Dream: The Silver Sun and Indigo Cloth
The Doorway: A Father Unburdened
The door swung open.
And there he stood—tall, radiant, unburdened.
His face was younger than I remembered, his eyes alive, his body uncoiled from its usual weight.
His neck—long and fluid, no longer compressed under the strain of survival.
His shoulders, no longer carrying the world, rested naturally.
His eyes—white, clear, not rimmed with exhaustion, not pink and yellow from sleepless nights.
His skin, untouched by the sunspots of labor, smooth, unmarked by time’s quiet carving.
And he was beautiful.
For the first time, I did not see him as the man shaped by sacrifice.
I saw him as he was before.
Before the weight of labor bent his back.
Before the sharp edges of capitalism turned tenderness into endurance.
Before the quiet war of survival hardened him.
He was glowing.
His smile genuine, his gaze open. No guardedness. No exhaustion. Just presence.
I did not recognize this version of my father.
Or maybe—I had never been allowed to.
Something stirred deep inside me.
A feeling long buried, long denied.
Pride.
The six-year-old in me beamed. Look at him. Look how beautiful he is.
The ten-year-old felt grief, but a different kind—one that was safe to feel her sadness.
The sixteen-year-old let go of the guilt, the resentment, the story that had once made her ashamed of where her father came from.
And my whole self—the self that had spent years holding his pain, unraveling his silence—felt something unfamiliar.
Relief.
Relief in knowing that once, he had been free.
That even if life had stolen it from him, that freedom had existed.
That joy, untethered by duty, had once lived inside him.
And maybe, just maybe—it still did.
The Offering: A Tea for my Father
"Papa, is there anything that you want?"
He smiled—not with expectation, not with command, but with something simple.
"You know what I like."
And I did.
I turned to the counter where the ingredients lay before me.
Once, I had made fast-food boba drinks, blending sugar with efficiency in a job that cared more about speed than reverence.
Now, I worked at Blue Willow, where tea was sacred, where every cup carried lineage, ritual, memory.
And here, in this in-between space, these two worlds merged—fast food and ceremony, childhood and adulthood, duty and devotion.
I reached for the red beans. The safe choice. The one I had always made for him.
But something in me hesitated.
Instead, I chose green mango.
And he trusted me.
Lola and the Unspoken Forgiveness: The Indigo Cloth and the Silver Sun
Then, another presence.
Lola.
She entered without hesitation, as if she had always belonged to this moment. And she was not alone. Beside her stood a woman I did not know—Black, steady, carrying her own quiet presence.
Lola smiled, turning her phone toward me.
Her wallpaper was a photo of me.
I blinked. She carries me with her. Wherever she goes, I am there.
And I was in shock.
How could I be her favorite apo?
I was not my grandmother’s favorite.
Not even close.
My sister and I had a nickname for ourselves at family parties:
The Garbage Family.
My father’s siblings always called him the garbage disposal—eating every leftover in sight, never speaking unless spoken to, keeping himself busy with dishes, throwing out trash, smoking in the corner while the rest of the family gathered, laughed, belonged.
And we—his daughters—were his shadow.
We sat in the order of the room, never in the center, always on the periphery. Watching.
The aunties chatted.
The uncles laughed.
The cousins played.
And we existed on the edges.
And my mother—
No one even spoke to her.
She would hide with us in the corners of the room, silent, isolated, unseen.
Perhaps it was because she was an immigrant.
Perhaps it was because my father’s family thought she had married him for security.
At least, that was the story she carried.
The story she passed down to us.
That we were unwanted.
That we were looked down upon.
That we had to prove ourselves.
And so, growing up, I was always asked to choose a side.
To stand with my mother.
To inherit her resentment.
To carry her story like it was my own.
And for so long, I did.
For so long, I believed the only way to honor her was to hate the ones who had cast her aside.
To see my grandmother as cruel.
To see my father’s family as judgmental, selfish, unloving.
To reject them before they could reject me.
