Midnight

Last night we talked about death. He showed me a photo of his grandmother lying on her bed.

“She even got up to eat when I arrived”. His grandmother had been bedridden since the accident and on some days did not eat at all.

He was her favorite grandson and he cried to see her back with bedsores.

“It was as if she just waited to see me” because she died the night he took the boat back to Cebu.

There are many nights when do not talk at all, weeks at a time even. There are nights when we exchange one word greetings as he walks out of his room across mine. Then there are nights when everything has crashed down and we are blanketed with heartache or failure or death.

And on our little couch for four, me or me and my three roomies, we would sit in silence and let the darkness bathe us. We’d watch all the scenes of our young lives, listen to all the conversations we could remember, all the bitter pills and silent nights.