By Selma Carvalho
The Friday they leave for a weekend in Belgium, Anju discovers Freddo is cheating on her. She doesn’t share her knowledge with him. What she should have said was, ‘Freddo, I’m tired of this shit. This time, I’m leaving.’
Her heart feels like it is going to stop breathing all on its own, distinct from the rest of her. The pain is so intense, she realises it is possible for the rest of her body to survive the carnage, while her heart, expelled from her being like a refugee, would simply die.
By Tim Tomlinson
Issue no 20
An APWT publication
They’d met at Warp and Weft: Re-weaving Indigenous Cultures into the Fabric of the Philippines, a conference hosted by his department. She was from the Cordillera. She had Bontoc blood. When she presented, she wore a traditional costume, the skirt ablaze with orange, red, and black stripes. The poetry was fierce, eloquent, blunt. No white colonialist dick will ever get inside this brown pussy, she read, and a tremor shook the room.
