#filipino poet

[dogma9]

Angela Gabrielle Fabunan, Midway

[reinaxregina]

I am not what happened to me. I am what happens next.

— Reina Regina

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 60: 19th Century III and Earlier

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct grouping.

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration.

[wheatfieldspoet]

as isaac, on the walk home

please, won’t you look at me, father? i can’t erase the memory                             of the surrender in your eyes if i keep staring at your back.

you held my hand as we climbed the mountain. i felt your pulse through my palm,               your grip tight against the sweat. God has called us, you said with urgency, yet       you took       your time       as we ascended.

i can’t remember what i feared more:                      the blade,                      the flame,                      or the aftermath.

who would have made the bigger sacrifice if there was no ram in the thicket— you? me?

or mother?

is there no test of faith more agonizing than to forgive?

but even in my final breath, i would have. i love you even though i may never understand it, if only you would tell me. i don’t ask for much—

father!       please.                             soothe my shivering. i’m afraid                      the next time                      i see a knife                                    i might think                                                                it’s                                                                              love.

— Jade A.

escapril day 3: eye contact

@adventurerswritingguild day 3: hand / god / knife

[tritemagicalsatire]

Always in the writing scene when the author themselves are drunk from the euphoria of having their words imprinted on a paper or screen. But the need of having their draft scanned over and over again for the final product is the real struggle here. The struggle to put one's words into something comprehensible, even to themselves FIRST, as its first audience of an intellectual freakshow—

Ah... The rules of the grammarian culture without sacrificing the childlike playing of random alphabet blabbering. And one's personal standard of literary utopia is waving, all after the random soliloquies whispering in one's mind as if they are asleep while writing/typing the words needed for the wordscapes recipe of an individual aspiration for having their illusions to be something material, and yet, ethereal.

The somnolent escape in the paper kingdom of mindless thoughts in order to have a mindful release to the letter collective! 😅🤣

—M.

[lovesicksai]

"you're my north star."

such a simple sentence, yet it exceeds the depth of mankind. the light surrounding your soul— the lightest energy i constantly consume, keeps me kneeling; praying to God to not take you away from me.

you're my direction, my source of purpose. without your fingers intertwined with mine, i fear i'll soon find myself lost in the misery of my own mind. you straighten the knots in my being.

sai's heart — the beginning (1.6)

[wordssricochet]

pov: nililigawan ka ni neil (neil perry is courting you)

[jmsapphire]

If I could I would

Read all the chapters of your life

Down to the page, to the word

Where we meet

I want to learn you

I want to see your points-of-view

I want to know what and what not to do

But I also want to see if I can be

Me with you, without pretending

Without withholding

I want that, I want you.

- if you could, would you read my book too?

[walking-metaphor]

[k-writesometimes]

An octopus has eight limbs,

master of camouflage,

and has three hearts.

In the next life,

if I were to live in the ocean,

I want to be an octopus-

no bones to break,

knows when to act tough

or when to give up,

and has spare hearts

if one is broken.

[hyikien]

Why is it that we readily accept the ache of loss when a life is extinguished, when a body is laid to rest, yet struggle so fiercely with the slow, agonizing burn of a living absence? I've never understood it, this easy categorization of grief. It's as if the world, in its infinite wisdom, deems some sorrows more valid than others, some tears more worthy of shedding. But I can tell you, from the depths of my aching heart, that the pain of losing someone who is still breathing, still walking this earth, is a different kind of hell. It's a quiet torture, a constant erosion of the soul.

I never liked grief. I hated the taste of it, the way it clings to the back of your throat, a bitter, metallic tang that makes every swallow a struggle. I loathe how it twists and warps the familiar, how it paints people in shades of grey and shadows where once there was vibrant colour. Most of all, I hate the powerlessness it brings, the feeling of being a spectator to a tragedy I can't prevent, a storm I cannot weather for them. People grieve for the departed, for the ones who have left this world behind, and while I acknowledge that pain, understand its depth, it's the grief for the living that claws at me, suffocates me.

