Minor Acts | QLRS Vol. 25 No. 2 Apr 2026

Controversy aside, I like to think of this rage of rain as romantic,
a set-up where the test of love commences. You carry me on your back
from an end of the pedestrian lane to another while we're covered
with the trash bags you bought from the sari-sari store. The rising murky
water from the canals is midway to your knees. You hardly complain
about your drowned favorite sneakers and probable leptospirosis. Do not
even bother whether or not you've recovered from last week's fever.
Say as long as I'm fine and dry, you are as well fine and dry. We are stranded
outside the pawnshop with high school students, government employees,
a mother and a daughter. We all want to go home, to check on our loved
ones and cook them mainit na lugaw. But the jeepneys are loaded
and the fall won't stop anytime soon. I hold your hand and you squeeze it
trembling. This isn't the last storm of the year, as unpredictable as it is now.
We survive to be like plastics and other debris — afloat, unmoored, lifeless.