman baybay majatah, baybay madeyoh, sumagawa pabalik du iya.” Your father used to say the sea is like life, it rises, it falls, but it always returns.

Tima nodded. “A pabalik du kita.” And we return with it.

The Surian flickered across the village that night, their reflections trembling like stars on the water. And life went on fragile, yet strong, humble, yet full of grace. The sea had taken a lot, but it was still giving all: food, faith, rhythm, purpose. Tima’s eyes locked with the horizon, steady as the heartbeat within her. The sea whispered back, endless and unbroken, as always. Claiming her father had shaped her. To the Sama, the sea was not the end of life but life itself, boundless, mysterious, and eternal.

“Dikayuh ullow, mag andah du kita balik, Amah!” One day, we will see each other, Father!

Fi Amanillah – May Allah protect you.

My Path Home

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Nelson Dino

I gazed at the sea sparkling under the evening light. The lepa that is my home swayed gently with the Sanga-Sanga waves. The breeze brought the salty tang of the sea and the earthy scent of thatch, but my heart felt heavy. I am only seventeen, yet my eyes hold a sadness too deep for someone my age. Today, the news reached me—Sulu is no longer part of BARMM. We are separated. Like a blade piercing my soul, the sense of loss cuts deep. My mother sits beside me, mending the nets we just repaired, smiling, yet her eyes are sorrowful. I know she feels the same, though she says nothing.

“Lantri,” my mother’s voice is gentle, “don’t be too sad. But I understand… it’s heavy.”

I lower my head, my long black hair fluttering in the wind. “Inah… why must we be separated? Aren’t we part of the same history and the same culture?”

She sighs deeply. “This is the decision of people in the big cities. They don’t see what we feel. They don’t know how the lepa and this sea have shaped us. They only see maps and political lines.”

I look at the sea again. In my mind, I remember my grandmother’s stories of old Sulu—Sulu before all the modern laws and regulations. About small boats leaving the harbors carrying spices, salt, and cloth. About how our people sailed not just for trade, but to uphold dignity, and to defend our honor.

Since I was little, I have learned this history from a kissa—my grandmother’s narratives full of laughter, war cries, and tearful farewells. But now, that history feels hollow. Political lines separate us from the identity we have always preserved.

At school, I feel the change too. My friends speak of BARMM, of new identities, of opportunities, and limits. But I feel as if my soul has been sidelined. I have lost more than regional administration; I have lost a part of myself.

One night, when the moon reflects on the sea, I climb onto the deck of the lepa. My heart is too heavy to sleep. I gazed at the sky, as if seeking answers among the stars. The night wind carries my grandmother’s whispers, a voice that always calms me.

“You know, Lantri,” the voice echoes in my mind, “sometimes the world forces us to accept separation. But remember, this sea is still ours. Our traditions still live. Political lines may divide maps, but they cannot divide our souls.”

I lower my head, tears dripping onto my hands as I grip the edge of the lepa. I feel the warmth of the history my grandmother passed down, and slowly, my sadness is no longer pure despair. There is anger, yes, and loss. But there is also resolve.

In the days that follow, I begin to write. In a small notebook I carry everywhere, I write about the sea, about the lepa, about Sulu, and the homeland I love. I write for myself, for my grandmother, and for everyone who feels lost. The words become both a release for my grief and a bridge.

At school, when my teacher asks us to write an essay about our identity, I write wholeheartedly. I write about Sulu, maritime history, culture, kulintangan music, pis siyabit weaving, and how every lepa rowing at sea carries the stories of our ancestors. My friends listen, and some cry along. My teacher looks at me with admiration.

One afternoon, while sitting on the lepa, watching the orange-hued evening sky, I hear my mother calling from the stilt house. “Lantri! Come eat before nightfall!”

I stand, take a deep breath, and look at the sea. A cloud passes, briefly covering the sun. But beyond the cloud, light still shines through. I smile faintly. So too is our life—though separated, the light of our culture and history still shines.

I know the journey to accept this separation is far from over. The sense of loss still presses on my soul. But I also know that in every word I write, in every song I sing on the lepa, in every weaving I learn from my grandmother, Sulu remains alive. Sulu remains whole, even if the lines on the map have changed.

And that night, as the moon reflects on the sea, I write to the wind, to the sea, and to history: “You may separate us from BARMM. But you will never separate our souls. I will remember. I will write. I will carry this story, even alone.”

The lepa sways gently with the waves. The sound of water and wind becomes a lullaby for my soul. And for the first time since the news arrived, I feel a small peace. A peace born not from accepting separation, but from the resolve to protect my heritage, to ensure Sulu lives on in every story told, and in every pair of eyes that gaze upon the same sea.

I look at the sky once more. The clouds move, leaving a gap for the moonlight to shine brighter. As if nature itself writes, “Souls cannot be divided. Stories cannot be erased.”

And I know, even if the world separates us on the map, I will never allow our history and culture to be separated from my soul. Sulu remains mine. The lepa remains my home. The sea remains my path home.