28 Questions and Paper Napkins

A year ago to this day, August 29, 2008, I had one of the loneliest nights ever in Bacolod City. I was alone on a table at Dunkin' Donuts-Lacson, with no book, just a lowbatt cellphone and a half-empty gel pen, waiting for the clock to strike 2:15 AM so I could take the tryke to the South Ceres Terminal and board the first morning bus trip home. People came and went, some lingered, others wolfed down their food. None of them took courage to look me in the eye and strike a witty conversation. The newspaper was in the hands of a portly gentleman, looking positively enamored with what's inside those brackish pages. I admonished myself: The next time you get yourself stranded, be sure to bring your rambunctious cousins and the entire school library along.

Nevertheless, I remembered my half-empty gel pen, so I rose and walked towards the counter, asked for a wad of paper napkins, sat back, caught my nape with my left hand, knotted my brows, and wrote:

Will the winds rock me in my sleep?

Will the rain wash away my memories?

Will the sun dry up my days?

Will the night lay my foes to rest?

Will the trees bow to my humility?

Will the birds sing about my death?

Will the rainbow herald my soft renaissance into the world?

Will my friends write my story with their footprints?

Will my life become a penciled illustration in a child’s well-loved storybook?

Will the cars run the distance my too-young feet once covered?

Will city lights dim when I blink goodbye?

Will the poets bleed verse when they remember my name?

Will lightning carve my name on a mountain that knew the weight of the skies too?

Will God give me a cross when I ask him for a coffin?

Will love be like a sick dove when my iron heart manages to trap it in?

Will music grow arms and feet in the still-death dance floor of my mind?

Will Cassandra talk about the past when I tell her I’m scared of things to come?

Will the angels soil their robes when I ask them to dig up my sins?

Will Summer cry in torrents when my soul chooses Fall and my heart freezes like Winter?

Will love look at me and see why I see even if I’m not looking, even if there’s nothing there?

Will my phone stop ringing in my imagination?

Will hot chocolate taste like the sea when my tongue couldn’t tell anymore what is sweet?

Will my dreams sprout wings when they break free from my mind?

Will my poems take root in the hearts I long to have?

Will my voice drift unheard in the breeze of history?

Will Spring sing mournful songs when I’m no longer around to hear them?

Will the End cease to birth New Beginnings when I’m no more and I couldn’t go on?

Will life be different when I’m gone?

Those 28 napkins were lost to me forever just hours after I took them home with me from the doughnut shop. In my hurry to jump into bed, I left them in the pocket of my jeans. The woman who does our laundry took my jeans off the "to-be-recycled hook" and did her job. How history can be reduced to a lump of dried wet tissue! But the heart remembers. Even the beauty of loneliness lost can be reclaimed. It all came into being a year ago to this day. But I still have these songs, in a place where neither exhaustion nor a laundrywoman can take them away.