It has been raining the whole night. And in the morning it is still raining. The sky is gray, wet. The trees sway and shiver. The grass is strewn with leaves. A dog barks from a balcony. It is the damnation samar.

I stand before the window and look out. Everything is still. I am absent from here.

The phone rings. I pick up. There is a sound of breathing. Then the phone disconnects.

There are days when I do not talk to anyone. I watch films. The risqué ones. Women swaggering their hips, flaunting their boobs, showing their thighs, putting out their tongues and teasing men.

I had seen a film once. A young man goes for confession. The priest asks him,

“Do you lie?

Do you covet what others have?

Do you commit impure acts, do you touch yourself?”

He gives him three Our Fathers and Hail Marys for kissing a woman tongue in and out.

I haven’t yet kissed. Maybe on the cheek of a friend once, on the forehead of a child once, my mother on her head many times. But on the lips? No sir, never.

We have a test. Sometimes we do this to allow people to pass into the loop.

They have to read aloud selected passages...

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