Shine Teleron's Sentimentalism (And The Girl Who Wrote A Book of Poetry About Shine)
By Mikael Rizada Borres
Portions of the interviews were conducted in Cebuano (Bisaya).
All Cebuano quotes have been translated into English for clarity and length.
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Prologue: Hold On/Let Go
Under Shine Marie Teleron’s bed are what she calls “boxes filled with random crap.” Like the receipts from past dinners she enjoyed, a pen with no ink left that she keeps because she feels like it was an achievement to use up all the ink, and the ribbons she wears to school – she keeps all the “random crap” other people would throw after the “crap’s” state of usefulness has run its course.
“Some of the people I know find this weird,” said Shine when talking about how people react to her “hoarding,” as some people may describe what she does. “They go to my room, and I was putting things on those boxes, and [they were] like, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Oh, that’s so weird.’ They’re shocked sometimes, so I’m like, ‘Oh my God, is this weird? Keeping things? Like, is it creepy?’”
The thing is that it’s not so much about what the random things are or which box Shine puts those random things in. It’s got to do with what those random things represent. Ever since her lunchbox days, she has been captivated by antiques, artworks by her favourite cartoonists and visual artists, and any object that means something to her. She wants to look at her possessions and hark to the good times of her past and the good individuals in her life.
But as much as Shine has demonstrated her excellence in accumulating things, she has yet to show any level of proficiency in letting things go. However, perhaps it’s not a question of whether she can let go but rather a question of whether she would ever let go. “I feel like I’m scared that I’ll forget about it forever,” said Shine. “‘Cause it’s different if you have tangible evidence to show that these memories happened.”
The thought of forgetting the past frightened Shine. When thinking about what happened to her in 2022, she could “barely remember anything.” She could only recall the big moments of that year like her run for a councilorship in the University of San Carlos Carolinian Political Science Society and her work to help elect then-Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo during the 2022 Philippine Presidential election. But when it came to the little things that kept her days going that year, she had fuck-all about it.
“I’m scared to forget about the everyday things,” Shine admitted.
“I feel like I always try to build an image [...] that I’m cool and composed,” said Shine. “But, in reality…”
“Is that all not true then?” I asked.
“No,” she replied. “Maybe, somehow, [that image has] become a part of me, but–”
“Is that a real part of you?”
“I think so. To some extent, ‘cause sometimes, I’m just really cool about things, but there are some things I’m actually passionate about, I just downplay it ‘cause it’s not cool,” Shine admitted.
She continued, “I guess an aspect of me is that I’m… a sentimental person. I keep things, I think about other people when I’m at a store. Like, ‘Oh, maybe I can gift this to someone even though their birthday is next year.
“I’m thoughtful like that.”
Poem Girl/Love Confession
On a September day in 2022, Shine swiped right on Poem Girl on Bumble because, in Shine’s words, the girl wore black, used blurry pictures for her profile, held a cigarette in one of the pictures, and her bio included the phrase “Abolish the patriarchy.” Poem Girl was a “cool girl”; she was not like the other girls.
The two matched and started chatting. “She was so excited talking to me. She was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re so pretty!’ I was like, ‘No, you’re so cool!’ Like, you know, casual flirting.”
Shine and Poem Girl continued talking to each other, but the communication never became consistent. The first time they called was a blur for Shine. Poem Girl was drunk and Shine could not understand what the other person was trying to say for the most part.
Then came the second call, where they talked for two hours, playing conversation ping-pong as they volleyed to each other profound questions, deep contemplations, and starry-eyed praises.
In relation to praises: during that two-hour call, Poem Girl took notice of Shine’s voice, complementing how calm and composed it sounded. Shine felt good hearing the flattery. However, she undercut the adulation, responding to Poem Girl that her tone – and by extension her persona – is a manifestation of her setting up boundaries, finding reluctance within herself to warm up to others. “I’m so bad with new people, so I’m so ‘slow burn’ in terms of romance and stuff.”
