When you're trying to catch up with work

When you're trying to catch up with work but the blues catch up with you so you start questioning your life choices, like why you'd rather be a writer who writes Hi, Name. I was illegally arrested and am detained now here at Concepcion Police Station in Tarlac with Name, Name, and many other artist-peasant advocates. We hope that you could extend any kinds of support and at least call for our immediate release via your platforms and networks (local / international) using the hashtag #ReleaseTinang83. For further context you may want to read this post (link) than be one who finds comfort in the sidelines of spectatorship: tHe WoRk oF thE wRiTeR is tO wRitE, peers out the window, draws rich material from the world.

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We called her Aling Paz

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We called her Aling Paz. Aling Pacita, not Aling Paz, my childhood friend's mother corrects. She wore her long hair in a bun and ran a sari-sari store near our house for as long as I can remember. With her lived Mang Mando, a man her age whom some people referred to as her brother, some as her lover. He manned the store on days when Aling Paz was away to buy supplies. Pagbilan, we would call. Ano yon? He would respond, annoyed. We would point to the item. This? He would ask. No. This? He would ask again.  Aling Paz cooked well. Lumpiang shanghai, palabok, spaghetti, champorado, ginataan—snacks we usually bought on Sunday afternoons. These dishes weren't originally for sale, though. She cooked them for car-owning people who visited on Thursdays and Sundays, for whom she also closed the store until their biweekly exercise of a religion with a long name was over.  There were years when Aling Paz owned a credit list of a mother and her daughter's subsistence—shampoo
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The Boy

The boy you used to carry in your arms is now with you in spaces we reclaim as a wave: the road is a flowing river toward the junction, now a clogged vein. I felt your pride as you were telling me this, at a time when you still dared to smuggle red posters on a train.  But you were intercepted at the station. The train left without you. 
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