sometimes, we all wish for the world to just stop spinning for a while; that we remain sixteen or nineteen forever — just dreaming of painting the marmoris of the sea and seeing it displayed in a museum. just dreaming of browsing bookstores — each book sinking into your effleurage, until you see that cream-colored cover with your name on the spine. just dreaming of hearing a song from a stranger's car, and call it your own. just dreaming of creating stories out of piano keys. just dreaming of discovering a star.

at least, if the world stopped spinning today, a dream can remain as a dream forever. it will never be another thing we messed up. it will never be another dream we lost.

oh, to live with sadness, so deep — it has started spreading;
i can feel its crushing weight: a stampede.

my trampled bones have started to resemble
wildflowers as they decay
and the soil flinches at the sight
of something so pure —
something so tainted.

behold, the lamb of god
has become the big, cruel wolf;
this is what happens to delicate things
after they're done breaking —
after they're done rotting.
this is what happens to pure things
after the sins and sacrificial rites.

behold, the lamb of god —
the scapegoat
has become the wolf

and one day, it will outrun the forest fog — spreading —
consuming.
devouring.
one day, it will outrun the howling in its chest.
one day it will outrun the ironic aching of ribs, long emptied.

oh, to be a girl and not a wolf.
to live with sadness and trampled bones.
maybe one day, i too, will outrun myself

girls like her won’t break you — girls like her will make you weekly playlists, and write you poems as you sit together on museum floors, and watch your favorite movies, and introduce you to new songs, and steal your hoodie while you read your long-pending books, and drag you out of bed at 2 am’s to watch the stars fall to the earth, and kiss you, right there and then.



and then, they break you.

I used to be that girl who believed in staying close to the things and to the people who make you feel human — make you alive. But these days the book clutters look just like a patch of misplaced stars while the dusk crawled in my head, and the poems look better when they're crumpled or written in red inks and on my wrist, and all the songs just come and go. Today, I let all four of my cacti die. Today, my eyes took the form of the nimbus clouds, and my body reeked of petrichor; maybe it has returned to dust. Today, I felt too empty to even mind the emptiness. And today, I would've written a eulogy to that girl who used to believe that we should all stay close to the things and to the people that make you feel human and alive.

The thing is, sometimes we're not alive anymore.

Some days, the emptiness isn't even obvious. You're brushing your teeth or putting on your favorite denim jacket or adjusting your wristwatch and it's there, lurking and you don't mind at all. It almost feels normal. Right, even.

But there are days and nights — mostly nights, when it feels colossal, you can't ignore it. There are times when it stares back, it's impossible to pretend it's not there. There are times when it feels out of place and you just sort of wanna dig for what's dead inside, or claw through your ribcages, or crack your chest open — anything, just to get it out of you.

It's been a year and the streets are a little brighter, and daybreaks are a little colder, and everyone seems a little happier. But forgetting has become way harder and longer, darling, and Novembers still feel like losing you.

today, i will wake up and think of you. the first thing will be about how your eyes had the color of all the storms that left this year. next will be your hair, in flaming red, as if to make up for all the colors your heart has been drained of for loving me. then, i will think of the way i wrote you poems amid writer’s block; every line, a compulsion, an obsession of i love you's rephrased. i will think of the feel of your skin, cold, but burning, like mercury fires crashing to the poles.

then, i will remember the chipped nails and back scratches and the heat of the whiskey, rushing from your mouth to mine. i will remember october and her rooftop letters we sealed with the skyline's silhouette. i will remember how they have become a foliage of words i refused to stop writing — and words you refused to read. i will remember how we wished to be paper cranes flung to the sun, how i have become icarus incarnate, falling, and crashing back to the earth. today, i will wake up and remember how loving you became my flight and my downfall. i will let the pain eat me up, rip my lungs, one flashback at a time. i will let the pain break me and break me and break me until there's nothing left to break.

and then one day, i will wake up darling, without sleeping next to make-believe alternate endings, without addressing you in apostrophes, and without the storms tailored to be metaphors for you. one day, i will wake up without wondering if you were ever hurt the way i was. i will wake up without thinking of you. i will wake up without the slightest traces of pain.