But in this dream—
I chose my side.
Not my mother’s.
Not my father’s.
Mine.
The one that chooses love.
The one that chooses forgiveness.
The one that chooses compassion, grace, and presence.
Because I see it now—
It was never about sides.
It was about wounds.
Wounds that hardened into pride.
Pride that became distance.
Distance that made love unreachable.
The Bridge Between Two Lineages: The Hands That Hold, The Love That Endures
Upon reflecting, I feel tears welling behind my eyes.
I miss my Nanay.
Not the grandmother in this dream. Not the grandmother whose love was buried beneath resentment and survival.
But the other one.
My mother’s mother.
The woman who, despite everything—despite my father’s cruelty, despite his abuse, despite the weight of my mother’s suffering—still loved him.
"Jojo, paciencia ka na," she would say.
And for years, I heard those words with resentment.
Why should my mother have patience for a man who hurt her?
Why should I have patience for a lineage that made her suffer?
Why did she not defend her daughter? Why did she not fight?
But today, I hear it differently.
Today, I do not hear it in anger.
I do not hear it in submission.
I hear it in peace.
"Please, have patience."
And I see now—this was never about endurance rooted in fear.
This was about patience rooted in dignity.
In presence. In love. In the kind of seeing that transcends pain.
I look down at my hands.
And I see both of them.
My mother. My grandmother.
Their hands are my hands.
Whenever I look at my wrist, I see my Nanay’s wrist.
The one I used to massage as a child.
The one that used to hold my hand as we walked to Albertsons.
She bought me my first crayon set.
A 64-color Crayola box—the kind with a built-in sharpener in the back.
That box was magic.
The colors glowed like fragments of another world.
And my favorite—Cornflower blue.
The name itself felt like an oxymoron.
How can corn be blue?
I turned the crayon over and over in my small hands, fascinated by its impossibility.
It was soft, cool, mysterious—a color I couldn't quite place, something that didn’t fit into the world I knew.
And she was my Cornflower Blue.
The color that made no sense but still belonged.
The color that was both familiar and unknowable.
The color that softened the edges of everything that was hard.
She was the counterbalance to all of this.
She knew how to love without distance.
She knew how to love without condition.
And I see now—
Both truths exist in my lineage.
The hardness and the softness.
The pride and the humility.
The survival and the surrender.
And my path—it is not just to grieve what was lost.
It is to integrate both sides.
To embody the kind of love that heals.
To become the bridge.
And just like Cornflower Blue—
Something between two worlds, yet whole within itself.
Something soft but undeniable.
Something that cannot be named easily, but exists just the same.
I, too, am here.
And I, too, belong.
A deep indigo cloth is laid flat on a minimal sand dune made of dark, shimmering grains, under a twilight sky in a lighter shade of glowing indigo. At the center of the cloth rests a silver sun—circular, radiant yet soft, not blinding but reflective, like polished moon-metal. The cloth’s texture is woven and weathered, with subtle threads that resemble constellations or sacred geometry. The entire scene feels ancient and ethereal, like a ceremonial altar in a dreamscape between worlds—quiet, cosmic, and reverent.
The Indigo Cloth: A New Evolution of Femininity
As I place my hands over the indigo cloth, I spread it gently across the table.
The silver sun glows at its center—steady, witnessing, unafraid.
I trace my fingers over its woven threads, feeling something shift inside me.
These are not the same hands that once clenched in resentment.
These are not the same hands that reached but never felt held.
These hands—
My hands—
are becoming something new.
I see my birth in them.
I see my purpose in them.
A new evolution of femininity.
One that does not just endure—
but chooses peace.
One that does not just grieve—
but heals.
One that does not just inherit—
but transforms.
As I straighten the cloth, I breathe in deeply.
And as I exhale—
I become the bridge.
The Final Collective Breath
Then, something shifts.
I feel it before I see it—
A quiet hush, a knowing, a moment of stillness.
My father. My grandmother. Myself.
All of us, breathing together.
