Category: Uncategorized

Something about an empty house
bare floor, no bed
candlelight
cold chill
uncertainty whirling the air
That brings out the possibilities
you scoop me in
We are okay
even with no roof that is ours
The safety
wrapped around me, caging my anxieties
The intangible things
heavy between us
Floating
between candle smoke and shadows
After I look you in the eyes
together we are broken but alive
Young and dumb
Full of mistakes
Growth yet to come
I swallow the butterflies
My hand on your chest, I whisper
“I think I love you”

Sometimes, I fall in love with people I don’t know: the baristas that only know my name, the loyal crowd of likes on my posts, the people at tables who poke at the little details of my life – It’s nice to be listened to. To be asked how you’re doing. Even if they don’t care, they ask.

Everyone is bored with pain. Don’t bother wondering if it still hurts – I can tell you it does.

I would collapse, heavy, in the arms of a perfect stranger if she would mutter, “it’s safe here, it’s okay,” or maybe she would say, “I love you just the way you are,” tracing the scars on my stomach – little pink rivers – “boys can be big, too.”

beat.

She would kiss the tears off my cheeks – when the movie is over – and whisper “goodnight.”

First off I would like to say how wonderful it has been these many months. Although we are embroiled in a war, this group’s commitment never wavered. That is why here, today, we stand on the precipice of a truly extraordinary breakthrough.

Gentleman, we know the task at hand. We are gathered here to consecrate a republic. No more bickering. It is time to show King George that we will not stand for tyranny, not stand for improper enforcement of laws. We will not stand for injustice! The King has imposed on us all levels of impropriety. Not the least of which is taxation. Taxes on everything from tea to stamps. Taxes on the written word? I think not. That shall not stand, and it didn’t stand. We fought that battle and we won it.

We shall also win this, gentleman. Win the right where the government is in the hands of the people, not a King. The right to govern ourselves, as it were. A government void of usurpations so long that I do not have time to list them all. We should no longer be subject to the crown. No longer subject to a King. No longer governed by those across the sea. No longer under the crushing hand of tyranny. Tyranny does not die in darkness, gentleman, it dies at the ends of our pens!

So, we must delay no longer. We must stand united as thirteen separate, yet equal, colonies and sign our names to this document. It is time to set ourselves free. As Thomas so eloquently put it, let us dissolve the political bands that have tied us to the crown. Because if we don’t all hang together, we will surely, all, hang separately. So I say, no more delay. Pick up your pens, gentleman. Let’s begin the revolution. Let’s start a country!

i have already lost too much—some taken, but most i willingly gave away,
stripped myself of everything, hoping to make you like me.
i changed my music taste, stopped watching the tv shows you shunned.
your voice is still in my head when i choose my outfit each morning.
it’s embarrassing i know, but i thought i could be stronger, butcher,
more gentlemanly— if you just gave me a chance to hold your hand bags
valentine’s gifts decayed in the trash outside. oh, how i long to join them.
when you left me, i stopped wearing jewellery—
what’s the point in adorning this empty vessel? it won’t change your mind.
you wouldn’t pierce diamond earrings into rotted fruit.
heartbreak in youth was bad for me, i foolishly thought age would ease the sting.
yet every rejection burns as fresh as the first,
and i lie in this scalding bath,
dreaming of smashing my teeth with a hammer,
making you a necklace.
let me floss with your fishnets, wear your sweat as perfume.
i want you to hold my bleeding body and tell me that you’re sorry
but you aren’t and
i am,
hunched over the toilet, spitting acid and bile.
i imagine you with him.
it’s textbook agony- salt on open wounds, lemon juice mixing with blood.
now, when i hear someone say your name, my heart will shatter,
but i refuse to flinch
— a.g

I once spent a week
In a place
Where sick people go
When they’ve had enough
Or when they’ve had too much.
But it wasn’t the open shower doors,
Missing shoelaces,
Dinners on plastic trays
With plastic forks,
Or even the constant sobbing from neighbors
That I found hard.

It was leaving.

I could have stayed there forever
In that tiny room
Where I knew
That everyone around me
Was fragile
Was hurting
Was in need
Of respect
Or guidance
Or empathy
Or patience.

There,
I wasn’t the anomaly.
You ask then
What was hard?

The first day I left
My tiny safe haven room
And was forced
To walk back into
The nightmare
I had finally woken up from.