Why the tendency to have it a slow burn? “Because, you know, [...] I feel like I have to warm up to the person, like a long time,” Shine replied, hinting that deep discussions and showing a bit more vulnerability during each passing conversation can bring down her walls. (And by her account, that usually happens over drinks – the alcoholic kind.)
But the deep discussions subsided in frequency around November, when school work and extracurricular service occupied Shine’s schedule, making her feel “emotionally fucked up” by the stress piling up on her. She had no emotional capacity to talk to people and "ghosted” a few, including Poem Girl. She doesn’t want or mean to ghost, but – maybe due to a lack of energy or time – she can’t bring herself to send out to others “half-assed” replies that offer nothing of substance. But Shine thought that maybe she could shake off the exasperation after a few days and finally start talking to Poem Girl with a more meaningful mindset.
But lo and behold, at some point in November, Poem Girl posted on social media something entitled “Ten Things I Hate About You.”
Shine stated during the interview that she never fully read the poem, only remembering the first few lines. She would never get the chance to read the entire piece because Poem Girl put it in her archives. Nevertheless, Shine did get a hunch that it was about Poem Girl’s feelings for Shine.
“I didn’t read through it,” Shine said. “I was so scared. Like, I hate confrontations. Even though it’s just online and it was so indirect, but [...] I get so anxious about confrontations, so I just read the title and a little bit.”
The next day, Poem Girl texted Shine a love confession.
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“So she told me that she has a massive crush on me, like ‘dinosaur,’” Shine said when recalling the confession, further remembering how Poem Girl insisted that Shine does not reply before she has “fully processed” the texts.
Shine then listed out her admirer’s phrases of tribute to her. Poem Girl wrote about how she liked the way Shine giggles, sounds and composed herself. At some point in Shine's retelling of the story, she grabbed her phone and went through the confession itself one more time to remember what was stated.
“She said she liked the movies I introduced to her, but I look back – I always try to dissect things and analyze them – and I didn’t think that I recommended her a movie, but I did recommend her a show, it’s called ‘Derry Girls.’ I love ‘Derry Girls,’ so she always associates me with ‘Derry Girls.’”
And whilst she read through the texts, Shine reacted in real-time with me, and she was less than lukewarm in her review of Poem Girl’s confession. She found it “weird to read” since they hadn’t met in person at that point. “And the way she described this person, it’s like she’s met this person her whole life, honestly.”
Shine didn’t think the person Poem Girl described was Shine Teleron but an idea of Shine Teleron. “I felt like I was reading through a Wattpad story or something from the internet that’s not really about me. But, apparently, it’s about me.”
She just thought that Poem Girl’s idea of her was just warped. “She sees me as summer,” Shine noted, “but it’s conflicting–”
“If you’re not summer, what are you then?” I interrupted.
“I mean, probably because my name is ‘Shine,’ and in my pictures, I wear a lot of bright colours, but I like autumn. There’s no autumn here in the Philippines, but–”
“The idea of autumn,” I interrupted again.
“Yeah, and then I like listening to jazz and autumn songs. And then she [Poem Girl] says she reminds me of some Taylor Swift songs, and like–”
“Oh, my God.”
“This is really interesting: she said, ‘What I like most is that I like how you ghosted me and left me wondering everything about you.’”
In laughter, I squealed.
“Like, she liked how I ghosted her, which is…” Shine paused but moved on without finishing her thought. “And then she said she started hating me then and said, ‘I hate everything about you.’
“She said, ‘I hate your flirtatious words and heart that captures the gullible and sleeping romance.’ That part, I felt so… like, ‘What do you mean?’ She said ‘the gullible and sleeping romance,’ right? So…”
Shine paused again.
She then asked me: “Why are you crying?!”
I was indeed weeping. Shine’s use of the word ‘crying’ is rather dramatic though.
But I digress.
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Shine did not know what to do with the feelings conveyed by Poem Girl, whom she never met in real life at that point. She did not know what to say to Poem Girl in response to the confession. But she took her friend’s advice, which was to meet Poem Girl in person. She asked Poem Girl out to go to the Cebu Literary Festival (LitFest) held in Ayala in the last week of November 2022. “I actually met Tarantadong Kalbo with her,” Shine recalled.