A final, collective breath.
And as I exhale—
The world dissolves.
The tea shop fades.
The indigo cloth vanishes.
And when I open my eyes, I am standing somewhere new.
Before me—
A vast, endless field.
Golden dunes of rice.
Shimmering beneath the weight of the wind.
Waiting.
Endless golden dunes stretch across the horizon, formed not of sand, but of delicate grains of rice—pearlescent, glistening like tiny sunlit jewels. The landscape rolls in soft, undulating hills, their texture both granular and fluid, shifting gently beneath invisible winds. Each dune shimmers with a warm, sacred glow, evoking the feeling of ancestral memory and nourishment. Footprints lightly press into the rice, momentarily leaving an impression before being absorbed back into the ever-moving terrain. The sky above is vast and quiet, filled with a honey-hued light, casting long shadows across the mounds. The scene feels otherworldly—both intimate and infinite, as though walking through a sacred terrain of lineage and transformation.
The Dunes of Rice: Walking the Unstable Ground of Ancestry
The tea shop dissolved.
In its place, before me, stretched hills of rice—endless, golden dunes shifting beneath the wind.
This was not just a landscape.
This was ancestry.
A terrain built on generations of labor, of migration, of hand-built survival. The shifting ground beneath my feet was not just soft—it was unsteady, impermanent. A land that had been tilled, harvested, stripped, replanted. Over and over.
A land that had never been stable, never been given the chance to rest.
To move forward, I had to choose:
The long, winding path around the dunes
The steep climb directly over them
The grains shimmered like tiny pearls, piled high into impossible forms.
I hesitated.
The dunes were soft, unstable. My weight felt too heavy, as if I would sink with every step.
I had felt this before—the weight of walking a life built on the sacrifices of those before me. The weight of carrying expectations, of inheriting a world that was both my home and my burden.
How could I trust ground that had never been solid?
How could I trust that I would not be swallowed by the same forces that had swallowed so many before me—war, colonization, assimilation, capitalism, exile?
Then, a figure appeared.
A guide—his posture firm, his stride confident.
He did not hesitate.
He did not look back to see if I was following.
He simply moved.
And I decided to trust him.
The Precarious Path: A Metaphor for Migration, For Survival
I walked.
Each step tested the ground, tested my belief that it would hold me.
At one point, I almost fell.
A deep crevice opened—a hollow where the grains had formed an unseen pit.
I feared if I misstepped, I would sink forever.
How many before me had fallen into these crevices?
How many had stepped forward in faith, only to be pulled under by forces larger than them?
How many had been told, "If you just work hard, if you just endure, if you just keep moving—things will get better," only to find that the land itself was built on an unstable foundation?
The illusion of security.
The promise that if we walk carefully enough, we will not be lost.
Then, I saw them—
A Mexican family climbed ahead of me, moving effortlessly. No fear. No hesitation.
They walked as if this land had always belonged to them.
Something clicked inside me.
They knew something I didn’t.
They had learned how to move with the land, not against it.
They did not fight the instability. They adapted to it.
If they can do it, so can I.
I let go of my fear.
I moved forward.
This is what we have always done.
As Filipinos. As children of immigrants. As people of a diaspora.
We move forward.
Not because the path is solid.
Not because we trust the land.
But because we trust ourselves.
At the top of the highest dune—I saw the temple.
A Lost World - Grieving the Ground That Was Never Stable
This was not just a journey across rice dunes—this was a journey through the landscape of loss.
As I walked, as I stepped into the shifting grains, I felt it—the grief of learning how to trust myself when the world that raised me never gave me solid ground.
This was not just personal. This was ancestral.
The dunes were not just soft because they were made of rice.
They were soft because they had been uprooted.
Because the foundation beneath my family had never been allowed to settle.
Because war, capitalism, modernity, and assimilation had stripped away the roots, had left us walking on unstable land, always fearing that if we stepped wrong, we would sink.
How could my father walk without tension, when every step had been survival?
