veryday I paint different figures on my ceiling, using my eyes as a brush. In the beginning, I painted mummies with fuchsia and cobalt blue bandages. The mummies transformed into mermaids with tangerine tails. Now I paint dragons. They blow fire into my ears and blaze my insides.

My brushstrokes are interrupted thrice a day by Cora. She delivers my meal of either oatmeal, lugaw, or noodle-soup in a porcelain bowl with a silver spoon.

Mother used to stop over when she could not sleep. In the beginning, she smoked and drank scotch while talking to herself. Then she read books on how to raise self-esteem and earn more money. When her eyes grew tired and her head ached from minuscule print, she started to rearrange the furniture.

First, she organized my Gothic books on my pedestal table in alphabetical order. The next day, she stuffed the things on my pedestal table: Gothic books, a manual typewriter, an inkwell, and a torcheres in a black plastic bag. She crammed the bag into my pine cabinet. A few days later, my pedestal table was adorned with Victorian lace, ceramics from the Mountain Province, oil lamps, and a tortoiseshell box.

My plaid curtains were yanked out and replaced with floral draperies. My gold-leaf mirror was substituted for an antler-framed one. My Navajo rug was strewn over my recliner, and my own carpets were rolled up to expose the ebony-stained floor.

When all my photo albums, school books, and journals were stashed away in my pine cabinet, antiques from all corners of the bungalow started to clutter my room.

A mahogany sidetable from the vestibule was placed beside my bed with an African wood bowl on top. An oil painting from the dining room by a Baguio artist was hung on my wall. Venetian glass, parasols, a rocking chair crafted from horseshoes, and a tall case clock from the salon embellished my dresser and floor.

One night, Mother was about to bury me under a black velvet quilt when it occurred to her that I wasn't one of her marble busts.

"Oh, Maryssa," she tittered. "I've forgotten about you." She fled the room and didn't come back.

Not until the day I met Anton.

It was Christmas day, according to Cora. She was spooning bland oatmeal into my mouth when Taira hollered in the hall about her muddied shoes.

"Excuse me, hija." Cora kissed my forehead.

I held my breath.

"I'll come back. I'll just clean Taira's shoes."

She left me with my stomach grumbling and my door ajar.

It was then that he entered. His shining black eyes produced upheavals of magenta in my stomach. His sapphire fingertips grazed my eyelashes.

"Who are you? You are so beautiful."

His warm breath spread the blaze I had inside.

"Are you hungry?"

I wanted to gorge his pointed ears and aquiline nose.

"Anton!" Mother's voice shook the Venetian glass on my dresser.

He asked Mother for my hand in marriage and Mother permitted him with a promise of a fair settlement.

Today there are movers storing the tall case clock, pine cabinet, and the rest of the furniture in a van that is headed for a small abode between a cemetery and a beach.

There is also an interior designer directing Mother where to install the Directoire lantern, where to place the shelf for her casino chips and mahjong set, and where to buy a 19th century card table.

I am painting a dragon now. A dragon with long bangs and callused hands.

He never gets tired of blowing fires of brimstone and terra cotta into my heart.

 

aryssa, Anton, and the furniture move into a small cement home with bay windows. Their nearest neighbor is two miles away.

The bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom have no dividing walls; yet the abode is full of wind and space because Anton stored all the unnecessary antiques in the basement.

He kisses Maryssa's eyes open every morning and feeds her berries in their brass canopy bed. He pulls her negligee over her head, rubs his nose against her tiny bellybutton, and leans his cheek on her sweet-smelling thighs.

He lifts her to the bath, pours liquid soap over her flawless skin, and massages the space between her toes.

Sometimes he thinks he sees her smile. "Maryssa, do you love me?" He chews his nails and stares at her face.

There is no response.

He photographs her whenever he can. When she sleeps. Chews. Drinks. Bathes. Urinates. Watches him from the windowsill. Dances. Makes love.

When he cuts her hair. Clips her nails. Sucks her elbows. Sleeps on her feet. Shaves her calves. Transfers chocolate from his mouth to hers.

He visits the cemetery next door every afternoon. Before he leaves, he seats her on the windowsill that provides a view of him.

"I'll be back, honey," he whispers into her ear.

She watches him painstakingly photograph each tombstone from a hundred different angles; his eyebrows furrowed, his jaw hard.