Shine did think that meeting Poem Girl and walking through Cebu LitFest with her was the right call, sharing how the thought that “[i]f ever she continues to like me, it’s justified ‘cause, you know, at least we’ve seen each other! It’s so weird to confess to someone…” Shine paused yet again without finishing her thought.
But that day didn’t move any needle towards a budding romance between the two. Both are introverted in a way that only creates awkwardness, not quirky moments. They’re indecisive in a way that leads them to anything but somewhere, immobile and confused when choosing what to do.
Shine does not doubt how amazing Poem Girl is as a person, but that amazingness is not necessarily something Shine thinks she needs or wants in her life. “I’ve always thought that she’s a lovely person and she’s smart and… you know, she’s a great writer. But when we went out, I don’t think I could ever see myself dating her.”
Then, Poem Girl wrote a book of poetry, and it’s mostly about her feelings for Shine.
The Book Of Poetry/The Art Of Letting Go
Sometime after their first date, Poem Girl let Shine know about how her affection for Shine prompted her to pour all her emotions into a literary piece. Poem Girl’s feelings eventually cascaded from a few rhyming lines to one whole book.
Poem Girl asked Shine’s permission to publish the book. Shine gave her a nonchalant ‘You can do what you want’ kind of response, believing that she couldn’t censor other people’s thoughts and works.
And like with the piece about the 10 things Poem Girl hates about Shine, Shine never read the book or any of the pieces included in the book of poetry.
“Have you read it?” I asked Shine.
“No,” she replied.
“Do you want to read it?”
“I’m torn, like 50/50. Sometimes, I’m curious. It’s interesting, my mind gets interested in things. But at the same time, [...] I’m gonna analyze everything and it’s tiring,” Shine told me, accepting that her insistence on having to make sense of everything being told to her and everything around her will exhaust her.
The time when Poem Girl revealed to Shine the book of poetry, Shine finally gave a clearer rejection of Poem Girl’s feelings. Previous instances of her trying to reject Poem Girl were more “implied.”
Poem Girl asked Shine twice whether the book could be published. On both times, Shine gave her the green light. On the second time, as Shine recalled, Poem Girl tried to clarify with her. Are you sure that I can really publish this? ‘Cause like, I think you might get uncomfortable because a lot of my raw feelings are in this book. That’s the ballpark of what Poem Girl said, according to Shine.
After hearing that specific statement, Shine then felt the heavy weight of Poem Girl’s request. The words “raw feelings” got Shine. As she considered more deeply what Poem Girl was asking of Shine, the latter had to share her truth with the other person – she cannot give back what the writer of that book of poetry wrote about: romantic love.
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“She’s a friend in the sense that we were talking before. I told her a lot about me and she knows random things about me now, and I know random things about her, so yeah. I guess that bond over that phone call, that two-hour phone call was… important, as someone who is sentimental,” Shine said when describing her relationship with Poem Girl at the time of our recorded conversation.
It’s December 26th, 2022. I asked Shine what she thought was the last time she had to let go of something as of that day of the interview. She said that she was “letting go of someone,” and that someone was Poem Girl. Around that time, Shine noticed Poem Girl’s posts, and she assumed that they were about her, remembering what Poem Girl did for her. “And I feel like if I don’t act on it, that’s a sign, a process of letting go. So I’m kind of letting go of her.”
Shine told me that she thought it wasn’t fair to keep Poem Girl hanging onto an impossible possibility, leading Poem Girl on to nowhere.
I asked Shine whether she had ever thought about the possibility of her and Poem Girl being together, to which Shine answered with an admission. “In order to really know that I’m not into this person, I always imagine or envision if we could be a couple, if I could do these things with her. Maybe that vague vision of us being in a relationship is what I’m letting go, and everything this person harbours for me.”
When Shine paints a more specific picture of her vague vision, utilizing her ability to overanalyze in this exercise, she can see an idea of her being comfortable outside with the person she calls her boyfriend or girlfriend. She sees in her mind’s eye a moment of comfort with the other person and having conversations defined by its ease.
