Garden of Dreams is now available for preorder!!! It’s out for a discounted price of PHP460. ETA is end of August. Watch the trailer below!
Natalia Go’s second poetry collection, Garden of Dreams, talks about resurfacing from the thick, menacing silence of a well, past the cold, damp walls, and into a garden where light meets dreamers. It includes sonnets and poems turned into songs.
The Glass Jar is the first virtual play I’ve written and directed, starring Ina Salonga and Mary De La Vega.
Synopsis:
No one’s watching the pharmacy. The pills are up for grabs on the top shelf. Only the glass case and a lock are separating them from Chloe and Max. What would they risk by stealing a few pills? Max only wants the pills to help her sleep, but it appears Chloe has other things in mind. Would the two women risk extending their stay in the psych ward for this operation? As Chloe and Max scramble for keys and face mishaps, they talk about life before and after their confinement.
Inspired by first-hand experiences in similar facilities, The Glass Jar takes us inside the minds of two mentally ill women who have very different perspectives on recovery. Will their little heist plan strengthen or break their friendship?
*Trigger warning: suicidal ideation, drugs, profanity, and mature content.
It started with a trickle of words on paper; a couple of poems, a few rhyming phrases we’ve exchanged… until it rained. Flowers and sweet dew filled our garden where I’d find you every morning reading letters I’ve laid onto blank pages, my altar of love to honor you and your living soul that keeps transforming this universe into the wonder that it is.
To this day, we speak this language, accented only by touch and gaze in which we reach for each other beyond skin and flesh. Your eyes speak poetry when they glisten at the sight of mundane joys; a piece of bread, a line of song lyrics. When you laugh, the prisoners of hell can’t help but play heavenly music, an orchestra of tortured souls getting a taste of what it is to be pure.
I remember my first soft bite into chocolate eclairs, how my tongue glided onto fondue and digged into the oozing lava cake, sometimes topped with strawberries. How it shook as I licked the sweet taste off my lips; how I sucked the last drops from the frosted Boston cream. Breathless, I surfaced back to Earth where everything’s repainted suddenly with edible flowers growing in the corners of my mind.
You said you were never much of a baker; never made cake. Yet your pastry is puff with just the perfect warmth, always gracing my mouth with bursts of flavor. I’ve never seen chocolate turn pink until your cheeks glowed from kisses I’ve blown… and oh, how you breathed them in… How majestically I swelled in your embrace.
And when the air became visible around me, that’s when I knew I’ve been breathing candy since you came along. The breeze is streaked purple and sunsets always triple their beauty when I watch them with you. And the dew trickles down my fingers again and again… each time I touch the most fragrant parts of you.
Chocolate Dreams with Trickles of Cream March 31, 2023
I poked my head through the curtains at the edge of the universe and gazed at the nothingness comprised of the microcapsules in which every breath I’ve taken in the past is stored. Invisible to my wondering eyes, weightless, yet tangible. I heard their whispers in the void and found each inaudible save for the words I’ve uttered out of love. And I wondered how many seconds in my roughly 650,000 borrowed hours are left to create more audible whispers before I return to particles at the end of it.
And in the nothingness, I felt a pair of eyes looking back at me, telling me I didn’t get it all wrong. For somewhere in the now, I’ve peeked into the soul inside them and held it with warmth. That I didn’t waste it all on spite and pain and bitterness. And the wind blew with remnants of every kiss we’ve shared and how they showed me the world past its plainness.
I wish to take lighter breaths though I know they will inevitably heave with weight at times. But with you around, it is as though they rise and fall effortlessly through it all.
As I pondered I felt each breath upon exhale being trapped within the void. And I withdrew my head from the curtains, content knowing that it was enough to imagine what life might be beyond the horizon. For here is where we took those breaths…together. No matter the distance in between.
If we turn the Earth a revolution backward, we will find ourselves gazing at the first daylight, exchanging our first hellos, unawares of the several more we would exchange each day forward. And here we are on the 366th day of good mornings, taking us back to when the skies opened up their graces upon us.
The stars shone fiercely at the close; they’ve been watching over us since. A sparkle for every kiss; “Good night. I will see you when the sun shines.” And it reflects in your eyes; a twinkle so sweet in noontime kisses and afternoon snuggles, turning tears into crystals we wear as charms on our skins.
That if we so much as step under shadows, they can’t but fly back into the depths of the well where they belong. As this little ball, the pale blue dot we call home, resumes its rotation, I extend my hand once again. Will you hold me through this next ride around the sun? Together. Onwards.
Through This Next Ride Around the Sun January 1, 2023
Maybe somewhere there’s a version of me that has wings for arms. Maybe I own a chariot I can fly in the night to take us to the clouds while the world sleeps and asks nothing of us.
In that world I can whistle to command the storms back to the heavens and fall as little drops of dew to cool us from hot weather. There’d be no floods for they will recede before they rise when they hear my voice and cower forever to the seas.
And all that color your thoughts black will dissolve at my touch back into the void where their screams die and come back as pretty tunes to make you smile. But I have none such power and my voice often sounds a whisper too meek to dare to speak.
I have only dreams to wander where I’m half as strong as I aspire. I stand a mere hopeful in a world where I can offer nothing grand. But my hopes spring from truth that it’s you I keep in the innermost depths of my heart.
With I can go the distance, a million lifetimes over and over to see my journey with you through.
I am starving for words locked away behind a boulder, in a cave of fears where hide vicious bats that prey on meister blood, and steal inspiration to turn them into stones they hang on moldy walls. Thieves and forgers of doubt in unsuspecting dreamers.
I come to the hatchway to face their king yet they have none. Only mercenaries of the dreaming guarding nothing but counterfeit jewels that don’t glint in the light. Unwelcome though I am, it is my words I’ve come to claim.
What moves the rock but your smile in my mind’s eye, which lights up the cavern of hopes turned lifeless. None mightier a spell than your name I speak to break the curse and return a hero in your eyes. No higher honor; no sweeter sacrifice.