It’s always the silence of the island nights that makes it harder. When the moonlight filters through the coconut trees, and the river sings its endless lullaby, I feel the weight of this life more than ever. The air smells of wildflowers—kalachuchi and ilang-ilang—but even their sweetness can’t soften the ache in my chest.
Loving you here feels like trying to hold water in my hands. The harder I try, the more it slips away. By day, we’re strangers in the marketplace, nodding politely if our families cross paths. Your father asks my father about the fishing, my mother greets your mother with a forced smile, and we pretend we don’t know each other beyond that. But we do. God, we do.
I know the sound of your laugh when you’re too tired to keep it quiet. I know the way your fingers tremble when you’re nervous, how your eyes soften when they meet mine. I know the way you look at me like I’m something more than the shame I’ve been taught to carry. And I know the way it feels to kiss you by the riverbank, hidden behind the bamboo grove where no one will ever see.
But we can’t hide forever.
Every glance over my shoulder, every hushed whisper in town when someone sees us too close, feels like a knife pressed to my back. It feels unfair that we have to live like this—dodging our own shadows, pretending there’s nothing between us when the whole island seems to conspire to keep us apart. They say the river sees everything, that it carries secrets to the ocean, but I wonder if even it would judge us.
My family prays for me every night, candles lit beneath the balete tree, asking for salvation they don’t know I don’t need. They think the softness in my voice, the way I linger when the other boys laugh about girls, is something that can be fixed. And maybe, on some level, I’ve started to believe them. Maybe this is something to be ashamed of. Maybe we are the sin they say we are.
But when I see you, all that shame fades, just for a moment. In your arms, I feel less like a sinner and more like a boy who just wants to love and be loved. I feel like the world could be different, like we could be different—if only the weight of their eyes wasn’t always on us.
Still, the fear remains. What would happen if they knew? If the town, with its mango trees and sampaguita bushes, found out about the two boys who meet by the river every evening? Would they stop speaking to our families? Would they cast us out? I can’t bear the thought of my mother’s tears, of your father’s anger, of the whispers spreading through every corner of this place we call home.
So we stay quiet. We bury our love in the same soil as their expectations. And it’s killing me.
It’s not fair that the kalachuchi blooms without shame, that the river flows freely to the sea, while we are left to hide something so simple, so human, so beautiful. It’s not fair that loving you feels more like a battle than a blessing. It’s not fair that every moment we share is shadowed by the fear of losing everything else.
Some nights, I dream about leaving this island. I imagine us somewhere far away, where no one knows us, where no one cares. Somewhere we can laugh out loud without covering our mouths, hold hands without looking over our shoulders. But then I wake up, and the palm trees are still here, the river still sings, and the world still feels too small for a love like ours.
If only they could see us the way we see each other. If only they could understand that what we have isn’t something to be ashamed of. If only love could be as simple as the wind that carries the scent of flowers through the air.
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