Fragments of the Quiet Mind

There are goodbyes that shatter, and then there are silences that echo. Not all endings announce themselves. Some just slip quietly into the background — like static you stop noticing until you realize the music’s been gone for a while. No slammed doors, no explanations. Just a gradual erasure, like watching ink fade from a letter you read too many times. You keep checking your phone, not because you expect a message, but because some part of you still hopes silence can be broken like a fever. Unspoken words hang heavier than shouted ones. The things we never said take on lives of their own — mutating into doubts, rewrites, what-ifs. You rehearse arguments you'll never have, play both sides until you forget which one was yours. And isn’t that the cruelty of silence? That it offers no shape to mourn, no moment to collapse against? Just a formless absence where meaning used to live. Closure is a myth we invented to survive unfinished stories. But silence — silence tells you there was...

  Isn’t it fascinating that, in Plato’s Symposium, there’s this old myth about how humans were once these incredible, whole beings—with two faces, four arms, and four legs—only to be split in half by Zeus? The story goes that we were separated not out of cruelty, but to give us a sense of purpose—to spend our lives searching for that other part of ourselves. It’s strange how this ancient story tugs at something deep within us, doesn’t it? Like it speaks to this buried ache we all have, this need to find that missing piece, as if by doing so we’d be whole again. It’s really both romantic and tragic at the same time. We spend so much of our lives chasing after connections, hoping for those fleeting moments where we think we’ve found that lost unity. And yet, it’s not just about finding another person—it’s about finding that elusive sense of completeness we think we’ve lost. Every relationship, no matter how short or imperfect, gives us a glimpse of that fullness we’re after. Just fo...

There you were again. Bittersweet. Mysterious. Smelling faintly of burnt hope and toasted almonds. I couldn’t place you, but somehow I already missed you. You arrived on a Tuesday — not a remarkable Tuesday, mind you. Just one of those limp, mid-tempo days that smelled faintly of budget cuts and existential dread. I found you sitting there, steam spiraling like a secret trying to escape, whispering things to my tired soul like: "You’ll survive this spreadsheet." "You are more than your inbox." "The meeting could’ve been an email." Was it your warmth that unraveled the corners of my anxiety? Or your bitterness — so artfully balanced, like heartbreak in a tuxedo? Loving you felt oddly familiar, like recognizing a skyline you’ve only ever seen in a dream. Or a crush on someone who doesn't exist — but has a Spotify playlist somehow eerily aligned with your breakup mood. I started timing my mornings around you. Measured my sanity by your pre...

Some ghosts wear zippers instead of faces. There was a time I couldn’t go anywhere without you. You were comfort on bad days, silence when words felt too sharp. You made cold mornings softer. Loneliness easier to carry. I didn’t question you. You were just there. Always. We went through everything together—late-night walks, grocery store breakdowns, bus rides where I tried to disappear. You hugged me when no one else knew how. I kept you even when you started falling apart. Even when I knew you were past your prime, unraveling at the edges, losing color in places that used to feel like home. You stopped fitting, but I made excuses. Called it loyalty. Called it love. And still, I held on. Maybe out of memory. Maybe out of guilt. Or maybe because I was afraid of what letting go might say about me. But the truth is— I don’t miss you now. Not really. Not who you’ve become. You're stretched out. Sagging. Smell like an old version of me I’d rather forget. You don't ho...

In the shadowed chasms of night, where souls are tethered, Echoes stir, deep torrents of forgotten desire, A lover's lament, drowned in celestial fire. Beneath the moon's pulse, two hearts together weathered, Bound by lunar tides, by ethereal devotion, Caught adrift in a sea of star-kissed emotion. In the cool glow of silvered beams, they wove their tale, A palace of passion within the night's frail veil. Yet fate, that unseen hand, tore their woven dreams, Ripping through the sky with silent, shattering screams. Now they wander, lost in the night's aching refrain, The moon, a witness, cradles their endless pain. The moon—silent mirror to a soul’s hidden scars, Searched for its reflection among the distant stars. But in the shimmering mockery of light, It taunts with truths forever out of sight. Oh, to retrace the steps along that skyward path, To see their eyes glint before the final wrath. But destiny, cruel, keeps the worlds divi...

