Bless

“Samantala habang pilit naming inaagaw ang iyong mga titik, sandali akong nang-umit ng titig. Nagtatanong kung bakit akong manunulat at makatang laging may salita sa dulo ng dila ay laging nasasalisihan ng iyong pagwika. Noon din ang aking pagtangi ay nasa iyo nang pag-iingat.”
― Lean Borlongan, Sansaglit

“ang iyong halaga ay labis-

labis na masusukat
sa mga hindi ko sukat
akalaing kaya kong gawin

kahit
ayaw
ko.”
― Lean Borlongan, Sansaglit

“Suspected of ties with the Communist New People’s Army, he disappeared after a lightning rally of farmers and students in Manila in the early 1970s and had not been heard from since. His family believed he had been rounded up by the Metrocom, along with a few other activists and students who had taken part in the rally. He was one of the thousands — fifteen hundred by one count, more than three thousand by another — who fell victim to salvaging. It was a term perverted by the regime’s goons to refer to the extrajudicial killings that had become a dirty open secret of the dictatorship.”
― F.H. Batacan, Smaller and Smaller Circles

“I didn’t like it. I didn’t want any of it. I. Didn’t. Want. It.

How important it was to him to have said this, the one thing he could not say all those terrible, silent years. To have said it so clearly and unequivocally, with the last breath and strength of his life.”
― F.H. Batacan, Smaller and Smaller Circles