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fray narte Mar 2020
My heart is a shrivel of miagos bushes,
uprooted, shoved, chucked in new soil;
the leaves between my lips,
now, in an unhealthy shade of chartreuse.

Regardless, I have taught myself
to shear them into tiny leaf crumbs,
making trails —
marking the houses, the buildings,
the roads of this foreign city,
safekeeping directions
into a catalog of things that aren't home.

My feet are weary and somehow,
they manage to find their way
back in this cold, oppressive room.
And yet, how does one sleep under the glare of these walls?
How does one revive a dying garden
in a city that only knows
the language of tires as they kiss the pavements,
in a city that only knows
the walis tingting's weary sweeping
of these crumbs of miagos leaves —
the ones leading back home?

Yes,

I can teach my tongue and all its browning, dying leaves
to remember these new ways of growth,
these new words, new schedules,
new routes, new streets.

Alas, even the waters, even the sun
can't teach it to love the language it doesn't speak.
fray narte Mar 2020
so here i am, walking away from cadillacs and city lights, as if skipping through soundtracks and photographs. above, the clouds have worn their black veils and the rain, it has started mourning each car i pass by, each block, each step taken. it mourns all the sorrows i cannot poke, all the letters i cannot write, all the words i cannot say.

the rain, it mourns all those summer days of pure bliss, with the sunlight peacefully fissuring through the trees. oh how we kissed, all soiled jeans and grass on sundresses. sweaty palms, hands on thighs, all yours prayers left on my neck. the cigarettes and dogwoods forgotten on our periphery.



i love you, i love you, i love you. you were the first, the last, the always.



and yet, how did we ever become that sweet summer’s downfall? the cigarettes are now ashed under all these spent lights and faint sunset colors. these mint breaths and sun-warmed kisses, now just bruises on my lips — now just memories slowly flaking off my skin.





and i used to love you. stupid, stupid girl.





now the rain has washed all those fields and the sins they’d seen. it has washed my skin of the lingering cigarette smoke, of your kisses, of your touch, and i’m not sure if i ever wanna forget. but even the rain’s heartbreak leaves behind the serenity of the last raindrops. lush grasses. damp streets. that distinct, morning breeze. that subtle scent of petrichor. that quiet settling of the calm.





maybe that’s all i need to know.
fray narte Feb 2020
Love, I said I wouldn't miss the sound of your early morning voice.
These sheets were weighed from all the times the dawn sent its sunrays
like palms filled with love letters;
but maybe I too, had become all the dawns that lingered too long.
I said I wouldn't miss the outline of your body;
oh how I planted kisses on every uncharted curve
but this bed is now a map of strangers from all these towns I do not know.

I said I wouldn't miss the hands, touching,
fingers picking each stray breath away;
I wouldn’t miss waking up next to you —
all serene, all magical than lucid dreams.

But darling, it's ten to twelve and our memories,
they covet me as the summer rain pours outside
and now,

I miss all these stupid little things;
the brief way you wince at papercuts,
the secret smiles after eye rolls
and radios turned to the max,
the way red lipsticks and love notes
linger on bathroom mirrors;
the water and steam have erased them now,
love, I miss the way you hog blankets;
the threads have now come undone,
taking down your scent with them,
all too painful, all too slow, it slips
even from these memories,

And I know I said I wouldn't miss you
but it's half past twelve, and I'm in your shirt
and the rain had stopped
but I think so far — so far love,

missing you has not.
fray narte Feb 2020
But they stripped us of our robes, our faces and names until we're but calamities inside loose skins, crumbling and flaking off. And maybe that's why we started to believe that we're the ones who burned in *****, kneeled before the calf, and died in the lion's den.
fray narte Feb 2020
so when you dissolve into a thousand poems you can never write trying to look for the way out, let go. even the moon melts parts of itself, and your skin, it is made from the cracks constellations have between its stars. and when december starts to breathe the last of its sadness — and how it lingers on your skin: a glass so breakable, let go; wilted flowers no longer flinch at a lightning's touch; you are made from the same matter — all cold lips and an ether of sighs. let go, darling. all this, because you are not just a girl. you are a storm without a calm.
fray narte Feb 2020
somewhere in manhattan,
atlas carries the weight of his heart —
a suitcase of battle scars and cigarettes
that strayed too far from his lips.

each vein, a thread
for all these sorry poems
that cannot write themselves.
each valve,
a compartment for spent lights
and all these fallen dandelion clocks —
all centuries' worth
and his body, it longs to rest
like a mass of dahlias and complexities,
coming undone in the arms
of a funeral song.