Some days don’t arrive. They repeat . Like the ghost of a bell you’re not sure you heard, but still check the window for. You wake up, and the sky is already tired. The clock ticks not forward, but sideways . You open your inbox and find nothing but yesterday trying to start a conversation. There is coffee, but it tastes like memory. There is noise, but it hums in the key of gone. And somewhere in that long stretch of artificial light and recycled air, you think of someone. Or no one. Or someone who used to be no one until their absence took shape. You wonder— Did they ever sit in a day like this, where everything feels like it’s happened already, but differently? Would they remember you, not in the headline moments, but in the filler scenes— the hallway pause, the lunch alone, the rain that didn’t quite fall? Maybe you were just a whisper in the acoustics of their life. Still, whispers carry when the world is quiet enough.

Last night, I was having the usual neurotic fixation with the moon. I was talking to her, admiring her light and beauty… but to my dismay, the clouds covered her up and it felt like the moon decided to close her doors on me. In a couple of minutes more, the rain started to fall. I guess it’s her tears… I guess it’s her way of pouring out her sadness… It must be pretty lonely up there, shining her light to people so they may find their way out of the dark night, sending romantic moonbeams to lovers in love and soothing crushed souls with her consoling silvery luminescence. It’s like the moon have these invisible arms that hug people in despair (hug me!)… but the ironic thing is that, is there someone out there who embraces her back? Is there something that consoles her as well? Does she receive appreciation with those romantic beams that she so willingly give? And this is what I’m doing. Trying to give something back to her… I maybe an insignificant speck of dust in this vast universe...

Way back in college, I had this quiet hobby of slipping into book sales. Not the big ones—just the messy, dusty tables tucked inside Centermall, one of Baguio’s oldest malls. The kind of place where the lights flicker and the scent of rust and forgotten pages lingers longer than the shoppers. It wasn’t about finding something specific. It was the hunt. The maybe. One afternoon, I came across a book with no title on the spine. The cover was soft, torn in the corners, like it had been through several hands that never loved it properly. Inside, on the first page, someone had scribbled in pencil: “Don’t finish this unless you’re ready to lose something.” I didn’t buy it. I kept turning the thought over in my head though, for years. I don’t even remember the plot. Just the feeling it gave me: like someone had whispered a secret then vanished before I could respond. We never really crave the thing, do we? We crave the tension before the having. The idea of it. The fiction we write a...

 I found an old notebook tucked away in a drawer, its pages filled with half-written letters and unfinished plans. Names I almost called, places I almost went, dreams I almost chased. The weight of those almosts hit me like a cold wave—ghosts of what could have been, pressing heavy on my chest. Almost is the ache of standing at a door, hand raised, and pulling away at the last moment. It’s the sound of footsteps fading before they ever reached you, the glance that didn’t meet your eyes long enough to matter. These almosts aren’t just missed chances—they’re fragments of a life that teased itself into existence but never quite formed. There’s a peculiar grief in mourning what was never fully real. The almosts live in liminal spaces—between hope and regret, desire and denial. They haunt the edges of memory like shadows that refuse to vanish, reminding us how close we’ve come to something meaningful, yet how far we remain. What do we do with these echoes? How do we carry the ache wi...

I live in the tension between freedom and belonging—the silent pull shaping every choice. Freedom promises escape and autonomy but leaves a loneliness like concrete pressing down. Freedom isn’t just no chains; it’s a room where no one calls your name. Belonging is messy, a weight carried because isolation terrifies more. It demands surrender, risking erosion—wearing a soft wound as armor until it bleeds. Freedom isolates. Belonging erases. We crave both but find them strangers wearing the same mask. The door to connection often leads to a subtle cage. We trade one prison for another, hoping at least the bars are invisible. No one teaches this dance—how to want people but hold your edges, how to be vulnerable without dissolving. I’ve fled closeness and begged for space. Stayed too long and left too soon. The hardest place is between what we want and what we lose. Maybe freedom and belonging aren’t destinations but forces held in uneasy balance—fractured and whole, both at once. Livi...

I used to own this small potted plant I kept by the window.  I don't remember its name—some hardy, leafy thing they said wouldn’t die easily. I believed them. That was the first lie. Or maybe the first faith. I never really watered it. Not on purpose. Not out of malice. Just... I got busy. Or I thought the sunlight was enough. Or I told myself I’d do it tomorrow, and tomorrow kept moving without me. Strange, how we forget to care for the things we once chose. Eventually, the leaves curled in, quietly. No protest. No drama. Just a slow folding, like a secret being buried alive. And still, I left it there. Watching.  Witnessing.  Me, in all my distractions. And it makes me wonder—what else have I left thirsty? What else did I promise life to, only to offer absence? Sometimes I think about legacy—not in the grand, carved-in-marble kind of way, but in the intimate, quiet ruins we leave behind. The forgotten promise to a hopeful person that we didn't really gave much thou...

