This collection of fiction and nonfiction pieces is peopled by women who live or come from Mindanao, that “faraway” place in the Philippine South known for its political wars and religious strife. But this book is not about that.

It is about a warehouse, fermented fish, water pipes, bougainvilleas, houses with stairs to nowhere, dogs, a hamburger, and a stolen kiss or two all told by a child, a teenager, a teacher turned OFW, a sixty-year-old woman in love, a daughter, a niece, an aunt. These stories are about those middle spaces where there will always be more than one thing, all at once: logic and love, truth and imagination, tradition and transitions, presence and loss, madness and choices, grief and life.