In the Claws of Light

In wild solitude underneath the stars, Cebu dances to the beat of the night – the howling wind ebbs and flows, grazing the surface of calloused skin. It is as cold as the backseat of my mother’s car on the Sunday nights we’d drive home from the hospital. Outside, the roar of the city punctures a cavernous wound within its already deteriorating palisades – the ruggedness of bare hands pulling against flesh and bone, against indestructible sinew. Cebu, in all its glory, is an unforgiving fusion of fuss and clamor. The scent of violence buries itself underneath.

My mother would often endlessly muse about her fading and, ultimately, forsaken dreams of leaving home – aspirations washed away by vicious, undulating tides. “If only we had the money,” was a common itch that slipped past her tongue in a discernibly abrasive, yet rather choppy native accent; undeniably indicative of my mother’s ineradicable Filipino upbringing. Longing laces the edges of her throat and translates the words that surge into the familiar resonance of disappointment – meanwhile I remain still, labored breaths concealed within the darkness. In that moment, words became futile devices; my silence was the only solace I could muster.

Despite having lived in Cebu my entire life, my mother’s cancer diagnosis was what truly acquainted me with the city, with every conceivable nook and crevice hidden beneath. After her passing, I felt as though every corner of my hometown was yet another place with a waiting room I had once sat in – the sudden beeping of the hospital monitors, the piercing screech of hardwood doors pushing against tiled floors to welcome yet another patient, the mindless clacking of the cash machine accompanied by the monotonous narration of jumbled numbers. Enduring mementos which remained to mock me until, eventually, this city entirely spun itself into an aching reminder of what could have been, a colossal waiting room I would go on to spend my entire life dawdling in  – could the softness of a mother’s touch have helped quell the burning in my soul? Tell me, what was there left to be desired? To feel the tenacity of remorse tugging against the longing to forget.

My mother’s ambitions, however, didn’t fade away amidst the bitter gust of the wind, nor did it drift mindlessly alongside the smoke emanating from the burning candles atop a prayer altar — a once fiery yet fleeting fervor that should have been smothered against the unfeeling hands of fate miraculously survived through me. When does foolish longing turn to grief? Grief, I am told, one must learn to wear – in defiance, I let it consume me entirely; you don’t learn to fold grief in half nor merely tuck it in between the ridges of your ribcage, what you learn is how to lend a name to a body without want for it back. I found myself hopelessly and utterly enticed by the same longing that plagued my mother. I felt as though I could swim out for miles, stirring even the untouched ripples of the ocean. The yearning for freedom, the undeniable and persistent instinct for movement, tugged against fragile limbs – overwhelming ambitions of leaving home, running far far away and towards somewhere where the morning dew isn’t suffused with the relentless cawing of roosters, where the roads aren’t undeniably more fissures than they are pavement, or where the bustling karsadas (streets) aren’t laden with overflowing throngs of people trying their best to evade jolting against sidewalk kiosks laden with anik aniks (trinkets). Perhaps somewhere where the smell of rot isn’t overwhelming. 

Rot, my father once told me, is perfunctory — inescapable in the manner in which it is capable of bleeding through even the thickest of concrete. Rot, unbeknownst to my father, was the inconspicuous catalyst that astutely concealed itself beneath the walls of his courtroom, inevitably nursing an all consuming flame, leaving in its wake smoldering embers as forsaken skeletons.

My father had been temporarily delegated a judiciary position at one of the municipal courts in Cebu. The week before the incident, he had received a phone call from one of his higher-ups, apologizing for having forgotten that his assignment had surpassed the usual two-year term for acting presiding judges (in fact, by the time they had noticed their negligence, my father was already approaching his third year of service there). What was supposed to be the final week he would have to report in that courtroom erupted into three months in the hospital, two of which he spent recuperating in the ICU for third and second degree burns on his whole body, whilst my brother and I took turns sitting in the waiting room. When my father speaks of what has happened, with his throat sore and his voice rasping, when he recalls the sputter of flames thrashing the walls and sweeping across the ceiling, he speaks with an unprecedented tenderness. The roaring loudness of this city stood no chance against my father’s forgiveness. 

Yet, the clement lull of my father’s voice shifts the heaviness I feel within – I am afraid that the grief that has perennially inhabited my body must make space for the unaccounted rage I have consumed. The roaring loudness of this city stood no chance against his daughter’s wrath.

On the day of the courtroom fire, I had sat frightened in the middle of the school cafeteria, despite the bustling of fuss and clamor amongst students, the erratic rhythm of my constricting chest could not have been possibly eclipsed. Past the mindless noise, I could faintly hear the piercing and abrupt siren of the ambulance, I could see the blurred hues of red and blue reflecting against the glare of the scorching sun,  the thought of the rot could not get away from me — crawling within those walls, eating away at unsuspecting bystanders. The rot which eagerly devours — inescapable, unrelenting, merciless. Rot which could have been easily mistaken for tenderness, if the cleverness was unheeding. Yet, the rot – try as it might – could not eat away at the wrath of a woman scorned; as it eked an unwelcome refuge within the hollow cavity of my chest, anger surges like wrathful tides thrusting against stone, a desperate scrimmage to wash whatever semblance of gentleness within me remains ashore. When fate’s adroit fingers bear down against the fragility of pliant skin, what then will become of me? 

What must be one of the greatest cosmic mysteries of the universe is the unfathomable ability of fleeting junctures within human existence to leave utter destruction in its wake; how a sullen city could so adeptly — in spite of its vicious demeanor — redefine the meaning of home, how the roughness of the pavement that scraped against my knees on that soulless night underneath the scattered stars taught me strength more than any god ever could. Am I supposed to be grateful to have survived all of this? I worry too much that maybe all the past has ever taught me is to mistake violence for the abundance of love. 

Nevertheless, here is where I belong — where the soft glint of the light canoes through the window as the sun embraces the tide; tenderness still blooms amidst the rot. Where else can I be a child once more — unwrinkled and guileless, untouched by the callous hands of blight? Where, isolated amongst ourselves, my mother was all she was and could ever be? Where my father taught me kindness despite the harsh, blunt blow of cruelty? Nowhere else, other than here. Before fate’s rugged hands molded my fortunes into misfortunes; here, gold was once spun. First the reckoning, then the fall.

Cebu is a cruel city, yet the ache does not eclipse the gentleness of home.