JFern.

I miss you, papa. More than I can understand on my own. It’s like I’m here but i’m also in pieces. So i walk around with these jagged pieces of heart glass that poke me in any random chance. 

Sometimes not at all, sometimes every color of the rainbow. 

I don’t know why the thought of you not existing anymore makes me cry and wail and thump wildly at my chest. 

Never—anymore — such permanent words. Echoing alone. Why? Why can’t you answer back? 

Tell me happy birthday. Tell me I’m the best. Tell me you’ve been practicing the speech you will make at my wedding. Tell me…tell me. I wanna hear your voice, damn it. Tell me I’m pretty. 

Papa, i’ve been feeling uglier and uglier these past few months. All this time, I thought I was just impetuously brazen and naturally secure, but no. It was because you always thought I was pretty and I always saw it in your eyes. Not at all like how others tell you you’re pretty out of consolation. 

You always said I could be prettier but you aways thought I was pretty, didn’t you? Because you kept saying it without me posing or fishing for it all this time when you were alive. 

Turns out you only need one person to convince you of your beauty. You were my one person, papa. And now you’re gone. I don’t know how to be beautiful anymore. 

 Mostly, I just want to emerge victorious like a butterfly. And shed this cocoon of half womanhood. 

Women, I find, need to be women. Not nice people. Not loving or kind. They need to be women. 

Women who nitpick and who would rather be late than look awful. Women who know secrets that men don’t. Women who know what it takes to be beautiful—or at least plain. And have preferences and routine. Who won’t make excuses and just diets and exercises. It’s not vanity, it’s clarity. It’s about doing what women do so men would realize that they need women as lover. Not friends, or secretaries, not a pure soul. 

High value women can’t be hidden. I think. 

I’m definitely a low value woman. So much so, even men find the need to point it out. What a pity. Sometimes I’m painfully aware of everyone’s pity. “Why is she like that?” 

If only I could do better. Maybe it’s too late. No one can claim a cocoon when they’re out to catch butterflies

Lately I’ve been thinking about getting a buzz cut and dyeing it lavender. 

I want to be delinquent and sink into my desolation. Choke on it and dye, in lavender. 

But I might never do it. Because the doing of it needs obsession, a hunger in the soul, an anger. While I, pour me out and still be wanting— I feel nothing. 

Maybe nobody knows how I feel. The nothingness, and being confused if I deserved it.

The endless, quality, radio silence. 

I used to think I was special. I used to have hundreds of conversation in my head, dreams under my belt, buzzing bees thru my fingers, love letters in my heart. I used to have many hearts, I used to have many faces. Now, growing old and staying the same has made me feel nothing. I have spent away my youth, and kept all the gifts I should’ve given away in exchange for life’s gems.

And now I’m thirty two. Given my unhealthy state, I can only live a few more years, probably dying before kissing someone for the first time. Just living to pay rent and groceries for my family in a dead end job I can’t afford to leave. Sleeping away my anxieties and regrets, because in my dreams, I’m always kissing. 

That mad kissing, that making love—love in the rain. Calling people, darling. Reviving romance singlehandedly with a steady, single finger. And piano keys, hammers hitting the string. And there I save people from tsunamis. And poof! 

I wake up. I’m always such an exciting person in my dreams, a real true heroine. That for the first few moments of waking up in the night (as fat people don’t sleep through to morning), I’d believe I was the stranger and she was real. For a few moments I ask the Lord if multiverses were real and if He pitied me enough to show me glimpses of a vibrant version of me. 

And not this toad-like being I occasionally see in the mirror when I bother to look. 

Sometimes, I tap into the source and dream about second chances and second careers. Maybe a job that can allow me to slowly travel. Maybe I can be a librarian or a book researcher—something lowkey like that. But then it means I can’t be a mother. Which then takes me to these words my parents told me. 

“Wag mo akong lokohin anak, walang lalaking may gusto ng babaeng puro kamot sa tyan.”

“Baka ako pa pwede manganak, hindi ikaw”

     “Sige, wag na lang manganak, mamatay na lang.”

“Mag-adopt ka na lang”

      “Kayo nga di ko maalagaan, adopt pa?”

And I feel the small hopes I allow myself, kill themselves off. For surviving. You’re never really hurt if you never really like-liked anything. Right?

If I was stronger, or flirtier, or had moxy—maybe this isn’t the end. But I’m not. So let me dye.