Perhaps if I die in the mountains of Negros
my family will be the most surprised of all
not for the reason that I died,
but for the fact that it is somewhere else not home.
My cousins will not be writing long posts
in memoriam,
but they will surely launch an online war
against keyboard warriors who would leave
laugh reacts to posts about me.
Perhaps if I die in the mountains of Negros,
my friends will wonder what on earth I was doing there
the same way they did
when I visited Bacolod
out of the blue
to fill a quota just to reach that Mabuhay Miles elite status.
My friends know I prefer the sea over the mountains
but they also know
that my feet have a mind of their own
and they often bring me to places
I did not even intend to be
until I am already there;
but my friends will recall
my first trip to the island
and
my rants about the sugar barons
and the struggling peasants
even though I have only been there
for just three days.
Perhaps if I die in the mountains of Negros
some of my acquaintances
will embrace the thought,
introduced by people who do not know me,
that I have took up arms and became
a “terrorist”
after all, I have always complained about injustice,
spoke against oppression ,
(ColonialismZionismCapitalismImperalismChildrenDyingPeopleSufferingForTheBenefitOfTheUltra-richWhileTheViolentStateMachineryStandsByToKeepThisSystemRunning)
and encouraged everyday resistance.
These three things,
after all,
make a terrorist.
They will forget
that we used to share a meal, a laugh, an afternoon;
forget
what they knew about me;
forget that we,
actually,
share the same values;
and from then on,
they will remember me
not from their memory
but from what others told them I am.
When I was younger, I had this ambition
to review every brand of Filipino corned beef.
I will eventually be labeled one of them;
it will either be a generic, brandless “kornbip”
but in bold, gleaming, red letters.
Perhaps if I die in the mountains of Negros
strangers will scour my social media accounts
and lose their way on my empty linkedin profile
and find their way in my travel albums.
Some will say that I have wasted my potential,
my experience;
to have the privileges of mobility
and foreign education
only to die fighting for nothing.
They will not bother to verify
the factuality
of their assumptions,
nor will they read or care
about the condolences and memorials
written by
relatives with long military lineage
from my paternal grandmother’s side
because that does not fit
the narrative.
Should I die in the mountains of Negros,
the worst that I will lose is not my life
but my agency;
as people whom I know not
would be drafting elaborate tales about me.
I will be branded
a brandless kornbip
terrorist
for dying where people die every day
just because
I was expected to die somewhere else.