May bahid kabaliwang pumapasok sa isipan sa tuwing ang tulog sa gabi ay di nakakamit.  Madalas, inaalala ang napanaginipan sa katatapos na gabi habang pinapakiramdaman ang malamyang ihip ng hangin na dumadampi sa mga pisngi. Di maiiwasan na ang kaabikat nito ay ang kalungkutang makikita sa mahinahong sayaw ng mga dahon sa awiting mapangaraping kaluluwa lang ang nakakasaksi. Sa pangarap sila’y padipang naipako –Pilit inaabot ang panaginip subalit lumulutang sa kawalan ang pag-asang masilayan pa ito… dahil sa pangangarap, pikit kanilang mga mata. Sa pagkakapikit, idinuduyan sila palayo sa realidad at patungo sa kapayapaang dulot ng kahimbingan… Kabaliwan… At lango sa katahimikang Kadiliman lang ang makapag bibigay.

Over rated na ang relationships…   As usual, nakatambay nanaman ako dito sa isang tahimik na coffee shop/bar na hilig kong tambayan pag nais kong magsulat. Mag iisang oras na din ako sa kinauupuan ko nung narinig kong nasabi ito nung babae dun sa katabing table. Isang grupo sila ng mga college students (I think) na mukhang inumaga na sa celebration. Alas 7:00 palang and either it’s too early or too late depending on how you see it, the point is, nag iinuman padin sila. Madami dami din ang boteng nakahilera sa kanilang table at madami na din ang naipong walang laman dun sa ilalim ng table kasama ng mga upos ng sigarilyong kung saan saan na lang itinapon. Hindi naman sa chismoso ako at nakikinig sa kanilang usapan, pero kung ang mga katabi mo ay nakainom na, di maiiwasang di marinig kanilang pinagsasabi. Ganyan siguro mga lasing, akala mo nakalunok ng megaphone at kung magsalita animo’y nasa kabilang bundok yung mga kausap nila. Tatlong babae at dalawang lalaki ang nasa kabil...

The golden melting sun froze in his spot.  He is filled with shock and distress and other anthropomorphic emotions one can think of as the beautiful moon hastily passed by his territory. Overwhelmed by the freakish-synchronicity-twist-of-a-plan from the universe (or perhaps the lack of it.), the sun gave out a hopeless painful sigh and allowed the clouds to cover him. In that place of cloudy smokes and caffeinated thoughts, the sun was filled once again with chaos deep inside him. Together with the erratic molecular movement of his own fire and the amorphous swirling of emotions deep within him, chaos... chaos... and more chaos breeds.  But.... deep within that absurdity and chaos, in that short glimpse of the moon, a spark of calmness was lit. He stared at the moon and peace was felt as he reminisced how they both followed the same orbit in the past. He saw the moon smiled as she walked without looking where he was. The sun shed a tear, not because he wasn’t noticed, but be...

Horizon darkened by clouds, majestically hovering high as it hides the darkness of outer space. I see the sad eyes of eternity looking back at me with consolation, as if she feels my grief. Living in an utterly void existence for the past couple of months without doing anything or saying anything is starting to backfire. I feel succumbed to the painful liquid memories of yesterday. Trying to reach for that last drop of hope as I am trying to steal an elixir from the heavens, but how can one mortal manipulate the gods? In my spot I see the vicious whiplash of the misty wind as it shakes my garden. The trembling lightning looks like strobe lights from the sky dancing in an overture to a long orchestra of nothing but loud reverberations and crashes. They are like kids, playfully jumping from one cloud to another. I am seduced with the scene as I try so hard to capture one bolt released from Zeus’ majestic hand with my phone cam. My thoughts are drowning with the rain as my voice is ove...

Godly   skies are slowly breaking, eliminating the sun’s final breath, night-time visions, hope starts rising elude now from your nestled   crest ! Marveling   at this ghostly scene, yet still I think of my lunar   kin , lost   in the labyrinth of tessellation, unable to solve this mazes delusion. No rest for the wicked as what they say, again, the song of the moon made me astray. rock me in thy perfect   harmony , kill   me with thy notes done vaguely, In a mantra filled with agony, nocturnal tunes crafted out of fantasy. deathless rhythm in euphoric moon beams, reciting incantations as surreal as dreams, Every sound and resonance i see; do not dare wonder, this is my   reality ! the   world of sounds i see through my eyes, hark not science, heed your paradise, Alter how the laws of physics drudge, not by reason but by your hearts nudge. kaleidoscopic thoughts be gone with the melody, singing a b...