Love in the time of Bacunaua

XXXI. PITY MUSICAL is the modern retelling of Butterfly, an operatic adaptation of a French novel Chrysantheme,

Miss Saigon Madama about a woman waiting for her man who never comes home.

Madame * over the go-go dancer lover who Silent tears streamed from Dulce’s left him for a woman.)

kiri face as she continued telling her story * to Matt. The poem had a title that sounded I don’t know what happened. something like “Butterfly Spaghetti,” It was as if I were hypnotized. or “Spaghetti a la Butterfly.” What if he does not come back? It started by talking about putting What if he returns and doesn’t see passion in preparing spaghetti by you, or doesn’t want to be with you? cutting the tomatoes and onions What if he already has a wife? with Puccini’s Dulce dried her tears with the opera playing in the background,

Madama Butterfly back of her hand. said something about “illusions dying

She took the baby from Matt, hard” in the middle, about how “love kissed it lovingly. for a man who never comes home is She was mad with hopeless hope. hopelessly hopeful.”

* The best thing to do, the poem I know Emilio will come back said, was to “leave it boiling until for us. the onions stop crying, then stir fry

My sweet darling baby, your the tomatoes until they bleed the father will come. intensity of your feelings.” Matt shook his head in pity. Matt only half-remembered the He vaguely remembered a poem so he wasn’t sure whether the poem by an Ilonggo gay poet who poet meant to leave the illusion, or befriended him while he was singing the pasta, boiling. at a bar in Iloilo City. *

(Months after that, Matt learned Anyway, the poem ended by that the poet killed himself by serving the dish,

hara-

then set your plate and pour the hot sauce over

before you sprinkle Parmesan cheese

* like shredded butterfly wings. Matt didn’t really understand the poem then.

Or maybe even until now, but given Dulce’s stubbornness, it felt appropriate to remember it now.

Matt does feel deeply for women who love their men with a love of a patient God, even if those men were total assholes.

(Sounds like a sado-masochistic lover God, but that’s not what Matt meant.)

(To be continued)/ PN