He reaches into the sunlit canvas; nothingness pulls him into the portrait of the child and her swing. His hands seem to be made of charcoal. “Welcome familiar face”, an old man’s voice whispers into the fleeting wind. Still rattled by the sudden turn of events, he explores this unusual new world.

The man squints his eyes, trying to sort out his thoughts. He washes his face and stares at himself in the mirror. Bloodshot. Groggy. Pathetic. Useless. He Smiles, and grabs his towel. He guessed it was roughly 3 to 4 am. “Lunchtime” he whispered to himself. He checked empty cupboards, and the empty fridge.

He tries to talk to the child playing on the swing, “what are you doing here?” he utters. The child looks at him, goes down from the swing and runs toward him. He is embraced by the little girl, “Your daughter” an old man’s voice exclaims. He holds the hand of the girl, and explores this odd world made of charcoal. A static world, bland… boring… He turns to look at the girl, “she’s smiling eh…”, he whispers to himself, as the girl smiles at him enthusiastically. This world felt surreal… it felt cold and… scary… but somehow looking the little girl he felt… relief. He plays with the girl at the swing. “Looks like she’s having fun” he thought to himself. “Both of you look happy” an old man’s voice mentions in a soft voice.

He glances over the portrait’s corner, first a droplet, then it seemed to flow out like a stream. Red liquid. Blood.

“But you killed her didn’t you?”

The mesmerizing world with the playful girl freezes…..

“Free time is over!!” exclaimed a security ward officer.

                The asylum doors close on the man once more…

The sound of a droplet…  Echoing through the caverns of my consciousness. The stillness of my thoughts encompassing surges of emotions. The deafening silence engulfs me, as if oblivion itself became manifest. My skin shivers, “its probably the cold air, yeah… maybe…” My senses go into overdrive, one memory after another overloading my mind. Eternity seemed to pass me by. I try to compose myself, arrange my thoughts, and make sense of what’s going on. Then, a flash of blinding light, then… Darkness.

A violin was playing across the hall, my heart swayed with each note; each tone reaching the far reaches of my soul. I went outside and asked “who’s playing?’ “Oh my, I apologize, for disturbing you, I forgot to close the door.” A young lady in her early 20s demurely said. “Not at all, you were playing magnificently.” She seemed taken aback by those words, she looked down on the floor and replied with a tinge of disbelief “Surely you’re joking, I… I.. I’m not good enough yet” She was suddenly teary-eyed.  There was something about her eyes… I tried to ask what was wrong, but words escaped my lips. As I stared into her emerald eyes, I felt… lost, I felt despair, sorrow filling me to more than I can bear. Her eyes sparkled with beauty, and yet it seemed like a façade to hide her loneliness within. “Anyway… I have to go, I have things I need to attend to.” She replied, breaking the silence, with a smile. I wondered how she managed such a beautiful smile, and have those sorrowful eyes at the same time. I could only manage to nod and smile back, we parted ways. As I lay on my bed, I kept wondering why I’ve never seen her before, why I never noticed her. I’ve been living in this apartment complex for 6 months now, who would’ve thought I’d have a neighbor like that. “Shoot, I forgot to ask her name…” , I thought to myself as I drifted off to sleep.

A week passed, as I came home one night, I heard it again. My heart pounded, beating faster and faster…  The melody understood me, it echoed my emotions. I felt a strange familiarity to it. It was sheer bliss, and yet… I felt emptiness. I searched for the sound until finally I found her again. She was standing on a hill gracefully playing her violin. I stood frozen, mesmerized by the sight of her,  “beautiful” I thought to myself.  She played with such elegance… she… played with such sorrow, I caught a glimpse of her face, she was weeping while her eyes were closed as she played. I went to her, and grasped her hands. They were trembling vigorously, she was a little startled, then she looked at me. She smiled “ah! So we meet again” she said, as she tried to hide her trembling hands. She smiled as if, she wasn’t crying awhile ago. It pained me to see her like this, “Stop this” I told her. She was probably about to say, “Stop what?” but as she looked into my eyes, she knew what I meant.  She was wearing this smiling façade for such a long time, it seemed like it was a normal part of her life now. We sat on the hill, staring at the night sky. It was unusually starry, and a light drizzle of rain somehow managed to sneak under the stars.  I held her hand, fearing she might crumble if I let go. After a while, she gave a sigh, she told me about the violin, she told me about the melody, she told me about her story. 

She was weeping again, but somehow it felt different, a huge load seemed to have been removed from her shoulders, she wept out of relief, out of the gush of emotions rushing out of her. She played her violin once more, then smiled with sincerity, the façade was shattered. “I think… I can let go now”  she told me.  I held her hand as we went back home. Our eyes met once more, I gave a sigh of relief, and left for my own room.

