By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

IN this day and age, women have lesser tolerance for philandering partners but it doesn’t mean they do not respond or react. They respond by not saying a word, or a tirade of so many words, or throw unidentified flying objects, leave, or wait.

I know of so many women who wait, who in time, get what they deserve or not, for their tolerance. Some were taken for granted, and some were rewarded for the “loyalty” and “sacrifice”, like the wives I knew who were just so happy to bury their husbands remains, after having left them for another woman, or man. The eventual possession of what remains is a pyrrhic victory considering that it took them a lifetime to wait, a life that could have been spent, not in waiting, but in developing their innate talents and pursuing other endeavors for their own self-development. Some husbands do come home at some point, after having explored their own sexuality and ambition, or shortly before they die.

Often, however, as a result of the tolerance, partners come home daily, at wee hours of the morning, or at odd intervals of the day, telling their wives, “Sa yo naman ako umuuwi.” (Translation: It’s you I go home to.) And the wife takes that as a trophy, not as a life sentence, or a death sentence, or an obituary.

Revenge lingers as an option, but is seldom or never resorted to, in its darkest sense, that of a crime of passion, as much as some men are more prone to do. Surely, there are women who get into relationships as an act of revenge against their partners, instead of being motivated to work on a more rewarding partnership with another.

For those who wait for the love they cannot see, an insight from Abraham Lincoln: “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

 

Tequila sunrise

your breath
lingers on the pillow
as buds awaken to the kiss
of birds and bees
and I’m here
seeking answers
from a drowsy butterfly
fluttering with clouds
of incoherence

I smell the night sweat,
on the collar of your shirt
tasting like the sea
tasting like a mermaid
in a bed of seaweeds
swimming in tequila
and it’s sunrise
and she …. lays there, still,
the butterfly told me, reluctantly,
with a seahorse
licking what remains
of the salt

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