How we love spending our lifetimes pointing

fingers so we don’t have to peel our skin. I

remember how my father was thrown into jail:

I was in sixth grade, the volume of my earphones

loud enough to block the rain dropping from the

sky. I went outside only to find smashed guavas

decaying in the streets. That mustn’t be the rain,

I thought as I received a phone call from an

unknown number. Nasa kulungan ang tatay mo. Inaalam

pa namin kung paano siya makakalaya. I wouldn’t

have known my father was wrongfully accused

because he has a habit of leaving for hours and coming

back only when the sky closes its eyes. He left when

I slept during afternoons; he left my mother,

disappearing for months, coming back to say he

had a job elsewhere building homes. My aunt came

in a later day to care for me because who would’ve

thought that a sixth grader cannot cook or wash their

own clothes? Was it a home my father built if it’s

made out of wires and sticks? In this way, I

learned to leave quietly. Tracing my footsteps in the

airport, as if there are hidden snare traps underfoot. I’ve

learned how to cook for someone, wash their clothes,

and disappear like a phantom in the wind. Tears

never came when my father returned. It happened on

a random weekend. My earphones were loud again

when he arrived, cleaning up the guavas souring the

concrete, fruit flies migrating to another garden. I

left the house two years after that, as if he learned that

with his leaving comes the pain of it being done to

him, too. Now I watch the back of your shoulder melt.

At some point, I might mark you with my wraithlike

touch. Will you pick up the fallen guavas? Will you be

the one to set up the traps? Will you cook me breakfast and

wash my clothes? Will you mistake me for someone who

watches raindrops fall so he won’t hear the phone ring?