and then i will let you go.

it had taken bones,
reshuffled and pounded to pieces
fingertips,
scorched
from molding cast irons,
worn, from unsewing and re-sewing heartbeats
and wrists,
white from scarring,
for me not to break
at the slightest touch.

so you sew your melancholy shut –
pour your father’s ***
on the stitches
like you always do

i turn my back and bend over –
ache descending my backbone
where your kisses used to rest;
it recoils in instinct

as i keep on digging for the same mistakes
on skinfolds and chromatic bruises
and thin walls where i hung
my tendency to ache
scrubbed out of me like dead skin,
as i lie, washed, stripped, and tender
in these soft, celestine sheets;
i pepper bits and pieces of myself
to diffuse the hurting

but my pain is blinded;
yours, all-seeing
as i draw my three of swords
from my deepest deck of cards
but there’s already an epigraph
of your name on my clavicles
and you see how your all-elysian, moon-drenched lover
is all tainted, all this time,
and darling, how alive you felt
when you fell in love with this disaster
but the truth is staying in love
will always be your death.

and what i know to be deathless love
is now lost in our ghastly lights
and how we danced with liquid fire
long enough to feel it burn
but all roads lead to rome, darling –
all roads lead to ruin
and all the letters i wrote you are banners
burning in its cathedrals
as roman gods watched us
pick our limbs apart.

and do you think
we can love each other through this,
touch our way out,
love our way out of these

wars we waged —
burning houses,
mess we made
kisses dead in our stately wake
this love — this feeling
spilling like ether, leaving
squandered poems
all over the place.
had you known it all along
had you walked away?

but darling how alive you felt —
how alive we felt in love
but  one day you’ll call it crucifixion
and i’ll call it back  my death.

and we fall like sacred dust,
a bedlam of debris.
and i draw my three of swords:
dead-cold steel
and paper-soft sorrows.


do you think we have it in us to love each other out of this?

i miss loving you; i miss the calm and easy and content way of just kissing in the blue hour — clothes, falling out of flushing skin; mine was a map of scars named after estranged people, and yours, an anomaly of carnelians breaking at the softest touch.

and yet, nothing hurt enough. not the fading autumn days leaving us to fall apart in october. not the poems that painted this love to be more beautiful than it actually was. not the carnelians, breaking everywhere.

and i miss loving you, but this october rain isn't cleansing — it just falls cruelly on a heart too eager to break itself.  i miss loving you, but all these blue hours have corrupted what's left of your first tainted kiss. i miss loving you, but betrayal still rests comfortably on my skin: a map of scars named after people. a map of scars cut by carnelians. a map of scars named after you.

and this october rain isn't healing; it's just cruel.

it's just cold.

— fray narte

put me, lovingly, in a hearse, the way the dusk lays it shadows;
the night threatens to spill off my pores
trying to run from lonely places —
now, it bleeds all over me.
a sight of a mess.
a sight of horrors
and no napkins for wiping.
no napkins for grieving.
some just don't
make it out alive.

tell the daylight i cannot come.

put me, lovingly, in a hearse.
no, i am not made for burials —
it's for the ones left behind;
tell them all

i cannot come.

leave me, my sweet one, lying in this hearse,
the way the dusk leaves its shadows in the arms of the night.
sweet and fragile.
quiet and gone.
send me off, softly.
send me off, mourning.
send me off, for good.

tell the daylight i cannot come —

maybe i'll see her too, so soon.

— fray narte

pandora opens her chest at midnight:
it is a box left out in the rain,
a wound unstitched in despair for october,
a small voice hushed by forlorn hours.

and dead gods forget so easily,
but
pandora still opens her chest at midnight
and the walls huddle to look at an ugly wound
left open to bleed all over
dusty pink cosmos flowers.
and drapes huddle, too,
to look at a nest of sorrows creeping about,
as though a wake, a vigil,
a somber watch that only ends
with all of my bones breaking.

but dead gods forget so easily,
and dead girls forget so easily,
and i forget so easily
all the aching hours that had kissed my skin
and their graceless, moonlit pull,
and i am left to lie
languishing on soft, breakable spots.

