After Freedom

After "Pagpapakalaya at Pagsusulat: A Writing Workshop for Juvenile Delinquents in Bilibid". Held in Bilibid, Muntinlupa on 13 August 2006.

Just when we were about to leave, the sky fell. The inmates held up umbrellas for us, but despite their best efforts, thick sheets of rain still wet our backs.

As we returned to the main gate, Terry, one of the boys who participated in the workshop, walked beside me. Terry is 22, in third year college, but he has been in prison since he was 14. He would not tell us why he was there. We were striding past the cells they would have to squeeze into later that night - 60 to 100 in a room that was half the size of a small basketball court. Some of them have to sleep standing up.

Terry had once read a poem by Pablo Neruda, "Body Of A Woman". He said he liked it very much. I recited the lines that I could remember from it, there, in the middle of the prison grounds, under an umbrella held up for me by a young convict, my feet deep in muddy water and half my body soaked through with rain.

"Loving is a journey with water and with stars, with smothered air, and abrupt storms of flour," I recite, though the words felt out of place and my voice sounded very far away.

By the time we reached the gate, Terry was trying to think of something poignant to say. In the end, though, all he did was smile shyly, and shake my hand goodbye.