In Antipolo, You Can Find a Museum
By Abner Dormiendo Translated By Ethan Chua Translated from the Filipino
I was dragged to by my feet, memories misled me with their leavings, an engkanto made my native city strange. Meaning, Samantha, I’ve been brought here again, facing a painting I can’t comprehend: is its subject love or disaster? In times like these when the wind is muggy and the cars parked by city hall rumble their boredom, it’s as if everything’s the same. Plus, I don’t have the strength or the time to divine distinctions, make out each shape and think, yes, this means something to me. Like when I looked at the ceiling in the room of our last meeting and whispered to myself, this is it. This is the art of all parting— your shadow squeezing into your jeans, the creak of a door I wished wouldn’t close. Each line and curve of recollection’s architecture was screaming your name. Your face a painting and I the wall on which, by a hook, it hung.
