*verdad

We live in a world where nobody stays in one place.

The gravity of better education took me away from Tabaco, a town made of sili and abaca and bolo's. It has been three years since I left my hometown yet the pavements I now walk on still seem unfamiliar to me, I drown in the crunch of the Metro's footsteps. The aroma of hot chocolate and dried fish in the morning, the mist against my windowsill, the sound of swaying branches, the banter of the nearby river against the dike, my mother's voice as she calls me by a younger name, these are the things I long for each time I say good night.

In the time that I have been here, I've been singing a happy song that only I knew about. Everybody sang along, nevertheless. But nobody really listened. The music lingered in the background like the echoing tremors of an unheard hymn. Fade.

I visited the places I walked on a thousand times but the withered roads bid their greetings to a stranger. The four-inch footprints of that little boy has become a hard stomp on the floor. Could I have changed beyond recognition?

Remember, through the eyes of that little boy, the rocks and stones gallop as he runs about in the backyard. He picks up a branch that fell from the mango tree and traces a maze on the soil that the wind blew away. He positions himself in, like a chess piece ready to take over a kingdom. With prudence, he puts one foot in front of the other on tiptoe, careful not to step outside. Three years ago, he solved the maze. I am back. How do I get back inside?

I will leave for Manila again tomorrow with the uncertainty that this place will remember me as I keep it in my heart.

Many times have I witnessed pictures of far places come to life. Ones that I used to just adore in elementary textbooks. I've trodden on the streets of people whose language I did not understand. Yet the streets I walked on as a child, young and free, they do not know who I am.

Farewell for now, Tabaco. The rocks that create the gravel of places under my feet are a monument to my journeys. You are one of them. But you are the rock that I can tell apart from the others. Yours are the scratches and texture etched in my memory, in my being. I will be going away but I will take you wherever I go.

You are my rock that remains steady.

I am the hand that forms a fist around you.