TRICYCLE

"Kuya, Baybay boulevard?" I ask as I peek down the roof of the three-wheeler I just halted a little earlier, then eye the driver.

And he retorts as he shakes his head in dismay. "Not going anywhere near there."

His deep, early-thirties voice rings a raucousness to my ears. Then his words with his wheels leave me there, takes the eastward way, unapologetically with the company of my shrunken shadow. And the warm embrace of the ever sensible caress of the sunlight, late in the morning, opens up rivulets running all throughout my body, from my temples, down and down.

I once again outstretch my now-tanner arm: hand flapping beckoning for any vehicles to stop. The uneasiness drizzling from the back of my damp, creased, chalked, white polo shirt totes up the prickling agitation shading my slick facade. I stand there hanging from the cliff of my patience, still, like my worn-out and marred Jansport backpak embracing the front of me.

Minutes run by, which seem a coon's age for me, I am still there upright like a framing square erected, camouflaged with the dead lampposts in every corner of the busy intersection. Yet mind runs along with the whooshing all sorts of vehicles speeding to and fro before me.

And like the wheels running the crossroads, the unquietness running all over me twirls in merry-go-round; stirring and swirling down the cliff on which at its bottom floored a seabed of appetency. I am ardently hankering for a stick of tip-to-tip compactly punctured fishballs, a stoup of palamig (usually an iced, fruit juice drowned with cubed jellies), and a bite of kakanin (luscious and palatable delectables from a myriad of baked or steamed dainties made from grated rootcrops and ground rice), served and sold in stalls lining along the boulevard's breadth. Honestly, I can't help but to be like the pooch in Ivan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning Theory thinking all those gliding down my already-doused tongue.

Then the voracious ride crashes as a growly voice skids in the midst of my evaded daylights.

"Are you gonna hop in or what?"

Dumbfounded, I short syncopate my still outstretched hand, cinch it by my side, and bring out, like the exhaust spitting ebony gas, the paramount severity of a mumble, "um... ye... yes, kuya."

The three-wheeler halted a few steps away from me. Its sheeny hues of paints turf out as the sunlight plummets fierily from the unsullied, azure sky. Debarring all the stilly screaming shades of white, red, yellow, and green on its brims, plumb bars, letterings, upholsteries, and all on its innards and veneer, my eyes meet the muted words - did up with colorways of white as the foreground and yellow as the backdrop - etched on the front eaves looking down the windshield: Each Step You Take, Future At Stake, which for quite a nanosecond limp my feet as I sashay to the minutes-already waiting wheels.

Mortified, I run on striding. Reaching the frontward ingress, my drowsy bum which fervently beseeching for an absolute nap, yawns when my eyes descry the only seat in front that's lying fallow from human gravity. A padded, dinky, yin-like, crimson seat looking up the windshield, directly beside the handlebars, and across the occupied good-for-two, space-key-shaped, sanguine seat.

This will do.

Then, I cock my head before I head to it, roll my eyes opposite the evident void behind the frontline heads. My backside pulls off a sudden mirthful jerk - there's only a head at the backseats.

Thank. You. God.

I stride on, my bum starting to doze off, three more steps, then curve. And my bum's need for some z's has pulled my legs up swiftly onto the corroding floor at the back, then I slump down the toom, half-the-size-of-the-lengthy-seat-in-front, ruddy seat.