Figurative Language

What happens when the lessons we teach become the truths we struggle to live by?

In a classroom where words are meant to explain the world, a teacher and his students discover that some feelings are far more complicated than any figure of speech.

Kru Mark, a young Filipino English teacher, introduces his students to similes, metaphors, irony, and symbolism. But beyond the chalkboard, his students carry burdens that no lesson can easily resolve, family expectations, prejudice, jealousy, painful secrets, and the longing to be understood.

Among them is Prem, a rebellious young man whose privileged life conceals a deeper struggle. As Mark and Prem grow closer, the boundaries between understanding, affection, responsibility, and desire become increasingly difficult to navigate. Their connection unfolds beneath the watchful eyes of a school community, where private feelings can have public consequences.

Through the stories of Mark, Prem, and their classmates, Figurative Language explores love, identity, compassion, power, and the consequences of choices. It asks whether understanding someone is the same as knowing how to help them, and whether words alone can heal the wounds people carry.

This edition also includes an Author’s Companion, featuring character profiles, relationship connections, key settings, themes and symbols, and reflections on the story. Readers will also encounter A Light Left On, an alternate-universe story that explores a different path: one shaped by intervention, recovery, support, and the difficult work of learning to live again.

Because sometimes, the most important lesson is not how to describe what we feel, but how to face it with honesty, responsibility, and compassion.

Some words can be erased. Their impact cannot always be undone.