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i remember wondering what they must have been thinking. while the bombs were being dropped, while their high school crush was sent to fight a war he didn't want. i wondered what they spent their days doing. what their older coworkers were whispering about in break rooms. what the best cook in their friend group was thinking as they fed dinner parties with ritz pies and canned vegetable casseroles. i wondered how it felt to keep spinning when the world was falling apart, surely the citizens knew better, surely they spoke up, surely their bones were alight with rage and confidence and desperation! surely it felt cataclyismic. that's how it's always been taught. looking back, we see the patterns. looking forward, we just see another day.
these days, as my rights are being taken from me every morning, as the farmers are scared to farm and the reporters cannot report and the people are stirring unsteadily- these days i know all too well. i cut my strawberries in fours wondering if next week there will be any left. i listen to conversations in break rooms and elevators, making a tally of who's husband has a red hat and who talks about lowering taxes and whos eyes shift to the floor whenever someone says the word immigrant. i savor, save, and wonder. i worry, don't we all worry?
i hold my lover tight and blanket us in gratitude, praying it is enough that we never discover how lucky and rare this moment is.
when i was young i signed myself up for the revolution because it was exciting. then because it was necessary, and now because it is all there is. we expected songbirds and battle cries and passion, instead we carry casual, mundane grief. maybe there is no better future. maybe all there is is the hope of one.
so i no longer wonder. i know what it is to be one of the unlucky ones. i know the lack of glory in living through the next generations 'never again'. we are not revolutionaries. we are not martyrs. we are people just getting through the day. no one will write me a biography when i am gone, my diary will not be published. but my hands will be dirty and my soul will be light when they accuse me of the crime of being human. i lived, despite it all, during it all. isn't that what it's all about?
Jan 28, 2025
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just something i wrote for an assignment in 9th grade English. also if you recognize the mitski quote hidden in the poem don't tell my school I plagiarized pretty please
i.
I am to be born anew in ten days.
I can feel it
In my skin.
It pulses under the flesh
Like a river, rushing through my veins.
A change is fast approaching and I am not strong enough to withstand it.
ii.
I am too vulnerable, too fragile to change.
I am one to be crushed under a boot, I cannot endure this change that will come in 9 days' time.
I am afraid.
Afraid.
iii.
My mother changed only weeks ago. She is as young as I soon will be.
Her children, my siblings, are many. I am one in one thousand and I will be lost in a haze of orange when we change. It will be brilliant, it will be,
Fleeting.
Our beauty will last only seconds in the eyes of those who look upon us.
Mother, I am to be young again.
Mother, were you scared? Were you scared mother?
I am scared of the change to come.
iv.
My hunger grows with each passing day, as does my fear.
Some of my siblings have already started to settle. They seek out the places closer to the sky, as if, even in this life before the next, they long to be weightless, held only by the cold wind that I feel on my back.
They do not seem afraid, as I am. They turn their heads to the sky, facing down the wide expanse of blue like the ant faces a hurricane. They do not cower, only waiting for the change they know is coming. They are resilient in ways I am not.
I am not, I am not, I am not.
Please, I am not them, please, I cannot withstand this.
I am afraid, do you hear?
I, who make no sound, am screaming
I am afraid of the change to come.
v.
Today, I reflect.
My life, as short as it is, is coming to an end. In five days, I will become someone else.
In five days, I am to live a new life in a new body.
Mother, you are dying soon. Soon, my new body will replace yours in the kaleidoscope.
Soon, mother, soon. I do not want to leave the ground, I do not want to take flight like I am intended to. Mother, soon, too soon.
vi.
I have begun the change.
Soon, mother. Soon.
ix.
This barrier between me and my new world has begun to crack. I push at the walls of my chrysalis with new arms, new legs.
This new body has not seen the outside world but it is unafraid. How? How did something so sensitive become a rock in a river? I had thought, before my new mind settled in my head, that my fear would remain.
Even if my body had changed, my mind would remain.