i remember someone telling me it's easier to talk about yourself in third person.


and yet, how do you depersonalize and say that
in there,
sadness has lovingly grown its flesh —
like wild grass spreading free in abandoned lawns,
albeit carefully contained,
carefully covered by these patches of skin
so as to not flood —
to not spill at every sigh
and yet, there can never be enough
breaths taken,
breaths given away

to keep it all intact,
to fend off all the
pecking,
the gnawing at the skin from its forgotten corners,
now a feast to a flight of vultures.

i now know why it's easier to talk about yourself in third person.


somewhere in manhattan,
atlas shakes, crumbles, collapses.
the flesh gives in;
the arms cave in under all this mass:
this weight of a heart,
this weight of the skies — they just slip right off your hands
and words don't see the difference.
fray narte Feb 2020
I. Persephone

Naive girls don't make good lovers
but I will sink into the comfort
of your clementine lips, grazing,
staking claim on my skin —
an offering to your kisses made of molten lead,
oh, how surely, how gently they trail,
like a river following its memory lane.

And yet, I have apologies etched on my skin;
I am a poem that bruises quickly
like petals on the soil.
So much for being the goddess of spring
when all I have are wildflowers
and moans scattered on the sheets of the dusk.

We know naive girls don't make good lovers
so cast me, Hecate, into firelight
where all your daughters burned.
Strip me of this sundress;
my chest was half of Demeter's softness
and half of the underworld's wrath.

And yet, I, too, am made of papercuts
forged to look like carmellia buds
lost and slow dancing in broad daylight,
your hands on my waist —
a quiet breath,
a delicate touch:

such curious ways of coming home.
Naive girls, they don't make good lovers
but I will pick you stray sunlights and goldenrods —
leave them by your bed;
these sheets know that
I belong to no throne.
I belong to no man.

And they say that naive girls don't make good lovers,
but only just;
darling, your walls are an eyewitness
to your gaze and my corruption.

So much for innocence
now neck-deep in mildew and anomalies.
So much for springtime,
its fields, now made
for us coming undone.
And so much for winter, darling —
so much for winter.

It may never come.
fray narte Jan 2020
it's an all too familiar, all too ironic situation —
knowing safety, softness —
lingering tastes off darkness' tongue,
now trailing down our skin.

the dark has taught us that
safezone is having the night skies
perched around us
and the moon rises from every touch, slipping,
from every kiss, ending;

and yet, how can something so dim, so obscure
remind me of the sun and its clarity?
darling, these rendezvous have taught me that
you are the lovechild of the night and the day
and i am likened to a vampire
whose fatal flaw is its
longing for the sun.

oh, to see you,
touch you,
kiss you

in the daylight

without burning.
without hiding.
without fears and pretenses.




and yet, we can only be in this all too familiar, all too ironic situation;
we can only be, in the safety of the nightfall —
we can only be, darling, in safety of the dark.
fray narte Jan 2020
i am no longer a girl;
my body has played host
to the fourth of the Fates,
and this is the twilight, unfolding.

the midday has seen clotho, spinning the thread
has seen lachesis measuring it, atropos cutting it.

and here i sit, a figure in the sunset —
a silhouette of a weaver in tattered dress

my heartbeat, a substandard thread,
a mess in my pockets
getting shorter and shorter
with each wound sewn shut

and yet,
a seagull's flap,
a poke of a stick,
and all these stitches come undone.

a cautious breath,
a loosened thread,
and the sunsets learn a new shade of red.
fray narte Jan 2020
I have mastered the art
of making myself small;
the years have taught me
how to fold myself
step by step,
edge to edge
into pinwheels and paper lilies
mindlessly left in infinitesimal space —
an instinct —
a secret slipping into the unconscious,
left beneath the mattress,
left behind the doors.

The years — they've taught me
how to take my heart out —
take it apart and fold it
into a thousand paper cranes —

all cooped up in my ribs.

Their wings, decaying
with all the wishes
I never allowed myself to make.

Their beaks, pecking on the flowers,
on the wheels,
on my skin:
an obsession, a compulsion,
a ritual for symmetry,

a constant flipping,
a ceaseless folding,

until i am small enough —
insignificant enough to attract no attention,
to remain unseen, unheard,
unnoticed in the room.

And here, in this infinitesimal space
I have mastered the art
of making myself small.
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