7 Days of BakitWhy Love: Share Your Love Stories

 Image by Shanissinha_ on Flickr

In order to start up this week of L-O-V-E that ends with a particularly frightening ominous night of fear, horror, and impending doom before glimmering rays of hope illuminate the treacherous night echoing the arrival of dawn, we're gonna be sharing love stories!

Now the story I'm going to share, I honestly can't say for sure if this is a legitimate folk story, my mom actually had a habit of telling me ghost stories about woodland elves that did some bad stuff to you if you pee'd on their tree instead, but I have loved this one ever since I heard it.  It's actually from a play called Flipzoids from Pil-Am playwright Ralph Peña, which I read some five years ago.  From what I recall the context of the scene is a mother who has a very difficult relationship with her nurse daughter recounts this story to a random youth she befriended. Please enjoy!

"Where I come from, stories grow from trees. This is what i know.

I will tell you a story. Short only.

There is a very pretty girl who lives in a town far away. Esmeralda. Every boy in this town, they like Esmeralda to be their wife. But she was very choosy, this young Esmeralda.

One boy, Santiago, he wanted her more than anything in the world. So one day, he went to her house and said, "What will make you love me, Esmeralda?" And the girl said to Santiago, "You bring me your mother's heart, and I will love you."

So, Santiago ran back home and found his mother sleeping, very peaceful, on the floor. He took a very sharp bolo knife from the kitchen, and he kneeled down by his mother's sleeping body. He was about to cut her breast, but suddenly, she was awake. "Santiago," she said, very soft...not afraid. "What are you doing my son?" Santiago said to his mother, "I want Esmeralda to marry me, I need to take your heart." That is what he said. Santiago's mother touched her son's head and said, "Take my heart, and be happy my son."

And Santiago plunged the bolo knife into his mother's chest and cut out her heart. He wrapped it, still beating in banana leaves and ran back to Esmeralda's house. "Esmeralda, Esmeralda," he said, running, "I have what you want." Santiago opened the banana leaves and showed her his mother's beating heart. Esmeralda screamed. "What have you done?!" "But...but...," Santiago said, he did not understand. "You asked for my mother's heart," he said. "I was only kidding," said Esmeralda. "I cannot marry a man who would cut out his own mother's heart. You get away," she said.

And Santiago, very sad, not understanding, walked away with his banana leaves and beating heart. He was crying and could not see very well. This made him trip on a rock. The banana leaves dropped from his hand, and his mother's beating heart rolled out, there, in the dirt. Sayang. Then the heart, it started talking. "Santiago, my son," the heart said, "do not be sad. You took something that was always yours." The heart said this. And then the lightning hit Santiago and turned him into a lizard. That is my Story. That is all I know."

 

Man, good job me, now I'm tearing!  I was going to opine some more about my thoughts on the nature of love, but you know what? After reading that story again I'm actually a lot more interested in what stories any of you readers out there have to share!  So please leave you own love stories and I've been informed by the BakitWhy.com Content Coordinator, that the most sappiest gets a prize!