How could my grandmother trust softness, when her life had been shaped by sacrifice?
How could I expect certainty, when our entire lineage had been forced to adapt, to migrate, to exist in a world that was not made for us?
This land—these dunes—this path was once stable.
It was once a place where my ancestors walked without fear.
Where trust in the earth was not a question, but a given.
But that world had been lost.
And now I am here, searching.
Does a Place Like That Still Exist?
As I climbed, I felt the weight of the question pressing into me:
Is there still a place in this world where we can walk without fear?
Where the land will hold us, without the weight of war, without the scars of colonialism, without the constant, quiet ache of displacement?
Where love is not burdened by survival?
Where joy is not rationed, not something we must earn?
Where healing is not a privilege, but a birthright?
Is there a place where I do not have to prove that I belong?
I do not know.
But what I do know is this:
Even on unstable ground, I can move forward.
Even when the foundation is soft, I can learn to trust my own weight.
Even in the grief of what was lost, I can still walk toward what is waiting.
And when I reached the highest point of the dunes, the temple was there.
Perhaps it had always been.
Perhaps it was never about finding a place that existed in the past—
But about creating the place that will exist in the future.
A Space for Integration: The Temple at the Top of the Dunes
The moment I stood atop the last dune, light poured in.
Light did not merely shine—it poured.
Golden, honeyed sunlight spilled across the open courtyard, cascading over the earth like an exhale long held and finally released.
There were no towering gates. No ominous statues of gods demanding reverence. No walls shouting their importance through grandiosity.
Just a simple structure, spacious and worn, humble in its presence—a place meant to be entered, not worshiped.
The walls, dusty rose, like the petals of an old flower pressed between the pages of time. Their color softened, neither vivid nor fading, but something in-between—something waiting.
The floor, made of wooden square tiles, was uneven, imperfect. The grain, marked by time, carried the imprint of those who had walked before me. Stained by patina and patience, this was a place that had been touched, lived in, honored by presence rather than preservation.
As I stepped inside, I felt it—the hush.
Not silence, but a presence, a holding.
Spacious and modest.
Ancient and minimal.
A structure that did not seek to impress, but to offer.
This was not a temple of revelation. It was not where I would receive answers in fire or thunder.
It was a threshold.
A space between leaving and arriving.
Between cleansing and becoming.
Between the journey behind me and the unknown ahead.
This was not the temple of gods.
This was the temple of the body, the breath, the self.
And it did not demand anything from me.
No sacrifice.
No performance.
No proof that I was worthy to be here.
It only asked:
Will you sit?
Will you wash?
Will you let this place hold you, even for a moment?
And in that stillness, in that silence, I realized—
I had already arrived.
The temple rose from the earth like a memory—modest, weathered, and unassuming. Its dusty rose walls, the color of dried petals, were softened by time, neither vivid nor fading but held in a sacred in-between. The wooden floor tiles, uneven and worn, bore the marks of countless footsteps, each grain etched with the quiet devotion of those who came before. The architecture was spacious yet minimal, ancient yet tender, offering not grandeur but stillness. A single wooden bench rested along one wall—unadorned, inviting. Near it, a bronze bowl of water sat atop a low stone pedestal, beside a folded brown cloth.
The Bench: A Place of Rest, A Place of Witnessing
The wooden bench stood alone.
Unadorned. Simple. A place to sit, but also a place to wait.
This was not a throne. Not a chair of power or control.
This was a space where one could be still, where movement was not required, where nothing needed to be done except to be.
How long had it been since I allowed myself to simply sit?
To arrive somewhere without immediately seeking the next step?
To be in a sacred space without feeling the need to offer, to prove, to perform my belonging?
The bench was not calling me to action.
It was calling me to presence.
To my left, a wooden bench—unadorned, weathered, waiting.
Not a throne. Not an altar. Just a place to sit, to be, to exist.
The architecture was unassuming—not built to intimidate, but to invite.
