Notes on a Murder

It happened eight months ago. It’s nothing but a distant memory to me now, but it haunted me for weeks, months, after it happened. I tried to write about it. I expected to come up with a meditative, exhaustive prose work. But what I had in the end was a feeble attempt at poetry and a lengthy status message that I decided not to post, realizing that likes were not what I was seeking and comments of friends would not make any difference.

It happened eight months ago, and until now, the killer or killers are still at large. The investigators didn’t even have a suspect. That’s Philippine police work and justice system for you. The best solution is prayers. The text below, which incriminates someone, may or should not be taken as facts of the case.

October 12, 2014
To Carry a Dead Body

A nephew of a cousin-in-law, that’s what you are
to me, not too distant for me not to care,
not too close for me to not know what to do.
So I help carry your body.

You are lying on a blanket carried by six men
like a baby sleeping in a hammock
sung to sleep by your loving mother, except
you’re too big, too heavy, and dead.
Your legs dangle out of the blanket.
The blanket almost sags to the ground
even if the men give
all their strength. Or maybe they can’t give
all their strength, for they don’t want their legs
to brush against the blanket, they don’t want
their pants to be soiled by the blood
oozing from your head
and seeping through the cloth.

We pull you up to the dump truck. An impossible task
it seems to be. But somehow we’re able to do it.
As the truck runs to the funeral home,
we still have to hold on to you, to the blanket,
for you might roll on the floor.
We don’t want you to be hurt because you
have suffered enough from the bullet
that a man put into your head
the previous night.

Your shin presses against my ankle
from time to time as I sit on a spare tire
beside you. You’re not yet too cold or too stiff.
You can pass for someone alive.
Your legs are lean yet taut, darkened by the sun,
streaked with mud. Have you
been plowing the field? Dirt has resided
in your toes, and only the base of your nails
have remained white.

We reach the funeral home and lower you
from the dump truck. It does not seem
so impossible this time, but the blanket
has shifted, and your lower body dangles
out, so I have to hold your thigh.
You can pass for someone alive. Or
maybe not, for when the other blanket,
which covers you, slips down, I see
your grimy forehead and half-shut
yellowish eyes on the blood-soaked sheet.
No, your mother did not put you
on this hammock.

A neighbor did. He who got irked
when you parked yourself
on the road last night and recited the poems
of a drunk.


November 1, 2014
A Day for Souls

Here’s a Halloween story. Three weeks ago, a man was shot dead at midnight about a hundred meters away from our home. He was a relative of a relative, so in the morning, I helped carry his body up and down the dump truck that brought him to a funeral home. He had been shot twice in the head, and though he had been dead for ten hours when we were carrying him, his head was still bleeding, the blood seeping through the blanket where he was lain. At some point, the blanket slid, and I had to hold him by his leg. It was my first time to touch a dead person. It was a chilling experience. But the most chilling thing about this story is that it is true, and until now, the policemen are still clueless as to the identity of the killer.

This Halloween, as we get ourselves busy with party costumes, may we spend some time remembering the victims of gruesome killings. May we be aware that there’s still so much to be reformed in the justice system of the Philippines, and may we care, for if met with apathy, injustice will eventually creep into our doors. More than ghosts, dead men walking, and psychotic serial killers, what we should be afraid of are our ordinary neighbors, even our loved ones. If suddenly pushed to the edge, They can kill us even if they love us. They can kill us even if they don’t want to.