Author
Fray Narte Fray /frā/ (noun) - sometimes, a girl trapped in her storms, other times, a storm trapped in a girl. When she’s not writing, she’s looking at memes, reading Harry Potter fanfics, dyeing her hair, or regretting impulsive hair cuts.
flowers on your grave Flowers on your Grave isn’t some kind of journal made by a lazy girl. It’s more of a public restroom wall, filled with mindless vandals about the things I want to say and the things I don’t. Sometimes, I like to think that my mind has become a graveyard of the parts of me that died, and these words are the flowers sprouting from them, hence the name. But really, there’s nothing deep, maybe it’s just the emo in me. If you’re up for some mediocre reads, check it out. Link: fb.me/thewiltedones. Parental advisory explicit content. Check the last page for more info >
ILLUSTRATIONS BY KEICHELLE EMIRIZA M. TUPAS
Teechelle
COVER & LAYOUT BY MICHAEL ANGELO I. FANDAGANI
Mafinfante
The Storms 01 Robyn is about bad ideas. Inspired by Robin and Barney’s relationship in How I Met Your Mother, it is about two messed-up people trying to find the strangest forms of love in the strangest places.
03 Berenice is a poem inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. It’s about dissociations, gloomy weathers, and a girl caught in the storms in never-ending storms.
04 Sylvia a poem inspired by Sylvia Plath. It’s implying resignation, cynicism, and suicidal tendencies. I wrote this when my mind was in a really dark place.
05 Jordana is a character from the movie, Submarine. One of the soundtracks was by Alex Turner and its line “I’m quite alright hiding tonight” hit too close to home, hence it was named after her.
06 Charlotte is about the never-ending, constant angst that is my ship. It is about a star-crossed lovers.
07 Khione Khione is the Greek goddess of snow — sort of. It is for the people who feel like they’re both the casualty and the storm.
08 Piper Piper is for the sad ones. It is for those whose wounds never get to be poems.
09 Sienna is inspired by the tale about Vincent Van Gogh swallowing yellow paint. While yellow is a color associated with Van Gogh’s paintings, for me, it is still an act of self-destruction. Similarly, loving the addressee is the speaker’s own form of selfdestruction.
10 Claudette is an open letter to my dad. I wrote this when I was having a breakdown in my room, hence the unrefined style.
12 Fria shouldn’t even be here. It’s more of an ode to my younger self, who always thought that in order to not get hurt, she must learn to hurt people first.
13 Brooke like Charlotte, is about my tragic ship. I just simply romanticized the belief that sorry doesn’t fix everything.
14 Savannah is about my favorite writer, and while she, too, is a trainwreck waiting to happen, she made me look at poetry in a different way and for that, I am grateful.
Robyn lost souls don’t end up in asphodel meadows, honey — they end up in your apartment; a messy, poorly-lit place. or so i did. our systems filled with nicotine and other bad ideas i will for sure regret. well, truth be told, you’re mine to regret. well truth be told, you’re not. but there we were, flung in a den of frenzied kisses — skin next to a black hole, a black hole next to a skin guess we’ll never know which is who. but tonight. break me — we both know this isn’t your watching-sunset-and-gazing-at-stars type of love. so tonight, stain me, and i’ll call it a pseudo-romance, darling and maybe after, we can smoke cigarettes or watch the city fall asleep or stare at each other’s empty eyes; maybe somehow that’s more of our style darling, than staring at the sunrise is.
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but at this moment i know, in this poorly-lit place, dripping roofs, dirty sinks, that i will waste my words writing beautiful poetry for you, even if i’m not that beautiful myself. even if you’re not that beautiful yourself. even if we’re not that beautiful ourselves.
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Berenice my soul is stuck in old, coastal towns; a cup of strong coffee in hand; i can drown in its taste mixed with my heartbeat running amok. the sound of the rain threatens to deform the roof, as if the midnight sky was trying to read her sadness out loud to the unmarked graves beyond my ribs; as if the raindrops were prison guards chasing after my soul, waiting to cage it back in place. the broken clock tells me it’s still midnight, but for all i know, it may yet be another sleepless-night kinda monochromatic daybreak and i can no longer tell which is louder — the storm inside my head or outside.
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Sylvia i have a graveyard of letters; relics dug up from plath’s oven now, trapped in the gaps of my ribs, paper-cutting through the bones; some are reduced to debris coming undone like angels, falling from crumbling buildings — crumbling minds — columns that break like they’re the threads of my life. nevermind the punctures, nevermind the fall; broken spines and fractured bones — they all hurt just the same. nevermind the metaphors, nevermind the words; poetries, and suicide notes — they all look just the same.
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Jordana there are days when my room turns into an ocean and i, a shipwreck of the person i used to be. i know i’m supposed to save myself — they tell me i’m supposed to clutch onto a lifeline of heartbeats attached to the shore, that i’m supposed to drain these night-tides dry. but my sadness is born from the seafoam and the seafoam — it’s everywhere. it’s everywhere. they tell me i’m supposed to save myself, that i’m supposed to sink my maelstroms on the bleakest of the sea beds. but how do i tell them that i am the maelstrom that needs destroying? how do i tell them that i have become the love child of melancholia and of the ocean after the storm? they tell me i’m supposed to live — i tell myself i’m supposed to live. but today, i’m quite okay with sinking into the depths the ocean floor. today, i’m quite okay with not saving myself. today, i’m quite okay with drowning.
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Charlotte nothing i do will you bring back; not the shoebox of purple hyacinths watered by the i love you's i still wanted to say. not the prose poetries i wrote you whilst caught in a mania in the restrooms of dying gas stations. not the caving in of the see-through walls mixed with static humming of the payphone calls. not the pillow telegrams that smell like bourbon and my mother's cigarettes; darling, my bed has become a post office of the letters i never had the chance to write and of the things i never had the chance to say. and nothing i say will bring you back — not even this poem, and i know that now; i just don't know how to live with that. still, nothing will ever bring you back and darling, watching you fall out of love feels like the only thing i can do right now.