and so pandora closes her chest:
a box to never be opened, a vault behind a frame.
a flash of stray light on a wound sealed shut. safe. secure.
there is no space for conspicuous melancholies.
there is no space for anything —
there is no space for hope.

and the gods forget so easily.

his chest was the ground caving in
in a matter of seconds;
it was the streets' sudden tremors
the wall cracks
and chipped rocks.
his gaze, hauntingly sad,
it was almost inviting.
and i was a girl,
all white dress and wide eyes
not really knowing any better;
steps, too careful
walks, too slow,
tracing the faultlines
misplaced on his skin;

it was an open field —
an open target for the lightning to strike
and leave its marks
and i was just a girl,
looking for poems
where they shouldn't be found;
on the palm creases,
and the curves of his lips.
i walk,
all tentative tiptoes
and a wrong step;
falling into each hollow,
each crevice,
each slit.

he was an earthquake, waiting to happen
seismic and sudden,
taking everything down.

and i — a nameless girl,
an inkblot for face and limbs
a paramour,
a secret,
all wrapped into one.

i — a doorstep kiss,
an uncertain touch,
a bedpost notch,
all wrapped into one.

and i — a jamais vu,
a face in the crowd,
a nameless casualty,

all wrapped into one.

the butterflies and their dusted wings — they're sore under my tongue. i inherited the sting of my mother's wounds — her sunday madness and propensity for hurting. but not quite her bravery. not quite her capacity to carry such wounding weights. i am a washed-out silhouette. i cower, with lips blood-red from a tourmaline graze. i shake, i buckle, i drown, and sink. how then, do i say my words without turning them into a gospel made for wasteaways? how do i become half a woman she ever was? how do i live with myself?

long are these cold, clear nights of sobriety and awareness. long are these cold, oppressive seconds. i pull this dilapidated skin — wrap it all over me, resembling an unclaimed body in a morgue. solace exists, but solely outside these walls.

I find myself chasing highs only to jump from them. But no, I am no comet. I am just a girl — all sunset eyes and gasoline. All dust grain and stale cigarettes. Shaky lips and broken mugs. Broken matches. Scissors running over my skin. Is it so bad then — wishing for my bones to finally break this time?

I find myself chasing highs only to jump from them, so save my poems and all my tales. Save me the apologies I cannot say. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.

"It's not enough."

"No, it's not. It's okay."

Save me the apologies I cannot say.

And once more, I find myself chasing highs only to jump from them. And this time, darling, there is no way to survive the fall.

We both know you would've broken my heart until there was nothing left to break, and I would've let you. I would've scattered petunias over the wounds you have re-opened. I would've carved you poems on flickering streetlights. I would've set sunrises on fire — kissed you as it died down. I would've skinned your neck open to know what turns my kiss into heartbreak, and what turns that heartbreak into poetry. And we both know you would've broken my heart until there was nothing left to break. It had been years, my love. It had been years on end.

And still, I would let you.

// "December has a softly cruel way of reminding me this."

I can never walk away from you. Not by the gods who all looked on as I ran out of reasons to make you stay. Not by the forget-me-nots I willed to die under my pillow. Not by the poems you never knew were yours. Between us, I can never be the first one who leaves because I'm terrified — of you, moving on to a life I'm not a part of. I'm terrified of confronting the choking weight of emptiness in cold mornings.

To walk away from this is something I never learned; that is my downfall and your strength. And I guess the difference between us is when I said that I was terrified of you leaving — when I said that I was terrified of losing you, I meant it.

I meant every word of it, my love — I meant every word that you did not.

unzip my wrists —
fragile, handle with care.

i am drunk with the thought of them breaking,
resembling quartz veins
down in the mines.

unzip my arms,
this is an enclosure —
it is safe from all-seeing eyes.

unzip my skin —
i am bag of sorrows and bones
waiting to be unpacked
in a new rental room.
the walls are white; the sheets are clean; the flowers are fresh
and i sit in the middle of it all:
a slashed, opened mail
spilling shadows —
like a ghost inside a house.
a parasite inside a host.

unzip my body:

i am strikingly
all things
anti-thetical —
old
dark
ugly
haunted —
a herald of infestation —
here:

the walls are white; the sheets are clean; the flowers are fresh,
the sunset is warm — comforting.
the world spins in a blur.
and i sit quietly, in apprehension,
stuck in the middle of it all.

a ghost.
a prey.

the room is spotless —
i step out of my skin.

