In the wide space of the archipelago of the Philippines, there lies a realm divided into two chambers. Two dichotomies that coexist to maintain balance—light and dark, creation and destruction, truth and noise. For a time, this fragile equilibrium sustained the illusion that even in chaos, harmony could still breathe. But lately, the scale has tipped. The noise has become thunder, and darkness has begun to nest in every corner of the internet.

Some are greater than the other—quite a cruel slap in the face, but that’s how it always works. Either way, the lower one tries its very best to push through though hard—so hard—notably that arbitrary clings to every corner. They are so resilient to the extent where they are deprived of their own rights by the hunger and greed of those in the higher altitude.

So, when a great destruction struck within the land—named Tino—the lower ones were drowned, some even physically brushed against the cold fingertips of the grim reaper as the tempest carved its fury across the sphere. Yet it has always been “okay,” for they have adapted to be tough—tough in every complication, tough in everything. This has become their shield against any inferior sword that tries to pierce the so-called “Filipino resiliency.” But now, at this very moment in time, this quality has been twisted, stretched thin, exploited until it frayed into nothingness—lost its meaning—causing lives to be spun into their tombs.

How pathetic that the lower ones’ armor against carnage is not even a tangible thing, not iron nor steel, not a wall nor a shelter, but merely a characteristic—fragile, intangible, unable to heal any deep-rooted wound. How hypocritical, how cruel, how convenient.

But the higher ones—you may ask—where are they?They are at a slumber party. Waltzing in golden halls where chandeliers never flicker, clinking glasses filled with imported comfort. Buying every luxury known to humanity, with apathy as their most loyal companion. A lavish lifestyle woven from the smallest pennies stripped from the calloused palms of those below—pennies so insignificant to them yet enough to patch the cracks in a leaking roof, enough to buy a day’s worth of rice, enough to keep a child from sleeping with hunger gnawing at the edges of their ribs.

So when Tino struck, what should have been a moment of reckoning became yet another vignette of disparity. The land gasped—not because the winds howled,not because the waters rose, but because the truth surfaced like a corpse forced upward by the tide:

That the nation is breathing through borrowed air, its lungs crushed beneath the weight of indifference,its people clutching onto a kind of hope that is no longer hope, but habit.

And still, as the waters receded, the lower ones rose again—shaking mud from their skin, clutching remnants of what was left, eyes searching the horizon for a light they have been taught to believe in. They rebuild with trembling hands. They sweep the debris of promises never kept. They whisper prayers into the wind as if the sky still listens.

But somewhere—high above the ruins—those in their gilded towers exhale comfortably, their windows sealed shut, never having to inhale the same suffocating air the rest of the nation is forced to breathe.

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