In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?
Ranier Maria RilkeLetters to a Young Poet
I wrote poetry long before I learned to write prose. It was an accidental epiphany, a legacy bestowed upon us before Ralph Semino Galan disappeared from our memory. In Literature 101, he taught us to play with words. Brimming with confidence and hubris only a person from Diliman displays, he let his words soar and dive and play dead in front of the class.
While the rest paid no attention, there I was trying to make my infant words sing. Like a distant constellation that he was, Mr. Galan never said anything when my words finally became a balladeer. Despite being brushed off, I found myself a companion. In turmoil and distress; in great joy and unspeakable sorrow, my words became poetry, and I wrote them to tell my journey.
The verses were never broken. They were inked in pages of a Papemelrotti notebook and sang to me in solitude. A few souls were able to read my works. Some were so moved, they wrote their own poetry. In my desire to immortalize their words, I kept their verses hidden in my treasure chest.
There is infinity in letters. And for four years in the university, I was able to weave stories with nauseating sentences. It was only after I was about to wear my toga that the stanzas were replaced with paragraphs. The prose was born and matured, as sentences upon sentences nourished my blog posts.
To ask me to write poetry again is like forcing me to speak a lie and tell everyone that I'm a virgin. Gone are the juvenile musings, lamentations of lost puppy loves, and happy words meant to say pain. Everything is spoken straight from the gut nowadays. I could not even lift a page from my notebook without showing pity to my past works. With the way I learned to bend words, I fear of desecrating my old language.
Resurrecting this memory only meant one thing. Like in the past, when poetry seems to disappear, this is a foreword of the things to come. My mind is getting cluttered, and the toils of living steals whatever time I set for reflection. Writing has become an elusive leisure; a time will come I could not afford it.
And so just in case my space becomes silent, you know it was meant to be. With nothing to write save for a life snugged between the mundane and the insignificant.
Expect less words to fill this void from now on.
