Missing Gizzards

In times like these, I dream of Sheilfa, angrier than usual, complaining how some particular guy had attempted to steal her eyes and ears, had she not been too careful and alert. “Don’t trust anyone with your eye,” I warned her, vehemently, in the language of women trying to deal with typhoons and earthquakes every other day or of people on alert for those tropical storms that usually caused the swelling of the river Pangi.
When I woke up, I discovered I was already robbed of my gizzards. I looked for them under the pillows, under the bed, inside the shoeboxes, cabinet drawers, even in the freezer of the refrigerator where I stored my lipstick, but they were nowhere to be found.
I had a funny feeling from the start who the culprit was; and it grew even more stronger the more I confirmed my missing gizzards—the one who stole them was the father of my son!
But it was still in the early morning, when like all the others, I was still breaking my nose over the breaking news, there was no time for me to stop, take the gizzards and fight back. I thought I would find time late in the evening when the air was cooler and everything was written and done with, though, I thought, I would already be too tired and exhausted at those hours.
In the afternoon, I discovered my liver gone; and so were my small and big intestines, the entire 12-meter length of them, gone without a trace; and so were some parts of my brain. I declared it the greatest monstrosity to ever happen in my life! Somewhere deep in me, in some parts I could not locate yet, rumbles a slow burning rage strong enough to break the nose of the of the guy who robbed me of my gizzards, liver, intestines and brain; a rage so slow and protracted it could fuel a long running feminist revolution that would surpass all other world revolutions in time and scale.
So, in the midst of my cluttered room in Nova Tierra, and with the help of a rusty old laptop bought from a Korean junk shop in 2008, I began to track down the gizzard thief. A sneak into his Facebook profile showed a plump man with a potbelly, with partly greying hair and a receding hairline. Hah! So, do you consider that a vindication of years?! Going over some of the comments posted on his wall, I noted how almost everybody called him ‘Sir,’ in such a stupidly patronizing manner that makes me say, Yuck! Nothing about the man gives off an air of intelligence at all. All you can sense, when you take a closer look at his picture, was the sheer stupidity of the eyes and the awkward way in which he held the bottle of beer in his hands to show to the world he was a man. In fact, someone with a discerning nose would notice outright that the stupid guy was holding the bottle as a prop to cover from the eyes of the world the rotten dullness of his life.
Okay, I'm mean. But I'm just getting back here. That guy stole my life!

Everything Is Accounted For

What they pay with money, I pay with my own body. I pay with skin boils, inflamed sinuses, sore throats that develop into hard coughs, stomach acidity, stomach ulcers, arthritic knees, blurring eyesight, blurring memories, crumbling spirit, long hours of hard mental labor.