1. This is how it doesn’t start:

We were fifteen, it was raining, and the dirt road on the way home was already soft mud. At the door, we tried our best to shake off the earth caked around our legs, knee-high, our uniforms still dripping at the edges, rain still battering the roof above our heads.

“Your mother will kill us.” With a grin, you proceeded to take your clothes off, shutting the door with a still-muddy shoe behind you. The door closed with a slight grating noise, as the soil that clung to the edge of the door ground against the jamb.

I’d known you all my life but it was only then that I felt something akin to that - a heightened sense of feeling that amplified everything, down to the minutest of sounds.

“Take that off if you don’t want to catch a cold,” you said casually, and I found myself absently toying with the first button of my blouse.

I don’t exactly remember when it was that I first saw you — we must have been very young. But in my head, I’d always looked back to this rain-drenched afternoon as the day we actually met…

***

The rest of the story can be found in What These Hands Can Do, a Lesbian Literary and Art Folio published by Lunduyang ng Sining (Sanctuary of Art). The book contains other stories, poems and essays on lesbian love and life by various women in the country. Photos and Artworks of the same theme will also be featured, in full color. The books is currently pre-selling for a price of Php 230 (regular price P250). The book will be available beginning February 8, 2008, 7 pm, at the launch at Party A-venue (Sct. Tuazon cor. Timog, QC). Entrance fee for the launch is Php 200. For more information, click here.

The work above is excerpted from The Art of Fleshing Out Rumors, in Ten Parts by Kate Pedroso. Excerpted by permission of the author. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the the author. (reposted from the Lunduyan ng Sining website)