You are a city — one I frequently pass on my way to other places.
You are familiar. I must have driven by you a hundred times. I’ve come to know the bumps and ruts on your roads well enough to notice when the small pothole near your new gasoline station finally disappeared.
Getting to you is convenient. Just a 30-minute drive will take me to you, and there’s no need to carry heavy bags when it’s you I’m heading to.
You are comfortable. Your people aren’t strangers to me in the same way I am not to them.
Familiar, convenient, comfortable, but nothing special were all I thought you to be.
We seek the thrill of newness in places and in people. What’s familiar is often in danger of being overlooked and taken for granted, and you were not an exception.
Yet today finds me breaking my morning’s schedule to drive to you… for a cup of the same kind of coffee I could get at the shop near my house, for a quiet moment by your beach, or for an aimless drive on your streets.
Short drive after short drive, one cup of coffee after another, I realize that this is a beautiful place. I nurture this growing appreciation and wonder why and how it took me a long time to realize that I didn’t have to wander far. Here, there is warmth. Here, there is comfort I didn’t know I needed.
Now I want nothing more than to stay up late to enjoy your stillness at night and wake up to the sound of your busy streets in the morning.
Here is the city that I love.
Here in this city I will stay.
* * *
Chenee Clea Gumalo, 21, is an agricultural engineering graduate of Visayas State University (Baybay City, Leyte).