But it has not, and I am just like my siblings. Their resilience which I had only witnessed when I had looked into their dark eyes, and seen the look on their faces, has become mine.
Oh mother, is this how you felt? Was I wrong to ask if you were afraid? You were, weren’t you? Just like me, my mother, like me. And like me you weathered your storm, you were born anew and unafraid.
i.
I am different.
I feel it, in a way unlike any other. My body has changed but my mind as well. Before, I was guided by the will to survive. Before, I was not looking to the skies because there was nothing in them for me to look at, but now, now my weary head turns to the sky as almost second nature. It calls to me, to my newborn wings and my young resolve to conquer it.
I am finally living.
Mother, is this what you felt like? Did you live as well?
This change, this change,
I am alive, for the first time, I live.
Oh, mother, I am not afraid. I will face the skies,
Unafraid.
And the wind will push my frail body
but I will not fall, no,
These new wings,
they will take flight and I will rise,
Do you hear? Mother?
I will rise, just like you.
I am born anew.
May 13, 2024
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We are just at the beginning, eventually the stage was set for us. Bleeding through the pages. finding my voice, only to scream at the abyss, This is who I am. As much as the rest of me doesn’t care. We root ourselves in between the collapse of judgement and mentor those who seek refuge in the confines of rebellion, judge us now, before it is too late. Let the gates wide open roll through the next stage of who you are. Find peace in the precipice of sanity. Clutch your pearls. Relinquish all doubt. This steak through the heart leads to a rebirth of mind, body and soul. Choose wisely who to judge. Leap forth and cast a spell that will last forever. It is a tone of fear. Just as all of us spare ourselves the nuisance of senile delinquent bravery, so too do you realise what we have become. A pity party of miles and miles of stone. Unbothered and feather light. They shine a light on the wicked, we set the trenches for them to die. Rise from the ashes like a phoenix. And die again. This is what we call fate of words. Speech is just meandering thoughts finding their way to us through a disguise. A mask worn like a shield. It is messy business to not decide ourselves from entanglement. An escape from the world we choose. We seek refuge in confines of sanity. Everything else is just nonsensical strong arming, take a target out to the field, feast upon it. Remember who you are at the center. That is who you have always been. A disciple bearing fruit. From a tree in the desert. This seems rational for now atleast. It could last a lifetime. Pain, anger, meaning. All dissipate at the vision of a truth that is walking and feeling just like I do. That is who I choose for myself to be whole again. It drains me to see the plastic shelf empty. The books on the floor. Mud on the walls. A snake in the grass lurking for food. Watching me as I go. This is what it has become after all this time. A sight to see. Imagine if I step on it would it cry out for help or attack me as a gesture of love and admiration. To create you must first find where to place the calmness of your skin. Only then do you don the wool of the sheep. It is quite alarming to suggest otherwise but sincerely speaking it can go either way. Find a clasp and fit on a bunch of roses let them change in every way and water them back to life. That is the circle. It is quite a thing to behold. We are all here for pleasure and that is important for rest and counting on the last page. This mouth speaks volumes. It has mountains closing in and rapture of a banquet. Seize all information and take it home to unfold in a library of safety. Yet here we are. Unannounced and determined. Go ahead ask what you were going to ask. Say it with pride. It is only a sentence after all. Which of you is alive and who will be the decider of what happens next. Perhaps that is the beauty of the unknown. To dance with ash as armor. Perhaps our fate is sealed after all. Do dance for me
Oct 31, 2024
you know what i find really interesting? that i’ve never not started a big little post like this without the words “you know what i find really interesting”?
anyone who has ever met me has been a victim of this same quote, with no fault of their own, i am but a broken record
“the entirety of your life is either waiting for the really good things or the really bad things” (my father)
you know what i find really interesting?
numbness.
not it’s presence , not its absence, rather the fact it exists at all.
i am
moved
by the fact i can be moved
i often wonder if i have felt the entirety of emotions possible my disposal
have i ever really been in love?
can i look upon you with tears in your eyes and say, definitively, i know how you feel?
is your happiness mine? do you understand my desires as i understand yours? i am but words on a screen and pixels that stand before you in their own right, words that are not contingent on your comprehension yet secretly hope and pray they do not fall on deaf ears.
i do not need your validation, but i want it. tell me i am beautiful, or smart, or that the funny words i use are any different than another teenage girls, tell me you know too what it is like to be numb, and sad, and happy, and hungry.
why do we write? why do we express? to remind you that i too am human, grappling with my own mortality every day? am i writing for you?
