Dumaguete Summer 2004

It was this time last year that 14 kids found themselves on the same ship together, trying to escape the horror that was Bohol. The tail-end of a storm was unleashing what was left of its fury on their boat. Tossed about like so much confetti, a child's toy floating helplessly in God's bathtub, poetry was the farthest thing from their minds. By the time they docked in Dumaguete, they'd left their stomachs somewhere back on the prow. They all just wanted to go home.

Manila was home to eight of the fellows, while the rest of them had come from different parts of the north and the south. What they didn't know was, a year later, they'd still remember everything that happened there, in cruel, vivid detail - two beautiful girls standing on the seawall, shouting at the ocean; Sawi's golden-green porcupine hair; lying in bed next to a woman who had become her mother, even there, thousands of miles away; hilarious text messages exchanged during workshop sessions; sleepy Sunday afternoons spent walking down the Boulevard; new friends sharing hamburgers at Sted's just before sunrise; and finally, the holy host of the moon sanctifying Mom Edith's house in Montemar. A year later, three of the Manileñas had found new jobs, while the boys from the South were themselves also gainfully employed. Only a child that summer, the youngest of them has become a willowy siren, now constantly having to refuse the many men who come knocking on her door.

And where was the troubled woman who had lost all faith in herself some months earlier? Now 25, she's happy to report that she's doing just fine. She's wiser now - love, she's learned, is a shy creature that has to be coaxed out of hiding. And that sometimes, one will be surprised by what or who will creep out of that shell: a hideous motorcycle-riding lech she'd rather forget, three or four men in suits, a rocker violinist, a bearded sitar player, and of course, her quiet poetess.

Like the others, she longs to go back to this place of healing, of wholeness, but she also knows she must first pay her dues to her craft. For now, she will dream it into being. In her sleep, she will ride the dolphins that she never got to see while she was there. When she returns, she will do so, with friends.

Photo by Myrza Sison.