child of war

photo screencapped from: foe (2023) // dir. garth davis

you make me feel like a child — a fresh, full, rosy nectarine tossed into the sun
only to fall into a knife, driven in deep, driven in slowly,
i wish i was the one holding it — fight for control, i always say,
no one can hurt me more
than me, such a sad thing to say as a child
behind the closed doors, the light flickers, unfixed,
the dishes fly and crash into a hundred angry shards —
my skin always catches its anger like a clueless paper target
waiting for its demise — it tears through the sanity, the slow-moving daydreams
spinning smaller and away, it leaves a picture behind:
you make me feel like a helpless child, so young
stuffing my cheap notebooks in a yellow hand-me-down bag from a local politician —
my mother bangs against the door as if it was the life stolen from her.
you make me feel like a child hiding in my room
as my father’s voice rains down like a bomb dropped above my roof:
an anomaly, a wannabe, a mistake,
god fucking forbid i wanted something more than this misery.
god fucking forbid i nail my ribs down to my heart, it bursts and stops.

you make me feel like a child, so powerless and choiceless
and there are floors to polish and secrets to keep and a mess to clean,
my filthy cheeks with filthy tears, i just got the nerve to cry, don’t i?
well you make me feel like a fucking child, barely thirteen
when i tried to kill myself ten years ago,
“go on, do it.” well fuck, i wish i did and now,
you make me feel like a child of war forced to live just for the fun of it,
for you to slice with words and crawl and cry like a prey under our bed,
i have nowhere else to hide, i hope angels are kinder and gentler
i hope flowers grow on my body when i die —
my grandmother’s jungle flames, so red it drips out of my skin,
so red it matches your anger, loud and big enough
to make me feel like i’m a child, fighting for her stupid life,
i throw in cheap punches, yes i fight for my stupid life
but i might just decide to die, this time.

for a change. you should see the look on your face.

— fray narte

Neurotic Girls

photo screencapped from: valerie & her week of wonders (1970) // dir. jaromil jires

i crawl like a bug all over rotten plums and marigolds,
my lungs are filled with the stench of the dead,
the desperate,
the greenhouse ghosts from the corner of my eye,
i briefly touch their outstretched arms, so cold it burns,
so haunting, it stays
and leaves all the same.

so cruel, it’s comical

one day, i swear to all my abandoned gods,
i’ll be able to breathe the air of my hometown
and it won’t feel like dying.

— fray narte | written august 16, 2023, 11:30 am

Going Insane in October | Written November 1, 2023, 5:11 p.m.

photo screencapped from: saltburn (2023) // dir. emerald fennell

my heart flutters like moth wings, once caught flightless on ice cold fire
it’s forever looking for the kiss of the flames,
the softest, kindest, slowest way of dying
so that i may rest in a chest that’s not my own — yours,
would you leave flowers on my tomb, once more?
virginal white jasmines, if you remember —
the color and predisposition of a ghost.
would you kiss my resting ground, softening under torrential poems?
would you say a made-up prayer?
(my lover, who art in heaven)
would you love me again if death is my rebirth, my second coming,
how angels weep right next to me, how they break over my sorrows — pathetic bodies made of light,
but they never burn, they never crash like fading embers.
my heart’s still caught on ice cold fire, it flutters, wingless
i arch in my quiet aching, godless, limbless — i’m sorry i’m made this way.
in heaven, god fucked up for the first time twenty five years ago,
he can take me back tomorrow for all i care
but would you pick me, take me back and kiss me, bathe me in biblical oil
(even if it kills me once more?) if i promise not to die once more?

Poetry Book Promotion: Persephone, Descending by Fray Narte

“I inherited the sting of my mother’s wounds — her madness and propensity for hurting. But not quite her bravery nor her capacity to carry such wounding weights.”

Femininity meets madness in my second book, Persephone, Descending.  🤎✨Buy a copy for your girl dinner 💋 ₱380

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Poetry Book Promotion: Persephone, Descending by Fray Narte

A nod to classic, feminine death, my second book, Persephone Descending, tackles women’s disillusionment with beauty, society, and themselves. It embraces the grotesque, the horror, and the unhinged, female gaze. When the curtains are down and the lights are out, you will find intimacy with all things ugly and unsettling — with all the tragically, dead women written by dead, male authors.

Contrary to the loud, obnoxious aching in my first poetry book, I now give you my quiet terrors, my subdued, poetic afterthoughts, and my distasteful identities — projected into multiple women living out their sensualized and sedated tragedy, in each and every page.

Buy my poetry book from 8letters’ website and Shopee account for only ₱380.

Always, Fray ❤

Note: Available in the Philippines only.

Blue Chrysanthemums

your blue chrysanthemums quietly rest in an airport seat:
a much lighter, dustier gray than your shirt,
the one we forgot in a hotel room, resting above a city
that’s sitting in its filth and rust —

you are its one silver lining i trace so desperately,
incorruptible around my wrist — your kisses
leave third-degree burning marks on tattoos i had forgotten,
as i run high adjacent to the skyline —
i’d sell my soul for all of this

and come back running, come back crying,
come back screaming from my shallow grave

and bury my body on your skin; there’s a compartment
where i shut away my sun-bleached bones next to your blue chrysanthemums.
they are soft and comforting against me, quiet next to my longing
as a different city announces its final call.

i drag my heart around like a luggage,
blue as petals, thick as stems, timid legs in an empty airport;
i hoped to find you find you waiting there
at the exit sign of my labyrinthine veins

the way you always find me:
in microdoses of sleep, in slate-gray cities, in midnight skylines,
licking the moon with my red poppy, opium-tongue like a starving beast,
in your arms i purge my lawless violence, my godless poems,
my childhood bruises, all taken off my chest — vessel by vessel
rib by rib,
until i am gentle and clean for grass to grow beneath me now
blue chrysanthemums, soft beneath me now, for
i am weightless, darling — i am made of incorruptible, pristine sky light
breaking away before the world wakes.
i am weightless — formless as the very air,

soft and flitting above you now.

— fray narte, “blue chrysanthemums” | written november 27, 2022