To see that bed
My bed
With the new information
Of knowing
What a bed
Without a criminal history
Looks like,
Feels like,
Smells like.

Something told me I deserved it
And deserved to sleep there.
As if it was my responsibility
To hold these memories,
This pain,
To not allow it to escape
As if it could infect others
If they knew.

This hopelessness and fear
Awoken something in me.
As I was planning my next deadly cocktail,
Searching for a pen and paper
To say goodbye
But for real this time.
No mistakes,
No miscalculations,
One more chance
To get it right
To make it count
I found the courage
To ask myself:

Why do you want to die so badly?

Because I can’t live
In a world so dark.

There’s nothing left for me here.

If darkness is the problem
Then I must be the light.

Yes?
Does that make sense?

If the world is so dark
Then I have to be the light.

Why did that end my plans?
Stopped in their tracks,
And still living in exile
Somewhere deep in my mind.

I never did find a pen.
Or the paper I was looking for.

Don’t tell me it was hope
That I found
Because it wasn’t.
Don’t tell me I’m resilient
Because I’m not.

I have taken
The sole responsibility
Of the world’s goodness
Kindness
Light
Into my own hands.

I don’t owe anyone anything.
I have become
The morning star
By my own free will.

u actually should
Liv, you text me that when i say i should write
you a poem.

Why be poly?: three’s really stable,
actually. It’s hard to fuck a stool

with two legs. I watch my friend clean up after her party,
see nothing above her knees, like she’s a Pixar adult–doing something off screen I can’t yet
understand. My friend mops like how mom taught me. Focus. Watch the mop. Mop away

from your feet. Don’t step in all that good
work you’ve done.
or I’ll make you do it again. Liv, i can’t ever spell
your name without the present

tense. I smell the shirt he left here and cry
and cry. Liv, I’ve always wanted to vanish. Not die but
unappear. Behind TV and weed and gin and laundry.

A good cry, baby. Liv, it’s hard. Names are hard
for me. Memory, a trap;

it sucks. I keep hurting my ex i’m trying to get back even
though I love him.
I find shreds of paper in the lint trap and think wow, I hope this wasn’t something I was
supposed to
cherish. Carry the toilet paper in my armpit, and the box of cat food with my hand. Can I
be careful

and strapping at the same time? Liv, I’m actually thinking about you.
Poems are all just talk;
what am I actually gonna do?

1. Well, I’m gonna shove my hair in a hat for work.
2. I’m gonna brush my teeth.
3. I’m gonna zip my fly and mouth

more. I’m gonna remember to flush the fucking toilet. Then
Black out. Again. Drunk. Just. Like that. No more theatrics, just habit. Easy and
unsatisfying Sopranos-ending bullshit.

But now, I’m awake
all over again. Awoke on a couch. And suddenly, the day’s a whole other person.
Liv, I’m the person you believe in.

In the future, Daddy Buzz and I attempt to work it out. He says “i actually need you,
Wood’,
to be a real life person. Not this droopy cotton just selfie-smiling while I ask it serious
questions.”
I polish off this tercet last night, buried
between Him and His new girlfriend
He also loves. As for me? I’m not going anywhere.

In the future,

1. I actually should be sober.
2. I actually should leave my ex alone (but won’t)
3. I actually should give the quatrain
4. a chance. I actually should write you a poem,

Liv. But right now, I make my friend from the beginning of the poem read the latest sad
text from my ex. She offers that, it seems, he
needs a boundary but really
she isn’t able help. She hands my hungover ass a coconut water and tells me it’s about
that time. Her real life name’s Gloria. Liv, next time we hang, I promise,

you’ll love her

Nothing awaits in Carcosa.
Sport is a form in decay,
Art is a decadent waste, and
Learning is vanishing fast.

Carcosa is barren, and dusty.
Its monuments crumble and crack;
Its people are gluttons and curs;
Its gathering spaces are sparse;
Its children are thin and abhorred.

Carcosa is buried in plagues.
Ennui, deceit, disease,
Stupidity, and loneliness —
Death.

You ask what your future will be in Carcosa?
Hear me, there’s nothing that waits in Carcosa!

