some things

like the sound of that machine i don't know the name of- the one carpenters use to slice lumber- can transport me to childhood. also some things, like the fragrance of Johnson's baby blossoms, i just dabbed on my nape because Kathmandu is getting unbearably hot. it feels like Manila when i do that. makes me think of Germie's face and how she always dabbed Johnson's baby powder on her face in the Ladies, during recess. i have loved how that face lit-up when we talked stories, lives, books.

Germie is a child in her black shorts and Tee again, touching all her books, sprawling on the extra bed in our room, which used to be mine. I occupied Jana's bed in summer because she wasn't going to be on campus for that semester. So, Germie, her books, chocolate biscuits and wrappers. We quarreled over the mess sometimes- over the way the  beef noodles she ate made me nauseous. And she teased that I sounded pregnant. But you didn't want to get pregnant in that heat. And when the undergrad kid, whose name I can't remember, brought his girl friend over to the dorm on Friday afternoons, I always wondered how they could make love in such heat.

Our Fridays were a lot about planning and falling out. I felt betrayed when Germie didn't want to go out with me. In the two semester on-campus, I'd started planting a sort of possession on her- like she could only be my room-mate in the world. I was comfortable the way we could just be in our room- hair unkempt, underdressed, without words.

So, the day she didn't want to go to Trinoma with me, I immediately found someone else to go to Rustan's with me. Out of spite. Later, when she passed me on the Katipunan Ave, I looked through her like she were a lost lover and just walked on.

Later that evening, she'd brought me chocolate biscuits. I don't remember getting her anything.