stagnation

Photo screencapped from: The Secret Of Roan Inish (1994) // Dir. John Sayles

This poem is stained with my absence, it refuses to write itself.

— Fray Narte

my mind is an escape room

photo by: alaska

dearest stranger,

i am too abstract now for my own good. i feel and hold myself, in place, in my hands and i slip right through like sunlight, like tiny moth scales, like the delusions of a sauntering ghost, like all things unreal and untouchable, like a madwoman, laughing away in her free fall to an unsteady ground.

and all the flowers are cheering in their surreal, psychedelic scarlets, and all the rocks are breaking, and all the words are failing to capture what i truly feel.

am i still despairingly corporeal, like paper napkins and panes of glass? am i still in actual flesh, now that god doesn’t exist? am i still as tangible as this last, frantic breath of a letter?

am i still actually here?

bidding my farewell now,
ginia

playing god on filthy rooftops

when will the world quiet down into a throbbing, feeble organ that i can so easily crush?

— fray narte

i gleaned my heart for browning letters

photo screencapped from: nothing new (taylor’s version)

i spend my days sighing away, digging away at each layer of disillusionment. when will i get to the bottom of this? when do i get to see my bones, all bleached out to a lifeless tan? when do i get to poke them around like live coals, desperately reviving a dying fire? when do i get to see myself, in my highest, truest, most foolish form, and have the closure — both underwhelmed and overwhelmed?

i’ve lived longer than my younger self would’ve allowed; tell me, did she know me much better? did she live just long enough for me to inherit her despair? have i gone dancing too much with illusive lights, only to get home heavy, burning, and blinded? did she know it all along? did i know it all along?

tell me, was it all for this? tell me, in the name of all my splendid highs and in the drawn-out silence thereafter — is this it?

— fray narte // long gone as alaska

monachopsis

photo by: kitkat santos urgelles

oh, to self-soothe like a wounded fawn. the hours are unmoving. the lights disorient. the city collapses on top of my head.

this world is too impatient with bewildered hearts like mine.

— fray narte

the wednesday i languished

photo by: alaska

i tire myself out. i bite on my heart and spit it out — press my fingers on the dents, the teeth marks, the parts that are supposed to hurt. and i watch as it breaks into a thousand glasses. dreams. futile daylights. i watch, ever so quietly.

i watch, unfeeling.

— fray narte

i am ready to say goodbye to february

photo by: jb gall

the days have dulled my pain to softness. maybe this is how it should’ve always been.

— fray narte

tatiana

in bed, shrinking to the smallest space my skin and bones will allow. in bed, with my sorrows growing, sprawling out in every direction, all for the world to see.

how can i go and fade quietly when my hurting is a loud, lurid spectacle under flashy, purple lights?

— fray narte

oh, miagao

life update: still falling through the cracks of light, and my feet are starting to fail. some roads must lead somewhere away from this town.

right?

an admission

photo screencapped from: lovesong (2016) // dir. so yong kim

i can never love you the way i claim — delicately and without violence. i remember hating flowers and broken seashells, and my grandmother, hand-sewing pastel dresses. deep down, my bones are raised on stories of ancient wars and biblical battles carried from memory to memory, a string of generational blunders — i am made of my father’s bitterness and my mother’s denial. so i will love you with corruptions and apologies, with bled-out veins, giving in like an emptied river, with all the poems i have read and forgotten, and with everything that makes me finitely human.

— fray narte