Cavite Stories

Three years ago, Elena Reyes left a note in the back of a thesis and sent it across an ocean. It said: Yes. I feel it. I am not ready yet. But I am closer than I was yesterday. Sera Villanueva read it on the floor of her apartment in Singapore, wrote in her journal - she said yes - and went to work. She built a life. She made a friend named Rafa who fed her on Tuesdays and told her the truth about herself. She kept the note. She kept the tabs. She waited, not because she had no choice, but because she understood that some things could not be rushed - only arrived at. Three years later, a regional conference in Tagaytay puts them in the same hotel garden on the same evening, and three years of closer than yesterday becomes: here. But Elena has a kind man her mother approves of, old habits that haven't entirely loosened, and a life in Cavite that has made her more herself than she ever expected. Sera has a best friend whose easy closeness makes Elena feel things she has no professional framework for. And both of them are going to have to stop being so careful before they lose the window entirely. Book Two is warmer than Book One. There is laughter. There is jealousy - the petty, embarrassing, completely human kind. There is one real argument, one honest goodbye, and a garden in the morning where someone finally says the word out loud. Not in a note this time. In the light. Where it can be heard. [ GL · Slow Burn · Second Chance · Filipino Fiction · Sequel to Book One ]

Amy Reyes is a seventeen-year old college student who wants to experience normal college experiences. Her high school experience is not exactly the best. It started great and ended on the very opposite end of the spectrum. Now that she's in college, she wants to move on from the horrors of the past eight months. She was free from her night terrors that was caused by the eight months of suffering she experienced until one night, one bittersweet night when she met a guy, Jonathan Abernathy, an international student from America who was sent to the Philippines to have his college degree instead of in New York because of his 'immoral', 'irresponsible' behaviour, opened her mind to feelings she didn't know before, feelings she thought could only be read in novels and watched in movies. When she started having feelings for this mentioned guy, she don't know if she should run away or embrace the feelings. When she decides whether to run away or to embrace it, Jonathan wanted something from her that she doesn't know if she can give it to him fully.

A man keeps on walking around in search of something.

A woman copes with both the loss of her marriage to her former husband and her son's problems. An early version of the story was written on 1 December 2014 where the character was known as Patricia and her husband was Daryl.

He first designed and conceptualized the flag that the nation earnestly value. He commissioned the national anthem that the Filipinos euphorically sing. Most of all, he declared the Philippine independence that the country continually celebrate. He is General Emilio Aguinaldo, whose contributions to the country are exulted until now.

After his sister Winter leaves for law school, Tristan Vince is left to navigate the chaos of Manila alone, carrying the weight of family expectations and the ache of her absence. Searching for solace, he finds himself in Cubao-where he meets Crystiane Jules, a restless Atenean who refuses to stand still. With nothing but dreams, a few friends, and the ever-moving city around them, the two embark on a journey through Manila's streets-a place of both innovation and nostalgia, escape and belonging. In the middle of it all, they begin to learn that sometimes, home isn't a place, but the people we find along the way.

isang malupitang kwento na wala pang titulo haysss, di ko alam kung tutuloy ko pa o wag nalang awuu

A poem about what Tennessee William called "deadening work."

Akala ko nga magbabago pa ako? Pero yun na talaga ako eh. kung ano ako, yun na ako always and forever..kung maganda ako, maganda ako forever!