It's the unlikely who are best able to squeeze into the crevices of our minds, the way the bespectacled student did on one of those protracted jeep rides home. I remember thinking her sneakers must have boasted whiteness once. In the clear plastic bag she was clutching was a miniature sun, no, a goldfish. If it had been swiveling with a partner, perhaps the urge to puncture the bag with a pencil would not have welled up so insistently.
And in the light of rush hour, I suspected Newton was wrong: more than one future could swim away from the swoosh of a single action. Water could gush out of the wound, wetting passengers' toes, while the girl's hands shook my shoulder for an explanation. She could rush out of the vehicle to find a method of salvation, trusting in traffic to avenge her finned friend. Guilt could tug at my sleeves if she burst into tears and let the bag dangle from her fingertips, my act finally tipping her into despair. Or she could snap, grab the still-wet pencil from my hand and shove it up my left nostril. I thought I could love her forever if she heaved a sigh of thanks and flung the bag, frantic fish and all, out onto the Elliptical Road's rage.
What would I have done, had she handed the bag to me like Charon giving up his oar before stepping out onto twilit Quezon Boulevard? That I am telling this in the subjunctive reveals nothing about the orange fins twitching for life on the drenched floor of my dreams
This poem is part of the collection that won First Prize for Poetry in the 2004 Palanca Awards
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