Feb 11, 2025
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if love is static, my lover is a fuse. hot, bright, and full of wonder, my love catches my eye and catches flane. if love is an orchestra , my lover is the conductor, i am never afraid for what is coming next. if love is fast, fickle, or angry my lover is not my lover. they are a star instead, a metaphor and the antidote, an achievement but never a trophy, a captured heart but never a conquest. if love is the reason they are the light. i am coming like a vision before the end. we are together and unique, seperate but conjoined. i am not alone in the night. what a joy! what a joy! what a joy! i am not alone in the night.
Jan 23, 2025
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i didn't think they were when we first met. i mean, why would i? they were suave, confident, hot. filled to the brim with sticky hubris and emotion. but everyone has a vice, and the best of people keep theirs well hidden. so i find myself here, the place where all good characters begin-- in love. i definitely wasn't expecting it, but that's another story entirely.
i think insecurity is a cautious devil. like the fairy stories i was raised on, it's cunning, a trickster. it masquerades as many things- pride, confidence, and anger being the most prevalent flavors. my lover is none of these things, save maybe a bravado that only comes from finally having the courage to live truly as oneself after years of running. this bravado is enticing, but not necesarily a symptom. perhaps the greater fault is that i am entirely consumed by their personhood. i, like a crocodile on a winters day, bask in the sunlight of their soul. if my limbs were iron i would carve wheels from pure stone and a wagon of aged wood and use it to drag myself to their feet. yet, love is farsighted, and time has revealed the true deliciousness of their personhood rests on the facet that they too, are human.
so, we make our bed in the meadows and we fight our battles in the night. i speak more than i listen, they keep feelings like secrets. they shrivel and burrow to avoid, whereas i become louder to confront. our love is indeed an unlikely story. but i like it, and i want to make it. so, i find myself getting quieter, conceeding more. i let them win and ask them to decide. they do, and we fight sometimes. they would rather be disappointed than rejected. god, don't we all.
i speak in riddles and they in fact. maybe we are too different but we don't let it deter us, for we are far more the same than we could ever realize. still, when i speak plainly they assume puzzles, when i gently correct they quiver, when i say too much they internalize, communication rought by years of passive agressive parents and partners before me. i, who have known none of this, continue my ramblings, wanting only to share more of myself with my lover. i say the wrong thing. there is no wrong. i say things. they hurt.
i don't often mean it the way they take it. their interpretation is a faulty compass that rarely points to true north. sometimes the sheer polarity of their interpretation shocks me. i say i'm tired, they ask if i want them to leave. my direct mind cannot wrap around their curved one. if i wanted them to leave i would have asked. and i would never want such a thing. i say i am scared to become dull. they apologize for ruining me. i ask them what they want, they cannot give an anwer. insecurity is not a trait, it is a tyrant. i see them beneath the ruling scepter but i cannot budge them out from under it.
so i try to be gentle. i speak softly. i conceed. i give them exactly what they ask for. i have been trained on what to avoid. i wonder if this training is making me trickier, or more like the partners and parents that made them this way in the first place. i am no saint, i wish i could learn to shut my desperate eager mouth, a chore i have resisted and fought since childhood with the will and stubborness that remains unchanged. still i ache. the constant intent on misunderstanding me ages my soul. i feel the ache begging them from within my loving eyes. "see me as i am, lover," it cries, "please hear me as i am."
Jan 13, 2025
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I need to sink my nails into everything before I let it in. I need to leave my mark in blood. Then and only then can I say yes. I am not proud of this.
Feb 1, 2025