No one predicted we’d still be here,
barely scraping by from a downpour of sorrows,
and still reality would come lurking in the corner —
interrupting our grief and mourning to stare at us,
begging to return with the living,
since we were beaten,
but hard enough to be left alone,
and that’s what we should expect
the calm apathy that comes from surviving;
because we’re here and that is how things worked,
and now after friends and families perished —
the dead became a number on statistics
drowned by the fickle nightly news;
yet here we celebrate,
when we reached another year
because damn it, we’re still here.
Neen Ramos is a Pinay who loves to devour pop culture and random stuff on the Internet. A lover of good books and coffee, her Spotify playlist keeps her sane as she juggles her work and TV show marathons. You can find her alter ego (@whatneenwrites) on Twitter and Instagram.