Someone mourns and I am terrified: my skin, shrinking — closing in upon myself, for how can they break and not break at the same time?

— “I am sorry for watching you watch someone else die”

Tell a little girl that her coily hair is beautiful when all of her playmates think otherwise. Marvel at a little boy’s drawings when everyone else he shows them to is too busy to spare a glance. Compliment someone’s floral dress in the subway; compliment someone’s smile, someone’s art, someone’s cooking, someone’s gumamela flowers soup they made especially for you. Thank someone for the songs they introduced, for the songs that now have become your shower jams and lullabies. Tell someone that you think they’re amazing and smart, especially if they don’t think so of themselves.

In a world where everyone looks past a street singer and ignores the old man painting sunsets in a park, be that someone who isn’t afraid to tell people about the beautiful things in them. Be that someone who isn’t afraid to be soft to others. Be that someone who isn’t afraid to be kind.

i lied there on the pavement, eyes fixed on the big dipper, waiting for the stars to fall apart all at once, or for a car to run over me, whichever came first. and there i was, staring at the space and the emptiness looked back at me, and for a second, it felt like looking at my own chest; the stars, my bones, slowly coming undone. i wondered if someone felt that way too. i wondered if someone else gazed at the constellations and thought, maybe the stars are disillusioned with the galaxy and so that’s why they fell during meteor showers. or maybe they were lost causes dressed as angels jumping off bridges in heaven, ever the cynic. maybe it wasn’t something poetic. maybe it was watching celestial bodies

i lied there on the pavement, under flickering lamp posts that looked bigger than the stars. the poems always said that stargazing is romantic it wasn’t. ironically tonight, i lost count of the falling stars while wondering why they’d gone too soon. wondering if they’d survived the fall. wondering if they knew that their descent was burying me in the sound of my breath. maybe in an hour, the black space in my chest would consume me and then i too, would be a shooting star lost in peripheral views.

and i hope i would survive the fall. and i kind of hope i wouldn’t.

like fallen flowers, i am
weary under the subtle noise of a rushing, babbling brook;
a death, quietly scenic
as i go back to dust.
i left my body rotting in a prairie paradise,
here it decays to gray
under the bruised indigo sky.

a ghost writes her poem in silence, in small, made-up synapses,
and the wind sweeps it away.

I'll always feel in my chest broken Septembers. I am languishing with the days, head first to a point of no return. I am the ghost of an abducted goddess, the one who bled all over saffrons and still holds on to her sorrows. I bid farewell to the sunglow on wildflowers. I bid farewell to daylit copper fields. I bid farewell to golden hours, as down I descend to the sweetest madness, and up it goes to consume me.

cigarettes still taste a little like our last kiss — like it's 5 am again and we were stuck in rusty rooftops, waiting for the break of dawn, or for the other to initiate the kiss. that being said, i always wished that 5 am's lasted longer, and that cigarettes burned longer, and that we kissed longer. but before we knew it, the sun had risen and there we were, ashing our cigarettes on the floor, kissing our last kiss. but here i am, darling — yours for the breaking; my cigarettes, yours for the taking — so kiss me again. break me again. leave me again.

say goodbye to me, darling. say goodbye, just once again.

and i will wait for you here on the other side, where the earth and her fields await the footsteps of that girl who dared to swallow pomegranate seeds — each one holding a tenfold of unsaid apologies. i will wait for you here, where the storms i brewed found themselves pressing against the softness of lilacs, where the nightfall forgives the sunset for leaving, where morning smells of teakwood and rain. and you will realize that each sigh does not have to weigh like a thousand bent bromeliads — that each breath does not have to ache in the presence of morning light. you will deserve every bit of softness you tried so hard to ****. you will deserve every bit of moment that doesn't hurt — someday, you'll get here and you'll know. you'll know.

— to my younger self