He locks her arms around his neck in the evening. He places her bare toes on top of his feet and they dance. He hums "Pure" into her ear and they prance around the kitchen table, tall case clock, and pine cabinet.

"I've never been happier in my life."

He tumbles on top of her and nibbles her ear, throat, and ribs.

She peers at his face through eyes that expose his lungs and heart.

He takes her jaw within his palms. "Maryssa, talk to me."

Her eyes mirror the cross of a tombstone he shot that afternoon.

He drops her head on the bed, covers her face with a pillow, and devours her breasts, hips, and inner thighs, until the image of the cemetery in his mind dissolves.

A gust of wind spirals in from the bay windows and seizes the snapshots from the kitchen table. The photographs whirl in a helical path from the floor to the ceiling until the salt water next door pulls the wind seaward.

In the morning, Anton picks up Maryssa's scattered pictures on the floor and pastes them on the bare wall to form the words: I love you. He frames the words with his tombstone photographs.

He kisses her eye open and he thinks he sees them shine. He dismisses the moment as his imagination.

Sometimes Taira visits and brings an antique piece. First, a candelabra, then, a tulip lamp, now, a chandelier.

"Do you want to jet-ski?" she always asks Anton.

He always declines. But today the air is dry and he has photographed every tombstone in the cemetery.

He searches for a pair of swimming shorts, lays Maryssa on the windowsill facing the beach, and kisses her goodbye.

He strides on the transient, unfamiliar sand.

 

very evening I wait for Anton's snore to swathe our spacey abode.

I unravel his arms from my waist and his legs from my thighs. I lean my forehead on his forehead and I kiss his soft lips. I trace the high bridge of his nose and nibble his flat nipple. I listen to his fluttering heartbeat against his chest.

I stroll to the window that overlooks the cemetery. I perch myself on the sill with my knees on my chest. I try to figure out ways to secretly paint the tombstones. Maybe one day Anton will take me there for a picnic.

Taira visits me more often now. In the beginning, it was under the orders of Mother, who had nowhere else to store her antiques. Then Taira started to bring the busts and sculptures Mother would never get rid of. Now, Taira brings nothing.

Anton constantly asks me if I love him. He asks me with pleading eyes. One time he grasped my jaw and shook my face.

We don't dance anymore. He scrubs my body when he bathes me. He doesn't look into my eyes.

He fucks me with a pillow on my face.

He stopped taking pictures of me. Taira knocks on our door at the break of dawn; Anton jumps out of bed, grabs his camera, and rushes off to the beach.

He leaves me buried under the velvet quilt.

I sometimes get up to look at his new photographs on the kitchen table. First, there were starfish; then, there were palm trees. One time I saw a snapshot of him and Taira on a jet-ski. He was holding a beer bottle and his face was very red.

I should've painted the tombstones sooner. I should've painted I love you on at least one tombstone.

Maybe if I did, the tornado of pictures would have never disintegrated on the floor.

 

t is eleven o'clock and Maryssa hasn't had her dinner.

Anton bursts into the house with a suitcase from the basement. "I'm leaving." He unzips the suitcase and opens the pine cabinet. "I'm taking my clothes. You can have everything else." He tosses in his t-shirts and jeans. "Your Mother will send a nurse for you."

Tears hurtle down Maryssa's cheeks. She pushes herself up from the bed with her elbows. "A-Anton," she stutters with a raspy voice.

His jeans slip out of his fingers. He glares at her with his shining black eyes.

She approaches him and sits inside the suitcase. "Please, don't leave," she whispers.

He looks at the tall case clock. "It is late." His eyelashes are moist.

She removes herself from the suitcase and sits on the windowsill with her knees to her chest. She stares at the sky with no moonlight to glow on the tombstones. He closes the door behind him.

She doesn't see his figure shut the booth of Taira's car.

 

sold all the antiques from the basement and settled in Manila.

I now live with a man named Enrique. I do not love him.

I used to write Anton everyday but I never sent him any of my letters. Sharon overheard from Mother's friend's boss's son that Anton is skiing down Tibetan slopes.

I quit writing and decided to dedicate my life to painting. I paint tombstones in all shades of pink; sometimes I paint traces of Anton's face.

I am hoping that he will walk into a gallery, recognize one of my paintings, and give me a ring.

[END]