The streets never sleep.
Like me—up at 6, out the door by 7.
Starting on Valencia Boulevard.
You know Valencia, right?
Where the lights never sync and traffic crawls for miles around the mall,
past the Valencia Town Center, the courthouse, the library—
all the places I can never stop for.
The green spaces? They’re there, sure,
but I only see them in passing.
It’s rush hour.
I hit the 5, the 405, then the 118.
Every day, a metal river, exhaust fumes thick as the air.
I roll down the window, choke on the mix of
gasoline, street tacos, wet asphalt—
the horns blaring like a pulse too fast, too loud.
I inch toward another 8 to 5,
just enough to keep me here, but not enough to own a damn thing.

$2,300 a month for rent, then utilities on top.
And sure, the medical bills are covered—thank God for that—
but disability doesn’t replace the hours he can’t work.
Three times a week, dialysis drains him.
You ever been to one of those clinics?
It smells like bleach, like something hollow,
machines clicking away like clockwork,
whirring his blood through sterile tubes.
I sit there, in plastic chairs that don’t bend,
watching time drip slow as the IV.
We don’t worry about the bills anymore.
But everything else? Yeah, we worry.
How long do we keep pretending we’re okay?

We talk about it sometimes,
my husband and me,
over cold leftovers at 9,
joking about mortgages we’ll never touch.
Laughing about pawning the TV,
because dark humor’s cheaper than therapy.
But beneath the jokes, there’s anger.
It swells, rises up like the rent—
faster than we can hold it down.
He’s barely 43, his body slowing before its time,
and I’m just trying to hold on to the pieces
while my own time slips away.

I’m in my 40s now.
And when the hum of the fridge is the only sound,
I think about motherhood—
how it slipped through my fingers.
I was too busy holding everything else together.
I missed the window.
Chasing experiences instead of diapers.
My body’s clock ticking louder than that damn dialysis machine.
There was hope once.
Doctors, technology, science—they promised a way.
But now?
Now, even that’s being torn apart.
Laws tightening like a noose around my choices.
Hope? Hope’s a distant memory,
just another thing they took away,
while we were too busy surviving to notice.

I don’t know my neighbors.
Do you know yours?
Thin walls filled with arguments, sirens down the street every night.
But we keep quiet, like strangers,
stacked on top of each other in apartments that feel
like temporary shelters.
Not homes.
Who can afford to know anyone here?
We’re all just counting the days,
praying nothing breaks that we can’t afford to fix.

Still, I rise each morning,
pulling on the same worn shoes,
walking the same cracked streets of Santa Clarita.
We make do.
Me, my husband, the furbabies.
Our small family in this rented space,
living between what is and what could be.
We carry hope in fragments now,
stitching it together with love, soft purrs, and wagging tails.
But let’s be real—
this city takes more than it gives,
and I’m tired of waiting for a break
that might never come.

But here’s the thing—
I’m still standing.
And that’s more than they expected

I bury myself in work, suffering, just to prove myself
I look in the mirror and change to be like her
I want the approval
I want the appreciation
I want to stop going unnoticed
When she is around the sun shines brighter
As for me it merely dims in their eyes
All the little girls say they want to be just like her
But they never notice me
Nobody thinks about those behind her
Spending hours, days, weeks, and years trying to earn just a sliver of their satisfaction
All they think about is the ‘perfect’ one
Sometimes I daydream about living up to standards
I daydream about living life like her
Having people love me like her
So goddamn effortlessly perfect for no reason
Whatever she does is amazing
Whatever I do goes unnoticed
So here in the darkness of her shadow I will spend my days trying to prove my worth

I’m going to kill a man. The thought spirals through my head. I’m going to kill a man. No hesitation. Because he deserves it. He’s responsible. He’s the reason. The reason for the black hole in my heart, the reason for the grief and sorrow, the reason why I’m standing in a field, under leaking clouds, salty tears mixed with rain, holding a knife in my left hand. My hand aches. But my grip doesn’t loosen. I can feel the pain and agony as the handle bull doses into my knuckles. I hear a crunch. My fingers don’t budge. I want to remember the pain. I want to remember what he did. So I won’t break. So I won’t crumble from guilt. Because he doesn’t deserve my sympathy. He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as I do when she can’t. He doesn’t deserve to live. I hear sirens. I don’t back down. I won’t, never. Not until the deed is done. Not until I’m fulfilled. Not until the screams echoing through my head are replaced with his. I won’t break. Because I’m going to kill a man.