Notes on the Writing of 'You Don't Love Me Anymore'

In 2009, the writer Lilledeshan Bose invited me along with other writers to transform some of her dad’s talisman drawings into literary pieces. The great Baguio artist Santiago Bose had died a few years back, in 2002, and Lille wanted to put up an exhibit of his works (along with their literary interpretations) in something she called Confessions of a Talisman. 

That’s when I began writing “You Don’t Love Me Anymore.” I was only able to send her an excerpt, because I couldn’t quite finish the story. I felt that it was going to be the story of a husband and wife who have slowly fallen out of love for each other, with the burning of the husband's anting-anting by the wife becoming the ultimate schism in that relationship. 

I based it on my memory of my parents. My father once abandoned us when I was a tween, but came back after a few years to live with us again — with an anting-anting in his wallet that he picked up from some adventure in Manila. [He swore by its powers.] This freaked out my mother, who was fervently Born Again, and I remember her taking the anting-anting from him and burning it, and shouting all manner of “In Jesus’ name!” while doing so. That whole scene is embedded in my memory. I wanted to make that the basis for my story — and this may be why it took me such a long time to finish. I didn’t want it to be too autobiographical. 

Year after year, I would come back to the story, writing a paragraph here, another paragraph there. One year, I decided to set it in Malaybalay, Bukidnon for some reason. A few years later, the husband became a writer, and the wife a maker of longganisa. A few more years later, he wasn’t just a writer, he was a writer of balak [or Binisaya poetry]. The story built on like that. And now it’s finished. 

The illustration below is the original Santiago Bose art Lille gave me. This story will be one of four new stories to be included in the reissue of Beautiful Accidents  to be published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2025. Obviously, I’m still working on the new edition.