saan ba?

I am afraid of silence. Not just the deafening sort that a whirring fan or a voice on the radio can eject. There is another kind of silence that comes at the most commonplace of times: when washing dishes, taking a shower, scrubbing the floor—mechanical tasks that leave the mind alone to cringe over old sins and what-might-have-been’s, as well as the missing commas in old published columns. So I take a romance novel to the shower, read the paper while sloshing soap water on my floor, and let Aladdin sing of a whole new world while I scrub the rice cooker. I do not like to be alone; I do not like the quiet.

-Patricia Evangelista

i wanted to write a poem based on this but i just couldn't write something that will encapsulate the idea better than this did. so there. i wanted to entitle it "saan ba" but this is an excerpt from her column Supersonic.