Rotten hearts make good compost
The first time my skin bled from scraping my knee, I didn’t cry.
It took three washes to remove the dried blood. But as if to verify this day wasn’t just a figment of my mind, no soap erased the stain of its scar on my flesh. I was in first grade—a big girl—and the red on the bandages bore witness to this truth.
Sunlit and sticky, I spent my childhood soaked in the mysterious atmosphere of provincial life. Behind the bahay kubo where my father grew up, there was a hole, roughly a meter in diameter, nestled within the swaths of grass enveloping the land. It sat there just as strangely as the scar on my knee.
On weekends I visited, children were eerily warned by elders to steer clear of the hole so as not to encounter snakes or, worse, find themselves lost forever. But I wasn’t so gullible that I could not discern when the grown-ups were adorning their words with fairytales.
I visited the hole.
The air around the hollow hung heavy with a putrid odor, a stark contrast to the crispness of the air I had known before. No snakes were there, though. It was just death. Inside lay rotten meat, dried corn cobs, mango peels turned brown, crushed leaves, and more disfigured shapes I couldn’t recognize.
This was my first meeting with compost and its dear companion, decomposition. I saw the earth’s way of feeding itself. But despite rot’s embrace in this small compost, I didn’t feel entirely out of place.
Time spent as a girl in Catholic school made the idea of my eventual decay all too familiar. With a black cross drawn on my forehead, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” had long echoed in my mind, like a solemn lullaby sung by the earth itself. It was also there, in those halls, that science supplemented me with another perspective: organic materials could transform into lush soil through decomposition. Thus, from decay, life can still flourish.
It was a warm Sunday, a decade or so later, when I realized the touch of decay had truly baptized me. In the quiet following holy communion, my mind hummed with thoughts that didn’t take the form of prayers. Instead, I knelt beneath the towering expanse of the church’s ceilings as my gaze wandered among the altar’s gilded embellishments and the devout souls kneeling before it.
I observed a middle-aged man clasping his calloused palms near his chest, then another with damp brows furrowed to his knuckles. There were eyes shut down in intensity—maybe in gratitude or perhaps in a desperate plea to the heavens. If I could eavesdrop on them all, what melody would they compose?
A singular tear traced its path down my cheek. It suddenly materialized before me. I glimpsed my own reflection in these faces. I existed in the same murky blend of despair and anticipation as these men. Were they, too, wishing for similar miracles as I do?
Perhaps I have sinned as I knelt without uttering my own prayers, yet the echoes of my muted cries seemed to feel like it was one. I’m just like them—forged from the rot that marks skin, hearts, and hopes. It took a storm of blows for the young girl, who believed she was a grown-up for stifling her tears, to realize that her wisdom wasn’t as large as she once thought.
I’m persuaded that age brings a softening of hearts. But it’s the kind of softness similar to a sweet fruit growing tender when it has started to rot or has been bruised from being handled too much. After loads of betrayals, sacrifices, and losses, I had shed the guise of the little girl who believed her intellect could navigate her through every surge of emotion. My heart festers—succulent and overripe—bearing the gouges from the merciless blows of the pressures that left it battered.
But the bitterness of life doesn’t seem all isolating to me. I like to believe that our hearts might someday transform into rich compost, enabling a select few—lovers, family, strangers, or even artists long departed—to cultivate deep connections. I think my years of pain have offered me a glimpse into why Virginia Woolf wrote her last letter to her husband or why Vincent van Gogh cut his ear. Perhaps, just perhaps, these reasons echo why I press my hands against my ears when I weep on the floor.
During somber hours, I often ponder whether the decay nestled within my chest will endure, much like the unfading scar on my knee. Perhaps this situation aids in the moment when I meet another’s gaze so that a sense of sacred understanding will bloom from our decaying hearts. What I’m trying to convey is that my heart feels rotten, but maybe that’s just a shared human experience. We’re all solitary beings to an extent, yet perhaps glimpsing one’s worn-out reflection in another is consolation enough.
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Paulyana Battung, 21, is a student pursuing multimedia studies at the University of The Philippines, just trying to navigate life with a deeper sense of care.