“The violin was a gift from mother” she told me, as if she was digging out her very soul to unearth these memories. “I always did love violins, the memories they invoke, and the emotions they made to surface were things i found great beauty in.” She said with a tinge of sadness in her tone. “We were always close to each other, we only had each other as family, we had no one else to help us out.  She was everything to me.” Her eyes were welling up as she spoke. “I think you’ve already guessed by now, she passed away already. She was frail, after working long hours so we could survive.” She spoke in an ever softer tone. “She earned enough to buy me a violin, and told me to play for her one day.” “I never did get enough time to learn a melody; she passed away too suddenly after that. I never got to play her a song.”

She played her melodies, hoping it’ll reach her.  She played to remember precious memories. And then afterwards I told her….

I knocked on her door the next morning, I was still racking my brains “what did I tell her last night that made her feel better?” I thought to myself, “never mind, anyway more importantly I’m not going to forget to ask her name this time” The door was apparently open after all, I went inside, and there was nothing, no furniture, no bed, nothing that would indicate that someone was living here. I spoke to the landlord, and he told me that this room was never occupied at all. I went back to my room, shaken by the turn of events, I washed my face and looked at myself in the mirror, I saw her… She was me. And then.... I woke up….

Beads of sweat were dripping down my face,

“a dream…”

“more memories of the dead…”

“this job will really kill me one day…”

My name is Death.

Explanations:
The humanization of Death as a person who experiences the emotions of those who's souls he is tasked to take away. The suffering Death has as he relives the life of the soul.
Given with minimal periods, and an extreme amount of compound sentences to quicken the pace of the story.

from: rebanene

SEVEN THINGS THAT SCARE YOU
1. Spiders... Big Ones
2. Deep Waters
3. Not Being Able To Breathe
4. Closed Spaces
5. losing people i care for
6. not having a dream to reach for
7. not being able to do anything to help people i  care about

SEVEN THINGS YOU LIKE THE MOST
1. Rain :P (gaya gaya nene)
2. competition
3. learning interesting points of view of things we normally hear
4. talking and just being around people i care about
5. thinking... more like contemplating
6. Sportsssssssssssss
7. Sleep in my bed

SEVEN IMPORTANT THINGS IN YOUR ROOM
1.  iPod ko... T_T injured, nasa macstore
2. my computer
3.  my phone... i guess...
4.  my giraffe stuffed toy (yeah.. a stuffed toy)
5.  my "wanted" notebook
6.  my giant pillows
7.  a really old picture of my siblings and parents

SEVEN RANDOM FACTS ABOUT YOU
1. i'm always sleepy
2. i like badminton and basketball
3. when my thoughts spill over, i write some literature
4. i can change my voice into almost anything i want
5. im extremely flexible... (for a guy at least)
6. i'm a Christian that needs a growth spurt
7. i listen to a lot of piano instrumentals

SEVEN THINGS YOU PLAN TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE
1. to have a patisserie
2.  learn a heck of a lot of languages
3.  learn to play the piano and violin
4.  understand most things (im pretty greedy, i wanna know everything)
5.  to play a song (using #3) and read poetry to the one i love
6.  to lead my family and friends to God of course. (and whoever else i can get to hitch a ride)
7. to be someone dependable and mature, so i wont be bothersome to others

SEVEN THINGS YOU CAN DO
1. i copy stuff people say after about half a second, it actually sounds like we're talking at the same time. giving an impression that i can read your mind.
2. when i sit on the floor, and do that PE exercise of reaching your feet. i usually end up going over my toes and reaching my heels.
3. i can run into a crowd of people and not get hit(i think its the reflexes)
4. play sports for hours on end
5. i can probably sleep through any circumstance (position even)
6. cook canned tuna.. (wooopeeee!!!)
7. control every little movement, expression, and words

SEVEN THINGS YOU CANT DO
1.  Filipino (the subject, not the language)
2.  give up on anything i try to do
3.  play bowling well *tear*
4.  swim in deep water
5.  stop worrying about other people
6.  fly (betcha didnt know that one)
7. im not very good at remembering names of people

SEVEN THINGS THAT ATTRACT YOU TO THE OPPOSITE SEX
1. someone with a lot of facial expressions
2. lips
3. confidence (same narin un sa appeal)
4. someone i can relate to
5. eyes
6. interesting conversations
7. a nice smile

SEVEN THINGS YOU SAY THE MOST
1.  tae
2.  aw mehn
3.  shet
4.  krafo
5.  ohhh emm geee
6.  weeeeeee
7.  lol

SEVEN CELEB CRUSHES
1. nicole kidman
2. kristin kruek
3. Julianne Moore
4. nicole hernandez
5. kate beckinsdale
6. jeon ji hyun
7. ayumi kinoshita

                Putting thought into paper, placing dreams on a canvass. Pencil stroke after pencil stroke …. Hoping and yearning, feeling utter despair, searching for something…  something difficult to truly describe, something hard to say, yet something known when felt.

