Feature| FLAVOURS DON’T WITHER
by Keezel Alag
Banaba, fresh rain on cement, sweet waves of wild bougainvillea. Taking a deep breath, I allow the flavours of nature latch on the fabric of my worn out sweatshirt. The receipt of its scent lingers around my collar, mixing with the sweat trailing from the side of my neck. It feels like yesterday, when my grandmother fixed the sleeves of her shirt, watering the flowers in her small garden right beside her porch. With the flick of her wrist, the leaves, the petals, the stems, the roots, nurture and exempt to wither.
The elderly woman reached for my naked palm that golden afternoon. “Today tastes sweet,” She softly pats the back of my hand. “It feels warm, too. Like hot milk,” I try to arch my lips into an awkward smile, a whirlpool of questions begun to cloud my mind, unsure of what mysterious message patterned between the words that softly escaped her lips. Chuckling at my odd expression, she looks at my eyes, my nose, the palm of my hands, “Our emotions have flavours, dear.”
It has been many months since I tasted pure bitterness fall on the tip of my tongue — a taste billed by my grandmother as the most distasteful flavour one can have. Yet the sharp, pungent taste wasn’t a stranger upon my lips. It had often made me nauseous, leaving my throat dry as if I haven’t drank anything for years. If I was completely honest, It must have been that all things liquid left in my system made its way and poured through my eyes as salty tears. Sometimes, I taste these flavours from experiences. Most of the time, words.
I first heard the most bitter word I have ever tasted when I was eleven. Suicide.
Then I heard it again. And again.
“A distraught 16-year-old Grade 11 student in the town of Tupi, South Cotabato has committed suicide due to alleged pressure and difficulty of learning school modules. In a statement issued by DepEd XII Schools Division of South Cotabato, Assistant Schools Division Superintendent and Officer-in-Charge Ruth Estacio confirmed the death of the student,” I flip the page almost instantly. The bitter taste slithers down my throat, my palates, my tongue, even seeping between the gap of my teeth. I take yet another deep breath, praying it removes the flavour filling my mouth.
Failing, I wipe the tears forming from the hazels of my eyes. It burned my skin, as if the droplets trailing down my cheeks were receipts of combustion. It didn’t need an ambulance for my ears to wreak havoc, the sound of non-existing sirens fill my head. My shoulders, my knees, my heart, drops.
How a flavour can easily control you.
The name of the young boy was simply obscure, a foreign scramble of letters and words that identified a person I was yet to know. Despite the foreign name roll on my tongue and leave my lips, It felt as if I had known this person for decades, like an archaic abstract I kept in the corner of my room. Perhaps it was because I felt — tasted, rather, a portion of the pain when yet another sweet existence is simply now a memory.
Unfruitful pollen, fresh rain on rust, strong waves of anthurium. Closing my eyes as tears fall freely, I am consumed by the flavours of nature that latch on the fabric of my worn out sweatshirt. The receipt of its scent lingers around the wrists of my shirt, mixing with the sweat forming on my palms.
It feels like yesterday, when I folded my soiled sleeves, pouring baroque amount of water on the flowers right beside the porch of my grandmother’s house. Antithetical to her ways, I have left the leaves, the petals, the stems, the roots, to wither.