He's here, physically present. I see him, I hear his voice, I feel the warmth of his skin if I reach out. But it's like looking through a warped mirror, seeing a reflection that’s familiar yet somehow alien. The distance between us, invisible yet impenetrable, grows with each passing day. It's a cruel irony; to be so close yet so impossibly far. It's a constant awareness that the person I love, the person I once knew so intimately, is slipping away, fragmenting like a shattered glass sculpture, leaving behind only the memory of the sharp, beautiful edges.

I’m grieving for him, for the parts of him that are vanishing, for the laughter lines that are fading, replaced by a stillness I find unsettling. I’m grieving for the shared moments, the inside jokes, the unspoken understanding that once existed between us, now buried under layers of something… different. I understand his journey, the reasons behind the changes, the invisible wounds that have reshaped his world. I absorb it all, feel the weight of it pressing down on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. And it hurts. It hurts so much.

Seeing him change, seeing the light in his eyes dim, the vibrant energy replaced by a quiet solitude, breaks me in a way I never thought possible. My heart aches for him, for the pain he carries, the battles he wages within himself. I've tried to be a shield, a soft landing place in the midst of the storm, but the truth is, I am helpless. As much as I yearn to ease his burden, to mend the cracks that have appeared in his soul, I can only stand by, a silent observer in my own personal tragedy.

And it's in these moments, when I'm sitting across from him, when his gaze grazes mine, that the deepest pang of grief strikes. It's the grief of knowing that while he's physically present, a part of him, a significant part, is no longer accessible to me. It's like watching the tide slowly recede, leaving behind shells and secrets on the once-familiar shore. I'm drowning in the silence, the unspoken words, the chasm that yawns between us.

The truth is, I don't know how to navigate this grief. I don't have a manual, a guidebook that tells me how to grieve for someone who is still living, still breathing, still capable of smiling and laughing, even if those smiles and laughs feel distant and hollow. It feels like an impossible paradox, a contradiction in terms. How can I grieve for someone who is still here? How can I reconcile the love I feel with the growing sense of loss?

-- @hyikien on insta! ♡

[the-literary-alchemist]

[reinaxregina]

they say people exit from your life because they can no longer be part of your next journey and now I wonder, where am I going that my dearest love cannot follow?

—the walk alone, some things don't survive, Reina Regina

[lihimlihamtinta]

Sumuko ako nang walang nakakaalam

Habang ang lahat ay tinutulungan

Mag isa akong nahiga sa kalungkutan

Hawak ang pighating hatid nila

Sumuko ako nang walang nakakaalam

Habang nakangiti at nagpapanggap

Kasama nila sa lungkot at ligaya

Ni isang kamay ngayo'y walang hawak

Sumuko ako nang walang nakakaalam

Dahil ito nalang ang natitirang paraan

Yakap ang aking sariling katawan

Sinubukan ko naman, hindi ba?

[wheatfieldspoet]

angels are real, mine lives in chicago

when people ask how i survived 3 years in a graveyard shift, i tell them it’s because i have friends on the other side.

i threw a line out the sea and ended up being found, your tug on the invisible string pulling everything into place.

more than half a day away, but time stands still for us enough to fit years of stories in the palms of our hands.

even if we’ve only shared smiles from afar, your wings cross oceans to carry your laugh to me.

when i make it to you, you’ll give me a place to rest, tangible to match the astral one you’ve already granted.

distance and time zones are nothing at all when i carry you in my pocket, guardian dear.

now, like sun and moon, we trade waking hours. still, i fall asleep holding your goodnight text-shaped hand.

— Jade A.

escapril day 2: change of state

napowrimo.net day 2: write a platonic love poem

for @darlingwendy

[tritemagicalsatire]

Why is there a need to preserve beauty? For beauty is fleeting, not a timeless phenomena.

Why is there a need to crave for sanity in a brink of lunacy? For this place we call our world is already in madness.

Why is there a need to protect one's name? For names are insignificant and sooner or later, will become just a memory.

Why is there a need to give our utmost efforts to do something "meaningful"? In the end, time will pass and it will be forgotten — so meaningless...

Why is there a need to survive and live long? For we will face the same end.

Why is that...?

~M.

"The Agony of an Old Woman"

Art by Abraham Bloemaert