On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about I'm like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune
But I hear the voices say

***

Each sunrise that blooms, blossoms and bleeds out is a series of colors that change only with the order one joins the game. It’s sky blue if you join first, purple if second, yellow if third and finally orange if fourth. As far as she could remember, he has never created a game and thus claimed the color dark blue. Whether it’s because she always volunteers to create a game first or their chinky-eyed friend is too frustrated to wait for a game to be created whenever they lose so he creates it himself, she will never know.

Instead of each setting sun ghosting through the blue-orange skies with the promise of another laughter filled day the next time Apollo rises, it’s now a series of blog post representing a number with which he measures his days. She has noticed the change in the posts. When that number was relatively large, the posts (at least in the non-emo blog) were either relatively happy and in I-will-shrug-everything-off mode or romantic dabbles about who knows who, but now as the number fades away, the posts are more personal, more emotional.

She wonders if a day passes when he forgets to count.

***

It’s not the first time he skived off his classes (or what’s left of them) for the noise-splashed freedom of the tambayan. It’s become usual for her to arrive and find him there, drawing or scribbling or eating or drawing.

“Naayos mo na ba yung papers mo nyan?” she asks.
He shakes his head, replies that he doesn’t even want to think about it.
“Ignoring it won’t make it go away.” She replies as-a-matter-of-factly, rather insensitively.

Perhaps too insensitively. She has told him that his posts are poignant, but she has never told him that she feels sorry about his situation, not even shown a bit of sadness for him directly. Maybe a part of her, the one who doesn’t forgive easily, still sees him as the guy who snubbed her for so long due reasons unknown or don’t want to be known.

Unlike her though, he has always been forgiving. Now he acts like nothing happened. He talks to her freely without the slightest hint of caution, gives hear a heads up every time there’s dinner or an EBS, comforts her about her failing situation. The way she sees it, when he leaves, he wants her to be a good memory.

Sometimes she feels like she doesn’t deserve it.

***

‘Sorry’ is a word that sounds distastefully foreign on her tongue. She tries to mouth it every now and then but she can’t get used to the disjointed syllables jostling through her teeth. The word ‘sorry’ to her equates to images of mistakes and guilt, and Martin.

Peter is the name she gave that stuffed bear she received two Christmases ago. Everyone else calls it Ondoy because she left it near a window the weekend of Ondoy and it turned from a polar bear into a black bear. Peter slash Ondoy sits quietly with Bloobee, Carlos, Kirk, Tigger, Rufus, Christopher, Adrienne, Misha and the dozen other stuffed animals in a corner of her room.

Her mom asked last Christmas if she wanted to give Peter slash Ondoy away to charity. She shrugged mindfully and said no. And then for some reason she wondered whatever happened to Pokey, that pillow who came with Peter slash Ondoy.

As far as she can remember, she hasn’t said sorry for what she did to Pokey. Maybe one day, when ‘sorry’ doesn’t seem so exasperating, she finally will.

***

He says that they are close again. She’s not sure if she can agree. Then again, closeness has always been arbitrary.

These days she’s all about that pretty boy angel with the smexiest lips on heaven and on earth who is totally clueless about the dynamics of porn, or that German basketball player with the perfect set of teeth who is always so close but never really quite gets to the championship, or that French UFC welterweight champion with the most beautiful blue eyes who made it crystal clear that he is not impressed with your performance. If she’s not talking about them, she’s blogging about them. You’d think she doesn’t care enough to remember anything unrelated to the aforementioned men.

But she does. She remembers that PC game about cars, that freaky movie about genital anomalies, that day when Kamaru made a total idiot of himself.

And she just hopes that he didn’t miss that look in her eyes when out of the blue she bought him a plate of tacos last time.

With extra tomatoes.

***

Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry…don't you cry no more

-Carry On My Wayward Son, Kansas
Supernatural Opening Theme

Just because I listened to this song over and over and over while writing this.