The Bronze Bowl of Water: A Ritual Yet to Be Completed
To the side, I saw it—a bronze bowl filled with water.
Not a grand fountain.
Not a well carved with stories of gods and kings.
Just a bowl—waiting.
Bronze, not gold.
Humble, not opulent.
A quiet witness, unpolished by grandeur but enduring in its presence.
And the water—
Not a force of destruction.
Not a raging river, nor a tide meant to wash away the world.
But a still, reflective surface, holding the sky within it.
This was an offering—
Not one I was meant to give, but one that had been left for me.
A ritual unfinished.
A cleansing yet to be completed.
I had already washed my left foot, the right side of my face—each movement a quiet acknowledgment, a step into something deeper.
But this bowl, this water—it was different.
It was waiting for my choice.
Would I use it? Would I complete what had been started?
Or would I hesitate, as I had before?
The Ritual: A Path Half-Taken
Inside the temple, a ritual was required.
A sequence. A pattern. A rhythm known before language.
Wash the left foot.
Wash the right side of the face.
Wash the right foot.
Wash the left side of the face.
I followed the motions as if they had always been written in me.
My left foot— the first grounding, an honoring of the path that had carried me here.
The right side of my face— a cleansing of sight, a renewal of vision.
And then, I paused.
The next step—my right foot.
Easy. Done. No resistance.
But when it came time to wash the left side of my face, something in me resisted.
My hands hovered above the water.
A hesitation. A refusal.
I splashed it half-heartedly, barely touching my cheek, unwilling to let the coolness fully settle against my skin.
Something in me rejected it.
There was something unclean, something uncomfortable.
A part of me that did not want to be seen.
A part of me that did not want to be touched.
A part of me that did not want to be witnessed.
The Unfinished Cleansing: What Was I Afraid to See?
Why had I hesitated?
What did I fear?
The left side—
The side of the heart.
The side of memory.
The side where the past lingers, unseen but felt.
Had I only been willing to cleanse what was visible?
What was acceptable?
What was easy to wash away?
Had I been afraid to face myself fully—to bring the water to the places I had kept in shadow?
Was this ritual about purification?
Or was it about acceptance?
A Choice Still Waiting
The bowl sat before me.
The water waited.
Would I reach for it?
Would I finally let the water touch me fully?
Would I finish what had been started?
Or would I turn away again, leaving the ritual half-done—
leaving a part of myself unseen, untouched, unhealed?
The bowl did not command.
The water did not force itself upon me.
It only waited.
And the choice was mine to make.
And yet—I knew.
I had done my best.
For where I was, for what I could hold, for how far I had come—I had done my best.
I was ready to move forward.
Not in avoidance.
Not in shame.
But in the quiet knowing that healing does not happen all at once.
Some things must be faced in layers.
Some wounds can only be washed when the body is ready to receive.
The left side of my shadow was not forgotten.
It was not abandoned.
It was simply waiting for another time.
And for now, I could walk forward—
knowing I had honored what I could,
knowing that when I was ready, the water would still be there.
The Brown Cloth: The Weight of the Earth
Beside the bowl, a brown cloth.
Not the indigo of the offering cloth.
Not the silver of the sun.
But earth-colored, grounded, unassuming.
It was not draped in ceremony. It was not embroidered with symbols.
It was just there.
A cloth meant for use. A cloth meant to wipe clean.
A cloth meant to receive what was shed in the act of washing.
It carried no attachment to purity.
It was not afraid of what it would absorb.
It was not afraid of touch, of mess, of the weight of what water could not take away.
It simply existed to hold what needed to be released.
The Hallway: Moving Through the Womb of Time
I walked, but it was not by choice.
My feet moved on their own, guided by something unseen—a pull, a knowing, a force greater than thought.
The hallway stretched long before me, its walls a soft, muted rose.
The air was warm—not stifling, but holding, womb-like.
On my left, windows lined the corridor, each one unique.
Sunlight streamed through them in delicate patterns, casting shifting mosaics onto the pink walls.
