The sea was already in my stomach before we saw the jagged line of Chinapoliran Port. Six hours in a faluwa, the bow hitting each wave like a hammer. In 2015, I had called it magic. This time I knew better. Magic can make you sick.

At 670 kilometers from Bulacan, I was as far from home as I could be without leaving the country. But far is relative. Sometimes the measure is not in kilometers but in what was never said, in time that never lined up.

The homestay owner woke me before 4:00 a.m., the power still humming. It was a small change from my first visit, when electricity cut out at midnight. The guide and I set off toward Rapang Cliff, the dark swallowing the village behind us, each step feeling longer than the last.

The trail was becoming more and more level, with the occasional rocks and small shrubs covering parts of it. Without the lamp the guide carried, it was easy to get lost, with or without the smattering light of stars overhead. To have no sense of wholeness, lost as to where body ends and darkness begins. Where reality’s boundaries lay, if there were any.

And for a moment, I could see her walking ahead. Occasionally looking back, that close-mouthed smile with a small dimple in her right cheek, the one she defaulted to, a small shield she did not think I noticed. The most beautiful thing in the world, for me at that time at least, was when she forgot to hide and laughed with her whole mouth. Teeth, pride, femininity, all at once. I told her once I liked that smile best. She rolled her eyes like she was humoring me, but I could tell the comment stayed with her.

She would stumble sometimes, giving me the excuse to rush forward and catch the scent of Memo. Yellow like moonlight, with vanilla and citrus chasing each other in the air. She would brush me off, insisting she was fine. I would scoff and tell her she would still be a strong and independent woman even if a man, this man, helped her.

We talked about De Beauvoir and Marx and Jesus Christ as a true-blue feminist. We trashed Instagram poetry to kingdom come. We sent each other pictures and songs, and somewhere between them we skipped the shallow layers entirely. Straight to the marrow. The way she met me at my own depth and kept going.

A pity I never got to tell her what that meant.

“Siguro mga twenty minutes na lang,” the guide said, breaking my reverie.

I nodded. “Malapit na pala.”

When we reached the top of Rapang Cliff, dawn was beginning to split the horizon. A knife of orange tearing through the dark.

The guide stepped a few meters down to take pictures, leaving me at the highest point of the outcrop. I sat with my arms around my knees, watching the light spill over the Pacific.

And again, the heady combination of yellow moonlight, vanilla, and citrus tangled with salt wind. I almost turned. Almost. Instead, I kept my eyes on the horizon.

“Sorry,” I thought I heard.

For what? For breaking my heart? I shook my head. We were both bleeding from different wounds, recovering from different storms. Us healing together was a dream for another lifetime.

I wanted that more than I ever wanted to know if EDSA underneath our condo would spit me out or keep me, the way Neo stepped into the street in The Matrix.