It is getting to be a habit, this three-hour sleep. I woke up at
2:45 a.m., listening at first to the sound of parrots imitating the sound of
humans and the Gregorian chant imitating the voice of angels. Then, I turned
off the music and listened to the streets that never sleep.
The streets have many stories to tell, but never spoke. Others
spoke for them, the blood of suspected addicts for example, still cries for
justice, long after it was backed by the heat underneath and the sun above it.
The dirt too, and the dog shit, cursed as people stepped on them, and they
fumed even after being carted away, or conveniently covered with sand. There’s
blood and stink in the streets of Marawi and they too are shouting stories,
muted by the silence of the authorities. There is a deafening quiet in the
news, in the mimes, and the memes.
No one seems to listen, and people pass by, hurrying to go to
places, in quick steps, and when interrupted in any way, utter monosyllabic
curses repeated many times over, that it becomes a sentence with no specific
subject and no defined predicate. Winds, stronger than their voices, blew the
stories away, and brought them to the sea, where the mermaids kept them as
songs, composed by others, from a distance, where the grass was green, once. And
then i listen to the silence. I listen to the silence of the flowers.
Virginia Jasmin Pasalo, Philippines
