Now

Late at night, I hear the TV in the living room switch on. It does this every night at exactly the same time past 11 PM. The screen flickers for as long as nobody is watching, nobody but me anyway, then switches off without anyone’s help. I told my parents about this, but my father says it’s just damaged cables, faulty wiring, the typhoons. My mother jokes that it’s the spirits of the dead trying to communicate with us. Both of their answers are good but only half-right. TVs have spirits like we do. They just aren’t wired the way ours are. And they aren’t dead but we think that because they’re too far away, broadcasting from tiny spaces in between the static. A week ago, I learned that TVs don’t have throats and need to borrow the voices of people onscreen to speak. The first time my TV introduced themselves to me, I didn’t say anything back. Not until last night, when I finally asked what they were (just a television) and why they were here. A rerun of a cartoon that used to scare me in grade school was playing, so a tiny pink dog named Courage said that he was searching. When I asked what for, the beagle went quiet for a long time. I looked at the TV for a long time too, wondering whether they had left and if it was back to the show now. Then the hum returned and the static appeared, forming and unforming into many shapes, sometimes blurring into one another. At some point, I felt the room multiply. Courage and I were no longer alone. I knew their eyes, if I could call it that, were joined by other eyes, belonging to other TVs, honing in on me. Large. Heavy. I could feel it but I didn’t move. It felt rude to. Their gaze, although unnerving, was not intrusive, not colonizing, not evil. Just sad. As if a storm were gathering, the TVs seemed to huddle invisibly around me, just staring, searching.

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Aylli Cortez (he/they) is a transmasc Filipino poet and creative writing graduate of Ateneo de Manila University, where he received a DALISAYAN Award in the Arts for Poetry. His work has appeared in HEIGHTS, VERDANT Journal, en*gendered lit, Wasteland Review, and BULLSHIT LIT. Based in Metro Manila, he is currently a poetry reader for ANMLY. Find him on Twitter and Instagram @1159cowboy or visit ayllicortez.wordpress.com.