The Invention of Heaven by Dean Young

Dean Young

The Invention of Heaven by Dean Young

T.

Where I live, we have a home development mutual fund that everybody calls,

Pag-IBIG

. It’s an acronym for

Pagtutulungan sa Kinabukasan: Ikaw, Bangko Industriya at Gobyerno

(Working Together for the Future: You, Industrial Banks and the Government – my translation, don’t quote me on this). It has several branches/offices scattered across the metro, which means jeepneys include it as one of their stops. A while ago, N.

was tweeting

during the commute, and said this:

I like it when people go down at pag-ibig fund bldg.they say:isang pag-ibig,pag-ibig lang,sa pag-ibig,etc.

(I like it when people go down at [the] Pag-IBIG fund building. They say [to the driver]: one person stopping at Pag-IBIG, just until Pag-IBIG, to Pag-IBIG, etc.)

In our native tongue,

pag-ibig

means love.

…

Thinking about Dean Young’s

heart

, and my heart, and other writers’ hearts.

The Invention of Heaven

Dean Young

The mind becomes a field of snow

but then the snow melts and the dandelions

blink on and you can walk through them,

your trousers plastered with dew.

They’re all waiting for you but first

here’s a booth where you can win

a peacock feather for bursting a balloon,

a man in huge stripes shouting about

a boy who is half swan, the biggest

pig in the world. Then you will pass

tractors pulling other tractors,

trees snagged with bright wrappers

and then you will come to a river

and then you will wash your face.

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