After another pencil line is drawn, another curve, another shade, the dream becomes a little more of reality. The whiff of smoke becomes manifest, slowly I begin to create an image, an image of what is a dream, an image of what is hope.

The portrait… never finished, never fully done, always changing with no definite end… there is no real finish… An image uniquely my own, an image only truly and fully appreciated by one holding the pencil, looking on at his canvass…

An Image kept in my mind, and a portrait protected in my heart. I know not when or if it will ever be finished …

And yet…

I still hold on to the pencil, I’m still looking at the little canvas, and still hoping to see the masterpiece the canvass will eventually hold…

It's melody making my heart vibrate. It’s sound like that of flowing water. With every key pressed, every tone heard, I feel my soul relishing the moment, a moment of bliss, a moment that the weight of the world is removed from my shoulders, a moment which breaks my shackles and sets my being toward freedom.

And for but a moment a glint of hope can be seen over my oblivion. Oh the sweet music that reaches my ears, my skin… my heart.

But alas, the moment is but a breath and soon the melody slows down, the sound fades away, my heart returns to earth. Each moment that passes seems all the more difficult, each breath heavier, each fleeting second like eternity. I’m still here, I’m still stuck to where I’ve been trapped all this time. My shackles remain, my darkness remains… So I lay still, lying in wait…

Waiting for someone to play the melody one more time…

A piping hot bowl of champorado with oats, along with freshly baked pandesal to dip it with. During rainy mornings, mother always mixes a batch of champorado and adds a pandesal bag beside the bowl. On these days, as I wake up to the cold morning air, since it was after or during rain, it was extremely hard to wake up so I would always slowly find my jacket, wash myself, and finally go downstairs towards my mother’s call to eat breakfast.

    I always loved the rain, but not because of a particular memory, I simply thought of the rain, as something elegant. Something that one could almost touch and feel, but it breaks up the moment we touch it. The mixture of appreciation for its beauty, and the coldness it gives off never fails to make me return to memories of old. Memories of long forgotten pasts, memories that have stained me, although these memories were all painful it was a reminder to me on what I have gone through. As I finally sit down, and take my first scoop, blowing away some heat, and take my first sip. I could always feel the first wave of champorado stream down from my mouth to my throat and to stomach, a sudden injection of heat coursing through my body, seemingly opposing the cold of he rain. For a moment a sense of relief comes over to me. As the cold air, submits to the heat of the food. Giving satisfaction to my tired body, and with the streaming down inside, I always feel a little more energized, a little more inspired, and a little less sorrowful about the memories evoked by the rains, in its stead memories of certain memories rise, memories with my loved ones, memories that break out a smile from me.

I remember this same chair that I sit on, with mom feeding me spoonfuls of champorado as she tried to warm me down from the bitter storm that was ravaging the country back then, I forgot the name of the storm, but as it tore through the city, ravaging our house, parts of our roof were flying off, parts of the house paint were chipping off, but here inside the house everyone was still there, everyone was safe and everyone was happy enjoying a champorado meal. Its unusual perhaps that in my family we almost never eat together unless it’s a special occasion, I guess this one was special. Since no one was able to go outside, we just ate as a family trying to warm our bodies with the sweet smelling champorado. I break off a peice of pandesal dip it into the champorado and take a bite, and realize that as the elegant rain brings me my days of sorrow reminding me of what I lost, this little champorado-filled bowl and pandesal  reminded me of what I still have now, and I guess gives me some energy to appreciate it, even for a little while. As I finally finish my bowl, I feel a deep satisfaction in myself.

And politely ask for seconds.....

I wish I had wings…

To soar high above….

To see the clouds…

To feel the wind in my face…

To feel… free…

I wish I had wings…

To escape from the sorrows of the world…

To take myself away from reality….

To move closer to another horizon…

To feel… free…

    Maybe sometimes one isn’t meant to reach a dream, to reach that ever elusive hope. I wonder if most people see religion as an escape. An escape to give their lives meaning. An excuse to say… well if I believe this… ill finally have a sense of purpose, and maybe if I believe this long enough.. maybe I really will find happiness.

    What if everything everyone has ever believed in was wrong, what if this world you’ve built up all around yourself, all crashed down right in front of you? What then? What of your dreams to reach your dream? What of the smiles wasted on false hope? Was it worth it? Was it worth knowing the uncertainty, fooling yourself to think it to be true, and drinking in the wine of your own lies?

    Was it worth lying to yourself, just to be happy even for just a moment…??

I’m scared of so many things….

Scared of failure, scared of things yet unseen…

Scared of an ever present darkness…

Scared of a light gleaming right before my eyes…

Scared of missing the glint of hope that can save me from all of this….

I forget of so many things…

Forget of dreams unfulfilled…

Forget of moments of joy, and of memories of old….

Forget of sorrow and the feeling of oblivion….

Forget of tears that had gone through my cheeks…..