An innocent is not innocent but a drug runner. A chase is not a chase but a clash. A gunning down not a gunning down but a gunfight. A boy played too close to one such gunfight, so close he caught pneumonia and died.
Unable to cough up sixteen thousand pesos, his parents couldn’t buy him a death other than the prescribed bronchopneumonia. (For a lesser fee, maybe something like sepsis?) The boy would have celebrated his birthday in three days, the birthday money now going to his funeral.
With the help of new and well-meaning friends, a wound began to form, to sink into the boy, but it was a slow, painstaking process, a few millimeters a month of sinking to a puncture. After almost ten years of constant friendship and well-meaning, a fully fatal gunshot wound emerged.
At long last, a celebration is not a celebration but a death.
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SIPI: Sumilip si Damian habang nirerebisa ang draft na ito. Medyo iniiwas ko sana dahil nagkataong ginagamot din namin ang kanyang pneumonia (at nagkataong 9 years old din siya). Kaso mabilis siyang magbasa.
“Daddy.”
“O.”
“Bakit ang lungkot ng stories ninyo?”
“Kasi totoo.”
Pinakita ko sa kanya ang reference ko rito. (Naipakilala na rin si Macli-ing Dulag dahil nasipat din niya ang isa pang burador. Saka na ito ibabahagi ha? Baka sa 24th.)
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1. Daily Guardian: The death certificate of nine-year-old Lenin Baylon...
2. Reuters: Philippine family allowed to correct death certificate of son killed in drugs war
3. Reuters: A pathologist, a priest and a hunt for justice in the Philippines
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