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The worry in the speech of the man who accepts cash from the register. Quick hands of the same man

who washes the mixing bottles, pours the right amount of ice cylinders, adds the syrup that diffuses a

little with the trapped air in the room thats a few Celcius below normal temperature. The slush of pre-

brewed tea according to order, the gush of water and milk, the distinguished clacks and thumps and

shake of the contents in the mixing bottle between his two hands. You dont witness these with your

eyes from your comfortable slouch in the red violet cushioned chair, the one in set with two others to

the right of the counter; you only replay the distinct noises of each second. There is a woman leaning in

the brown-painted top of the tall rounded serving table, she endures impatience for the ten minutes

shes been talking out the lone man who takes all the orders. The womans colleagues have left earlier

so she is pissed but denies it to understand the faithful servant in the counter. Finally she receives her

finished plastic glass of milk tea, hidden in a brown paper bag with other unknown things. You

recognize a face from your periphery vision straight ahead. It is the newest girl who joined the five of

you in room 132 this June. You dont lift your gaze so as not to entertain the building anticipation of

her asking and possible wondering why you arent in class. Or she may not care that much enough; but

you do. Its the first time in weeks that someone has seen you. The previous weeks you ran and hopped

in jeepneys, in reserved and tight strides and poses sat in the long shared seat with older men who hadsatchels, talking to their cronies about the boss they cant stand, promiscuous women, their sodded

cleavages struggling to pop out of the low necklines and tank tops, children who are unaware, clung in

their mothers or yayas laps staring at you in a childs blank language you no longer recognize,

children who are a bit older, tired from school, dozing off, or fussing about having missed a story

telling session because their guardians fetched them too early, the man behind the steering wheel,

sometimes interesting, sometimes polite in repeating the right stops, sometimes strident and hurried,

clutching on the breaks so hardly that you are pulled forward against the lurch exactly as Newton

describes in his book of laws. Today you refused the jeepney because of news that hold-ups are in trend

so you decided to visit this tea place instead. You walked the way from the dorm room in the third floor,

locked the door and descended down the stairs in slow, quiet tiptoes. In the ground floor the femaleguard was on her daily spot, you dislike her countenance, never humbling, too imposing that it strikes

your rebellious ego, but you met her on the desk anyway, signed out in the log sheet, tried to write your

name illegibly so when the authorities sort it out they would have a hard time. You exited the girls

building and strode in huge steps as nonchalantly fast as your legs could stretch so that the authorities

wouldntsee you and wouldnt call your name for interrogation. You are afraid to face them, you hide

from them because you know youve disregarded and violated the rules. Soon theyll have their take on

you. For now you are free again, continued to cross your favorite avenue, the sun peered shyly from the

white, vast hall of the noon sky. When you reached the famous tea place there was not a single

customer. You were pleased and headed to the counter, the man asked for your order, you choose dark

cocoa pudding milk tea, took out your dirty wallet, a bill, and realized its the second to the last

hundred buck. This alarmed you a pinch, then you felt an intangible wave of anxiety hit you, you

ignored it, instead you put your green backpack in the round wooden coffee table beside the counter

where you still are now. Youve always claimed this spot so you can observe the sidewalk where a car,

three at most, would pass by like meteors. You like cars dissolving in the background. The hours have

ticked some 200 minutes since you settled for this spot, your dark cocoa pudding milk tea is now

merely melting ice cylinders floating as huge icebergs in its shallow sea of self, this miniature sea is

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light brown, its seabed the unconsumed yolk-colored pudding. There are too many other customers

now, more than a dozen, talking behind their breaths, staring at the menu in a trance for a few seconds

before coming out in epiphany on what to order. Its noisier now, such as the fidgeting around of the

man mentioned. The girl you share room with has walked away with her company without so much a

bid or a smile as you never looked up to meet her eyes or face, you didnt wish to. She disappeared in

the sidewalk; you regret your made-up oblivion, but you think that she would perhaps excuse you

because you are often and known as the weird and lost one during the late night talks that reverberate in

the closed confines of your room in the third floor, those talks of and about boys and your roommate

Athena always initiating horny perspectives on just about everything, the nights the girls giggle, of

jokes you always miss the taglines of, of attempts on dissecting boys behavior and girls behavior

toward the assumed boys behavior, the frank sexual urges materialized through curious words,

uncensored, which you struggle to unlearn after hearing, the nights you play innocent because you are

and they do understand, those nights all dreadful for taking away bouts of your previously genuine

naivet. In this tea shop, its still early, just half between two and three, but the luminosity outdoors still

accustomed for high noon, only slightly opaqued by a couple of wide, groomed branches of acacia tress

across the street. Maginhawa* is the name of the street; it serves its purpose. You hear the man fromthe counter converse with another in a regional dialect, your automatic impulses tell you its the same

tongue spoken in your hometown. You try to laud this silently but you are insinuated by the tingly

sensation from your organ below, from the glands you know are there, you can shush the urge for a

while but youd rather just pee, so you stop this stream-of-whatever you were compelled to start only

because of what youve been reading and musing on a lot the genius of Sylvia Plath. You stop now,

walk to the restroom, come back again, leave this writing to think heavily of Sylvy instead, and decide

how you can make a Sylvy of yourself

*maginhawa, adj.comfortable [Filipino]