Written by Sofia Ysabel Mariano (aiahmbic), with photography by Beatrice Guray

for Nathalie—

You deserve sunshine, but I cannot give it to you when all you do is run into midnight rain, away from me, before I ever have the chance to wake up the morning after you say you love me. 

When I realized I loved my ex-wife, I told her:

I understand why stone clings to your skin—

even the ever-steady, the most seasoned, find

themselves on their knees if it meant

they could someday grasp onto whatever you might decide to give.

We had sat there, somewhere between a 

centuries-old clock tower and 

Kuya Manong’s sorbetes cart, recipe passed from brother to brother

until it’d reached someone who’d paid no mind to the

first word in the ‘dirty ice cream’ label

and delivered it to us directly, deeply enough to 

help us taste the same milk we’d soon harvest from my breasts

as our hands became mothers to a paradox,

(Tell me: how were we at all so tender

yet so desperate? 

I am afraid I will never understand but 

I said I’d never lie to you and it’s the last promise

I’ll ever keep for you,

 

so

the truth is: 

Time was always there. 

    i                      felt                it

        watching.       waiting)

conceived in the back of classrooms

and left for foster care when

the lights turned on

so it’s 7:00 AM

so our mornings went like this:

Traffic, no matter your punctuality. Suspensions when 

you’re already on the road.

 

When you take the jeep to Dimasalang, 

you arrive at a graveyard instead. The flowers

there hold funerals for anything we may have had,

though they’ll never rest in peace 

so long as you never call it what it was

I remember you’d either cry out,

 

“Para po!” louder than all

engines, 

   motors, 

       honking, 

          road rage 

or

         melt into the breath of your shame,

              asking the same women we ate dinner with 

                  to hand the driver your payment,

                      buried underneath receipts of illicit affairs—

Either way, you get off, 

hurrying into the campus chapel as if

you could ever be forgiven without first 

confessing:

 

“This is what I did” / i have lost her trust, i have lied

“This is who I hurt” / a wife, a wife, a wife. we loved each other. 

i told her this, and i let her believe it, even if i could not do so myself

—but your lips, stubborn and pouty as they were, lay 

pursed for pictures whenever I needed them, so no—

the Church can’t let you repent, not quite, and

I can’t keep pretending your hastily scribbled love letters on

Instagram stories are profound enough to rebuke proofreading anymore,

only stop looking you in the eye like you did with me

even during that lunar eclipse of strange significance 

to astrologers because

it’s the same as ever,

don’t you see?

I still wear violets in my hair to work / your home still reeks of lavender

and you still dress cowardice in one of intimacy’s old nightgowns

thrifted on a whim after a deep voice murmurs he likes them,

seven months after the original store’s been closed down,

forced to flee under some filed case of fraud

the same way you lie to yourself every time 

another boy gives you flowers knowing 

it’s going into the trash in a few hours, never

making it onto that shelf from your dorm where

you refuse to touch my first and last bouquet for you

because Nothing of truth is ever 

fully present— 

not enough— not with you—

to matter. 

So you still go back home to your legal husband in España

because that’s the only route you’ll ever know and want to know,

and I still avoid Dapitan whenever I pass through Dimasalang

in fear I’ll once again begin to grieve

how Dangwa looked last Valentine’s on our date,

witness to our faces glowing red and

unbridled like all the roses as if 

our blood moon could last longer than a week, 

immune to your spontaneous stopovers for

the shadows of all the guilt you carry—

never ceasing in neither lingering nor longing

for the love you always left, leave, and will leave 

stranded in red rainfall.

About the Author

Sofia Ysabel “Rosie” Mariano (@aiahmbic, as in iambic pentameter, derived and twisted from the last syllable of her first name) is a queer creative writer, student journalist, and mental health advocate from the Philippines whose works aim to act as a home for people’s dreams, struggles, love, grief, and overall experiences. She has been published in EPIC: The Musical Fanzine, UST’s The Flame, and Miriam College’s Chi Rho Publications, with other pieces for zines currently in development. In her free time, she enjoys experimenting with double-exposure photography, participating in yumejoshi and oshikatsu culture with her friends as both bonding and psychoanalysis of oneself and characters to translate into real-life positive change, and tarot reading.

About the Work

All Roads Lead to España (and other lies told on jeepneys), despite its title, is first and foremost an ode with many faces. It is a piece dedicated not just to the muse, but also to the truth of love. It honors love lost because of girls who could not step out of the shadows of their fear, and it honors love given by proud lesbians whose hands experienced never truly being held in the light. Through its retelling of a timeline wherein the author loved an avoidant who could not fully come to terms with her sexuality and instead settled for heteronormativity, the piece hopes to help lesbians questioning their worth because of male replacements — whether it is a matter of infidelity or disrespect succeeding a messy break-up — realize that they are not inherently destined to become a detour. For Type B, it has evolved into a collaboration with Thomasian artist, Beatrice Guray, who witnessed and played a major role in this train of thought’s existence — both as a literary work and as an emotional process of healing — and contributed the accompanying photographs as the backdrop of the piece.