Such a vague vision was not comparable to what happened on their first date at Ayala Centre. “When we were going out, I was really… I was very conscious of her [...] I was conscious of her, but I can’t really be comfortable asking her, ‘Wanna go there?’ I guess we were not comfortable with each other,” Shine said when describing their date. She also envisioned being able to talk casually, which did not happen during their hangout, labelling their conversations at Ayala Centre as “forced.”
But Shine is not only letting go of Poem Girl. She is letting go of the ideas in her mind that come with Poem Girl. She is letting go of the prospects of being in a relationship with Poem Girl, as well as the feelings about her Poem Girl harboured.
“You try to keep them in mind, but I don’t think I can handle every day of carrying her feelings. ‘Cause like, if you decline a person and you still keep their feelings, isn’t that kinda weird?” she asked. “That’s like you have this hold on them and they cannot escape from you because you’re holding onto their feelings for you that you can’t even reciprocate. So you have to let go of that. You have to let them free, basically.”
“When do you know when you have let go of her?” I asked.
“When I’ve made it extremely clear that I don’t reciprocate those feelings. Clear boundaries.”
But the process of letting go was hard and even rather “scary” for Shine. Even if the fact remained that Shine could never reciprocate the feelings Poem Girl has for her, she held a fear that she was letting go of an opportunity, or the person Shine was meant to be with. It haunted Shine.
I blurted: “How do you let go of the two [her and her feelings]?”
“For me, like personally, it’s a long process, actually,” Shine confessed. “Sometimes, like months from now, I’ll probably look back, but… what’s important for me is that this person, she knows that she’s being let go of. That’s what’s really important for me. And I don’t want her to know that I’m thinking about her, because I do think about people, I do think about her, but I don’t want her to think that means that there will be a chance. What’s really important for me is that the other person is able to move on.”
“How hard is it to let go of those two things?” I asked.
“It’s really hard. I think it’s really hard, but it’s hard to define how hard it is because it takes time. Like, I don’t just let go of one person in one day,” said Shine. “I can’t just rush letting go.”
She then recalled the moment she broke up with an ex-girlfriend. “Before, when we broke up, she was like, ‘Are we ending this now?’ I replied: ‘Can we just sleep over it?’
“I really cannot make a rash decision over this. She was like, ‘No, no. Let’s talk about this now.’ I can’t. I just feel like there are things that we can let go better, like we can think about it over and refresh our minds if this is what we really want because letting go is a commitment. And – first of all – I’m scared of commitment in a relationship… and I’m scared of any form of commitment, actually.”
“What about commitment makes you scared?”
Shine thought of her reply for three seconds before answering.
“Maybe because… you know, I have this trait… with things. Let’s not talk about people first. With things, I’m like, ‘What’s mine is mine.’ I hold them to value. I hold to them, I care for them. If someone borrows something from me, I really want it back. With people, it’s different ‘cause [...] we have to talk about loyalty and things like that. I guess that’s what’s hard for me because when I commit, I want to give everything about myself – I really commit. I get really serious about it. I hold that word [commitment] to value, I have my own standard of commitment in that I’m really serious about it. So maybe that's why.”
Epilogue: Kael, Poem Girl, And The 10 Things She Hates About Shine
Considering the sequentiality of the story between Shine and Poem Girl, writing the feature was the breeze in my hair on the weekend; it was a relaxing thought. Just one thing: the fact that I never read that piece entitled “10 Things I Hate About You” was the albatross around my neck. A part of me was in a state of competitiveness because, over a year before this feature was released, I wrote a literary piece for Today’s Carolinian called “Top 10 Reasons Why I Want A Crush.” I wondered whose list was better.
But with that curiosity, I never felt I could finish the feature about Shine Teleron without knowing what Poem Girl wrote.
After months of contemplating how to get a hold of that poem (I researched with much resolve on how to hack Shine’s Instagram account and stalked her Instagram followers list), I realized that the only way to read the piece was if I asked for it directly.
