Czander Tan: “Manila Skyline”
I used to sit on the balcony, stone rough where I would scratch my copper soles on the railing before it meets the roof, or sometimes on the roof I would be smothered, unseen, by the dark, my lashes occasionally lit by fireworks sparking the Manila skyline, right above my grandmother’s clothesline, crossing tangled power lines that converged in a bulbous mass of wires up a wooden post, our totem pole of civilization, our electric ecstasy conducting the small hands that set crackers screaming below, their shadows hopping to gunfire-crackles as if they had commissioned the cardboard crickets' violence at their naked feet: a messy dance, a gunpowder patter, and isn’t it wonderful to watch from the dark roof: sparklers waving like magic wands that glow and burn eye-spots, that twirl and dance with smoke and blood to spell the words “come down” — in a savage cursive the flashes stain my sightlines long after — and I say that one plus one statistically approximates to two only most of the time, my coin always spinning, both sides catching light, but discretely I am stuck in the dark and cannot move: the stomping rituals round and round the crackers cry “come dance” and I wonder if dance could ever be an objective criteria or a family tree and if neither then why not a fireworks show: they pass the skype around the fire each asking “when?” and I reply I am with them in spirit because I have no hands or feet or heads or tails.
I imagine the view from the balcony still, where I hear the roosters crow and the man sell sweet silken tofu and the pesos clink in his hands and the coconut husks scrub the floors to polish them. And me, prowling on the ridged red tin roof that cuts my callused soles, who left to reach forgotten lines, to jump
Born in the Philippines and raised in Singapore, Czander Tan (he/him) is a video game developer currently based in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. He moonlights as a musician and sometimes writes poetry.