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Khione who’s to say she was a girl trapped in her storms — or a storm trapped in a girl? nonetheless, she had been waiting for the calm to settle after the storm only to see it left nothing unscathed.
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Piper I have too many stories told in each scar — on the wrists, on the forearms, on the calves and the shins and the thighs. Tonight, my skin ran out of spaces to write my sadness on.
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Sienna you are to me as yellow was to van gogh but then again, yellow was the color of the july sunsets we missed when we were puppeteering the glitches in our words. it was the color of autumn — its night, when we first made out and left permanent scratches on the hood of your daddy's car, its leaves - a deep feuille morte; detached, detached, detached. like the scent of my hair from yours. it was the color of the light — back when we lived for the early morning kisses on coffee-stained tables, when the world was still asleep. it was the color of the first sunray that crept through my blinds after two days of raining — darling, that was day 4 after you left.
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it was the color of the rose petals — a mess on the floor as we listened to a bulk of lonely playlists — love, it would take corrosive agents to dismantle the songs — and probably the memories too, that unlike you, refuse to leave. but then, you are to me as yellow was to van gogh. but then, it was under the bouts of madness that he ate the paint, thinking that happiness could be ingested. and darling you are to me as yellow was to van gogh.
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Claudette you always ask why i always stay in my room, in that voice that always made me feel small and vulnerable — the one that always made me feel like a five-year-old girl wishing that the blankets and the stars will hush the thunders. you always ask why, dad, and yet you always find ways to hurt me the moment i come out of this four-walled shell, ashen and gray from all the storm clouds circling over my head. you always find ways to spot the cracks on my skin, like i was just another wall in this crumbling house. you always find ways to lasso your words around my throat — tighter and tighter, i can no longer breathe. you always find ways to unhinge my mind; to unbottle all the tears and all the loose pieces of my heart hastily stitched out of place. dad, i am caught in a trojan war brewed by my demons, and you are paris, piercing all of my achilles heels; stitched; tender; still healing from all the poisoned arrows you shoot — a year ago. two years ago. three. four. and for years and years, you always find ways to crush me, like the cans of your empty beer. you always find ways to crack and snap this bent framework; my bones are broken from the weight of your words. you always find ways to hurt me and hurt me and hurt me and hurt me again — like i was never the little girl you played dolls and cooking sets with; like i was never the little girl you watched disney movies with. like i was never the little girl you used to love — dad, i am still she, now trapped in the body of an adult. i am still she, now trapped in the prison of a dusty room you unknowingly co-erected. and i guess i’ll stay right here where i’m trapped, but safe. i guess i’ll stay right here where the voices only come from my demons. i’ll stay right here where you can’t see me. i’ll stay right here where i’m not hurt.
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Fria When I leave, cut me out of our polaroids taped on your bedroom walls; let the vowels in 'i love you' fade, like the last bits of my scent left on the pillows we shared, let yourself forget the words to the verses to the songs we said were ours.
When I leave, darling, please remember that I am sorry that you fell in love with someone who left after she promised she would not.
When I leave, don't say my name like a post-nightmare prayer or re-read the poems I wrote for you when we were out at the sea or looking at the stars from my favorite spot.
I am sorry, darling that you fell in love with someone like me.
I am sorry that you fell in love with someone who needs to leave before she gets left behind.
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Brooke Let me write about all the things poems couldn't fix. Let me write about the promises we borrowed from our parents' favorite songs for they knew all the good ones — the ones with just enough metaphors and rhymes. Let me write about the way we always dreamed of burning cars and love letters under the fading southern lights. Let me write about how we were trainwrecks crashing, crumbling, and never getting back up again. Let me write about the way we sat on pavements and talked about a future we would never have, waiting for the sunsets to take us there. Let me write about the way I left lipstick marks on cigarette filters and the way you left poems unfinished. Let me write about the softest touches before we came undone and the gramophones playing as we fell apart. Let me write about the secrets
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we almost shared; the one where you wished we weren’t so broken and the one with a thousand hushed I love you’s And I love you. And I love you. And I fucking love you still. As if I can make you love me again just by saying it loud enough. Let me write about all the things we had. Let me write about the things I could remember breaking with my hands — your heart, and mine, and our first kiss, and our last. Let me write about all the things poems couldn’t fix anymore — starting with us.
Savannah you stood there with sadness braided to your locks, and i was pretty used to making homes out of sadness, and your eyes — they made me think of both writing poems and running away; i chose the former and you chose to smile; and smiling back felt like jumping inside a book found in the bottom of shared beer bottles, and yet, we read it sober with our fingers touching when we'd turn to the next page and darling, that was how we met. and there we were gazing at the stars wrapped in a sunset; and we named them love written for a wolf trapped in a girl's skin and a girl dressed in bleeding moonlights and together, we crashed into a fray, unworthy of being written poems about. and i loved you so fucking much, and even more so because you couldn't love yourself and darling, kissing wasn't the most romantic thing we ever did — it was running away from the world and darling, that was how we fell in love. and running away was our kind of poetry, and running away got tiresome after four books and a couple of heartaches. and we ended. abruptly. 14
like an anticlimactic poem written by fading silhouettes atop an abandoned building as the rest of the world caught fire and crashed down. and there you were, a piece of a debris escaping my lips and sinking down, like words in the middle of a poem i could no longer write, and i, a pronoun you could no longer love. and that was how we became ashes without dancing with the flames — how we became a million pieces of broken kisses inside a poem made for two. and that was how we became strangers again, darling — and that was how i lost you.
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