Around a week before this piece was due to be released, I asked Shine if she could connect me with Poem Girl. Shine was slow to act upon it (because of her work as the Vice President of the University of San Carlos Supreme Student Council, or so I’m told), but she gave me Poem Girl’s Instagram handle. I texted Poem Girl right away.
For transparency, I told Poem Girl about the interview with Shine and how Shine and I talked about Poem Girl and the book of poetry. Considering how I was asking Poem Girl to share her poetry about her feelings for Shine, I apologized to Poem Girl in case I made her uneasy. The conversation kept going, so I assumed (and hoped) that it meant she felt comfortable enough to talk to me about Shine.
Poem Girl then shared that she has yet to finish the book. The poetry has been written (21 poems, to be exact), but what makes the book incomplete is that she hasn’t done the analyses and explanations she wanted for every poem. She planned to publish it in June 2023 but had to cancel for reasons I did not ask about. I would have liked to ask, but I don’t think I have the privilege or even the nerve to ask such questions since we barely know each other.
I wanted to read the poems, but I did feel that I should pay to read them. After all, artists should be recognized for their work. However, we didn’t really know how to price the book. After sleeping on the question for a night, we eventually settled on a price of Php 140. I based the number on the Big Bad Wolf price list; the ‘F’ price seemed fair to me.
Out of respect for Poem Girl’s craft and the fact that the book has yet to be completed, I have only shared the book of poetry with the visual designer who was tasked with creating social media visuals for the feature, hoping that the copy will give her inspiration. After the visual designer finished with their work, I restricted their access to the book.
I have no plans to share it with anyone else – especially Shine Teleron, who will only overanalyze the meaning behind every word within the book. But what I can share, with permission from the author herself, are two tidbits from the book to explain what Poem Girl wrote.
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Poem Girl would say that both she and Shine are past those moments of awkward first encounters and “-ber month” calls over the phone. They now both consider their relationship as one befitting of good friends, and they work closely as activists, joining and organizing rallies and campaigns against the social injustices they see in society. “I guess our relationship now is healthier compared to before,” said Poem Girl through Instagram, explaining that after those days in late 2022, they didn’t get to interact until they both became activists.
Nevertheless, even if the relationship changed, that moment of time when one liked the other is emblazoned in their personal history. That book of poetry is a testament to that moment in time.
At the end of the book’s introduction, Poem Girl writes: “This is a journey of how beautiful the soul of my love for this someone I met way back in September was, but also a journey of pain and agony that packaged the love that I had which she tolerated instead of celebrated. I hope these poems will give you a glimpse of what my feelings were composed of, and a glimpse of what unrequited love is”
But I think what will define the book of poetry is the poem titled “10 Things I Hate About You.” After almost a year of wondering how to read the poem, I finally read it.
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10 Things I Hate About You
Written by Poem Girl
I hate everything about you.
I hate your flirtatious words and heart that captures
the gullible and soft-moving heart I have.
I hate your smiles that kill a thousand worries of
my deranged and abandoned heart.
I hate your eyes that shine like hopes in the vastness
of my delirious thoughts.
I hate your nonchalant gestures that drive me crazy
‘cause I care about your little sneaks and gaze.
I hate your hair that reminds me of the color of my
anger and pain in November.
I hate your voice that echoes a loving and peaceful tone
that put me to sleep for eternity.
I hate your warmth and serenity that eat my madness
and maniacal thoughts.
I hate your calm chin that eases my paranoia and anxieties of
not being reciprocated and seen.
I hate your reactions to every solstice gale I gave
‘cause it never loses your cool and composure.
and for making me feel I’m transcending I don’t like it,
And what I hate most is that I hate how the universe allowed
me to hate you.
But at the very least, my deities knew I can’t. And you know it
too.
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Poem Girl put my “Top 10 Reasons Why I Want A Crush” to shame.
It’s the best thing since banana bread.
Mikael photo-bombing a picture of Shine and their batchmate Nina during their batch party on May 2023.
Shine and Mikael conducted an in-person interview on Monday, December 26th, 2022.
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