I wanted to stop.
I wanted to touch them, to trace the patterns, to hold the beauty in my hands.
But I could not.
The hallway did not allow me to linger.
Something greater was pulling me forward.
Then—the windows ended.
The light disappeared.
And before me, the wall.
The Brutalist Wall: The Final Threshold Before Arrival
The wall was gray, rough, cold.
A monolith of cement. Stark, unadorned.
No doorway. No passage. Just a sheer face, blocking my way.
The corridor had led me here, without explanation, without instruction.
I stood at its base, looking up.
The weight of it pressed into me, into my chest, into my bones.
I could have walked further. I could have followed the corridor until I found a proper entrance.
But I didn’t.
I knew, instinctively, that this was not a wall meant to be passed through.
It was meant to be climbed.
So I climbed.
With every reach, every pull, something in me broke open.
This was not just a wall.
This was the final threshold.
I reached the top.
And the world opened before me.
The Garden Beyond the Wall: A Return to the Body, A Return to Presence
When I reached the top of the brutalist wall, I pulled myself over the edge.
And on the other side—a garden.
It was not manicured perfection, not the kind of beauty that was shaped and controlled.
It was wild.
The land was lush, an expanse of deep green, humming with the quiet murmur of life.
At its center, a circular hedge—a natural boundary, enclosing something sacred.
Beyond it, trees stretched tall and untamed, their branches twisting, reaching toward the open sky. The air here was different. Thicker. Quieter. More real.
And there, in the heart of it all, he was waiting.
The Man in the Garden: Presence Without Claim
He was sitting on a low cement bench, unshaped by time, unmarked by urgency.
His posture was effortless—neither stiff nor slouched, but simply present.
He was not watching me climb.
He was not waiting in anticipation.
He was just there.
A part of the space itself, as if he had always been there, as if he had no need to prove his presence.
His face was unreadable, but not in a way that was distant.
It was open. Receptive. Whole.
There was nothing in his body that spoke of expectation.
Not the subtle shifts of a man waiting for something to unfold.
Not the tension of someone calculating what comes next.
Just being.
The garden breathed with him. The trees swayed around him. The earth beneath him did not resist his weight.
I stepped forward, drawn toward him—not out of need, not out of hesitation, but with the quiet, certain knowing that this was where I was meant to be.
I sat beside him.
He did not move.
He did not turn to look at me, did not shift in the way people do when they are measuring how close is too close.
And in that silence, something in me settled.
The Reclamation of Desire: Moving Without Hesitation
For a long time, I had lived with the weight of expectation—what intimacy is supposed to mean, what connection is supposed to require, what love is supposed to demand.
But here, in this garden, in this moment, there was no need to explain.
I did not hesitate.
I did not second-guess.
I moved onto him.
Not with caution, not with self-consciousness, not with the fear of taking too much or giving too little.
I straddled him, my body pressing into his, my hands resting against his chest.
He did not resist.
He did not pull me forward or hold me back.
He simply allowed.
Not in the passive way that men sometimes "let" things happen when they are disengaged, nor in the indulgent way that suggests they are allowing it for their own gratification.
He simply received me.
Without demand. Without claim.
Without attachment to what came next.
There was no hunger in his touch.
No conquest in the way his hands met my skin.
Only presence.
Only breath.
Only the quiet understanding that in this moment—nothing was missing.
It was not about power.
Not about ownership.
Not about proving anything, or fulfilling a role.
It was just now.
And when it was over, I left.
And he let me.
No grasping.
No longing.
No weight of expectation hanging between us.
He just remained.
And that, more than anything, was what stayed with me when I woke up.
This was a different kind of masculine.
Not one that seeks to control.
Not one that seeks to own.
But one that simply exists.
Unmoving.
Unwavering.
A presence that does not demand to be needed.
A presence that witnesses, without taking.
A love that does not tighten its grip.
A love that lets you come and go.
And in that moment, I understood—
This is what it means to be free.
