Flowers for Your Grave

By Angelina Porfilio

Flowers for Your Grave is a personal time capsule of mental illness, grief, trauma—and learning how to love and heal alongside it all. A collection written over the course of several years, these poems follow the journey of a young woman growing into adulthood, and what survival costs, takes away, and gives in return.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosebud Press
• Release date: Jun 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781737124122

Book preview

Trigger Warning

This work contains serious subject matter concerning mental health such as: depression, disordered eating, and self-harm. This book may not be suitable for all. If you feel triggered in any way resources at the end of the book are available.

Contents

Dedication

Part 1: Growing Pains

Part 2: The Silence

Part 3: Famine

Part 4: Flames

Part 5: What Grows after Death

Resources

Dedication

For Jose,

you either woke me from a deep slumber, or you're my greatest dream. 

Part 1:

Growing Pains

Today I feel like giving up...

Today I feel like giving up.

Putting my voice to rest.

Letting all my half finished 

and barely started stories 

waste away to forgotten dreams—

collecting dust in the attic of my mind.

Bury those dreams in a graveyard

with a tombstone inscribed:

Tired of fighting.

Today I feel like giving up

on anything I ever hoped for.

Late Night Thoughts

I just feel so empty right now.

Let me sleep in the forest

buried amongst the leaves

let the moss grow over me

leave me for a week.

Or two.

I just need some rest.

The emptiness will go away, I’m sure.

You see, I just feel so empty right now.

But I’ll be fine by morning.

It aches...

There’s a thing inside me.

Bursting.

Pounding against my ribcage like war drums

screaming in my head like banshees

boiling my blood and it aches

it aches

it aches. 

There’s a thing inside me

smashing my skull with a hammer

tickling my vocal chords with a feather

taunting me

Just scream already.

There’s a thing inside me

crawling around like a creature possessed

and I can’t tell if it wants me dead.

Sleep, eluded 

I'm so exhausted.

No need to ask me how I'm doing

because the answer every time is

Tired. So tired.

I feel it echo in my bones,

exhaustion calling me home,

just a few more hours of sleep and I’ll be good to go

a few more hours and I’ll be set to glow–

a few more hours, I promise no one will know

that I can barely keep myself standing.

Destruction/Creation

I want to crack open my ribs and pull out a fistful of 

something

to smear on paper until nothing

but beauty comes out of my pain.

I want to lose myself in a world where the hurt isn’t mine

I want to create, create, create...

but I don’t want to turn on the lights.

Liar

You ask me how I'm doing, I say 

I’m good, I'm okay, I'm alright

every time. God, grant me the strength that lets me shout 

that I'm on a cliff's edge unable to breathe 

and I'm teetering with the breeze, my knees   are weak. 

I can't keep fighting. 

It's like I'm stuck in a river's current 

and I'm fighting against the water that's trying to pull