A letter home

photo by jon roberts




Dear Anna.

I'm sorry if I didn’t get you right the first time. What I get for not looking back.

Pigcawayan is a long way back and since family I was closest to -- my mother, my grandparents (two sets) and an aunt-- are all departed, there’s nothing there left that I love except the graveyard, which I heard will be bulldozed in a little time soon. High school wasn’t so happy a time for me, you know that, and I have little to connect with as far as my high school classmates and friends are concerned. I have a few good memories of people, can't remember if you were one of them. But one day, I will go back to Pigcawayan. So much of me is buried there.

When you said you’ve read all of me, it was like oh, so someone from down there reviewed my career and had taken a peep at the shape of my soul, too? that should be nice. Our country should know a bit of us before we depart, don’t you think so? But understand that I’m rather long estranged from home and I’d like to believe that I had gone continents. I am honored by your good appreciation of me but if you knew what I know, you wouldn’t like me very much. Happens all the time, even with those who swore fealty, sad planet this.

You want to know something? I don’t miss them.

I want to excuse myself from whatever it is you want of me. Besides, I love someone. She’s okay by me. The rest would be excess baggage. But more than anything else, I love my art, my writing. Beside all that she’s nothing too.

I will probably die alone, my shadow high above these walls. How glorious.