First assessment
When the young doctor said, adjusting her thick glasses, “You might have ADHD. I am…
Author: Gretchen Filart
Gretchen is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist from the Philippines, where she embraces life while managing bipolar disorder and ADHD. Her confessional pieces unpack the complexities of grief, healing, motherhood, love, and intersections, garnering recognition from the Greg Grummer Poetry Contest and Navigator's Travel Writing Competition.
To go forth and multiply
Adjusting his eyeglasses, the priest read Genesis 1:28. “This is the most misunderstood…
Ghosting
Welcome to our cityof ghosts who steppedinto the ether, orbitingthe graves of our…
Memento mori
Ghosts remain even when there is no unfinished business between the departed and the living….
Someone told me, “You write from the heart, that’s why everything you write is special”
And I thought, thank godmy heart walks with bandaged calvesthat it knows footprints…
Ars poetica
After Matthew Olzmann So here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why I still…
An Instagram reel said, “Don’t swallow your grief whole”
Leave some space for dessert.Let your grief be your cake,Joy the icing.Integrate your…
Birthday poem
Countries away, imperial armies march on toward erasures: lands, babies, freedoms, humanity. All I’ve known is…
Gardening during a depressive episode
These arms were often ropes that stopped another from looping around someone’s neck….
Where home resides
(Collaboration with Shikha S. Lamba) She holds a faded polaroidagainst a rubbled horizon….
After a nine-hour brownout, our village cheers & looks like a mouth
For everything hinges on lightafter a long darkness. I still remember the wide…
The last
These are the last slices of nian gaoI scrimped from last month’s Chinese New…
The altruistic tree
I am done with lovingsomeone else. The world does not need another felled daughter,…
Mama, we don’t talk anymore
After Maria Giesbrecht But if you must know: I now choose truth over…
Poisons
We all desire something lethal to feel alive. In my recurring dreams, snakes…
Day 46 of the Gaza Genocide
After Rachel Kann’s What to Tell the Children A poet once said, We are…