AS A child, I witnessed how a river was wasted to serve as dump for a mining plant’s bowels. As a 14-year old reporter, I interviewed a broken man who allegedly murdered a store owner for a kilo of rice. Then I was assigned to cover killer floods and deadly typhoons—and civilians caught in the crossfire of the government’s Communist counter-insurgency war. Deaths, lots of death: the backdrop of my life’s love stories. Love, like a wounded dove, inches out of the dark of my nights, the cold of my days—and keeps on struggling to fly out of my heart. I kiss like it could be my last, hold like it’s the only warmth I ever knew, make love like she’s the only pleasure I could taste… I love like life is about to snuff out of my world: I keep it deep, so deeply embedded in my being. [--Pasckie Pascua]