They can call me a spend thrift, a hot head, a capricious, spunky little thing.

They can call me intense, obstinate, and arrogant.

They can say I did all for the the vanity and the glory-

They’re probably onto something.

They can go on about my pride.

Talk about how my tongue is as silver as it is sharp,

But oh when it cuts, it cuts straight through the heart. 

They’re probably right.

They’re probably on point.

And then they’ve got another thing coming.

I’ve been a hedonist,

A “cheeky little bitch”, an impetuous f*ck.

I’ve been a neurotic,

A gypsy, a weirdo

A whore.

They can say what they want about me.

But they cannot say that I did not question,

give, experiment, and challenge convention.

I’ve been a basketcase

A vixen, a virgin, a shrew.

I’ve been a wise woman,

A viper, a spinster, a fool.

It’s all true.

But they cannot dare say that I did not live,

that I was not free, 

that I did not choose.

New Type

I like them aloof, borderline- emotionally dead

I like ‘em, neurodivergent

Lost and fucked up in the head.

Daddy issues, mommy issues

And a looming ex.

Depression, anxiety

Their cards too close to their chest.

Good boys are fun,

But they always want to commit.

Their certainty drives me crazy

And their projections make me sick.

Safety’s enticing, but too much to soon

And the walls always start to cave in.

Narcissists got tricks,

But I can always out smart them.

Yeah, I’ve been a sucker for lovebombing

But their callousness quickly ousts them.

I like that you’re honest

And along for the ride

I like that you’re not trying to change me

And not trying to hide.

I like that you tell me you want me

And don’t give a shit if I leave.

I love that you do your own thing

And don’t keep a single trick up your sleeve.

So if you’re bad news baby,

Then I want to know all about you first

So if you’re a bad boy baby-

Well, you can get ahead of the herd. 

On Liminal Space

Lately, I’ve been thinking about liminal space. The space between what is and what is to be. Or the space after the end of a rite of passage, but not quite the commencement of another. It’s also the space I’ve been inhabiting over the last couple of months.

I was apprehensive of this space. I knew this stillness was coming after returning home from living a vibrant life overseas. The pandemic has only compounded this space and like for most people this pandemic has brought so many feelings of isolation and alienation to the surface. It’s been a very weird and existential year that has prompted me to ask myself a lot of questions, but it feels like a lot even for a ‘weirdo’ like me who relishes in the absurd and abstract.

Some days I am comforted by the sound of my father chopping away at the kitchen or my mother knocking on the door to drop off a fresh load of folded laundry. There’s something cozy about being home and knowing during this uncertainty you can be with the ones you love and who cherish you the most. Other days, I find the added quietness and humdrum of everyday life absolutely unbearable. My mind trails to places I don’t want to go. I find myself yearning for a chapter of my life that has long closed and the future seems like an extra intangible space that is out of reach. And I know I am not normally this nostalgic or this ahead of myself, but the ‘present’ also seems not here either.

I find myself missing simple things like being able to sit at a coffee shop for hours unbothered and yet comforted by the people clicking away at their laptops nearby, but today I went on a four mile walk. The wind was brisk rather than brick for what seems like the first time in two months. I took my headphones off, listened as the birds cooed, and bikes moved swiftly past me. I felt the sunlight on my face and overlooked as the sun hit the tops of trees- giving them a pretty auburn color. And I remembered that I am here. For today, that is enough.

You left me with no milestones to remember

No sweaters to return

Not a single picture to burn or untag,

No conversations to fondly look back on

No scar tissue to pick on

Just a lingering sadness that’s taken me months

To rinse off the sleeve from where

My heart once used to sit.

You left me with more questions than answers

The man always speaking in metaphor,

Left me with but a few words.

The vivid memories of the contortions of your face, ever irritable.

Your past in passive voice,

But always a run on sentence.

An ever looming figure, before me.

But I left you suddenly,

Defiantly

With resolve. 

I left you the way you were always afraid

Of keeping me, with commitment.

You were so afraid to be consumed

Or to be abandoned

That you never saw how slowly 

You were cementing me to walk away.

How every single abridge, built my case

And how slowly I was gathering embers

To start a fire,

Just so I could burn the bridge,

And keep it burnt.

1:30 am

I lay my head on my pillow,

Cotton feels like hammer to nail,

My thoughts trail and I make

The mistake of thinking of you.

My thoughts cascade from Niagara to Iguazu, 

By now, it’s 3:00 am in

I’m not sure which time zone

And I still can’t sleep.

But who I am kidding? 

I was thinking about you five hours ago, 

While I was trying not to-

After I turned the musica romantica off,

Did the dishes,

And a whole load of laundry by hand.

I was trying to focus on something more kinesthetic,

Anything just to get out of the habit.

I got myself reading up on theories of emotions, 

Been trying to deprogram the physiological responses, 

Control the compulsion and repress the cognitive instincts,

To mull things over and think of you incessantly.

I’ve been trying to cure the necessity to ruminate

Been working on hyper-focusing on your yellowed teeth,

The twice worn shirts. 

Anything to snap me out of the fixation.

Last week, I went three whole days 

Without thinking of you much.

I was almost proud of myself, 

Until I found myself furiously 

Making out with you in the back of a taxi.

And I know it was just a dream,

But I woke up with your taste still in my mouth

And I smelled like you.

Fuck.

Thoughts on healing

Healing doesn’t always happen in big moments. Sometimes it happens in doses. Often it is incremental.

Like one day you will find yourself before a man, giving long answers without hesitation. Before you even know it, you’re telling a long, detailed story and then it hits you. You realize you’ve never done it before- told a story to completion without hesitating, fragmenting, or recoiling.

And the man before you doesn’t take his eyes off you or interrupt. Instead, he gazes up at you eagerly and asks a question, and then another, and then another one.

And you think of all the times before, you spoke in pauses or cut stories short. The way you listened to an old lover drone on, but kept yourself from ‘rambling’. Eager to keep his secrets, but fearful of telling him yours. Never trusting his interest.

**

Or sometimes it happens when you’re with friends at the beach. You’re kicking back cans, laughing, and finding different ways to kill time with food and mixed drinks. On the way to the next restaurant, your friend takes you side saddle on the back of his beat up bike and gives you a 1.5 mile lift. He’s pumping hard and you’re f**king terrified, but you’re also laughing. You realize you haven’t heard yourself full belly laugh like this in a while.

You think back to the heartbroken woman a year before. She’s sitting by a big rock by the ocean- weeping and wondering. And you know leaving him was the right decision. It took you here.

**

But sometimes it does happen in big moments. You have a fight with your man, and you think this is it- this is where it all goes to shit. This is where he shuts down. You brace yourself for a pain you’re all too familiar with.

And then he texts you in less than an hour. He tells you he loves you, that he was being an idiot and he’ll see you in the morning.

In the morning, he drives you around and helps you run errands. When you finally get a moment to sit, he pulls you in close, and with tears in his eyes he says “I’m sorry about last night. I couldn’t bear the thought of letting you leave like this.”

Your defenses drop and you disarm immediately. You think of all the times before getting an “I’m sorry” was like pulling teeth or hitting a wall. All the times you felt like you were “too much” for men much smaller than him. 

And you realize maybe this is healing. It’s not always in milestones or long term relationships. Sometimes it’s just with a guy you met at a bar and spent all night talking with. The one who held your face with his hands and said “You’re beautiful because you’re real.” Sometimes, it comes when you’re kicking back cans with friends at the beach. When you realize you’d rather be nowhere but here. And sometimes, if you’re really lucky- it’s with someone you love, when you least expected to love again. 

Maybe that’s all healing really is. Not time or distance. Just presence. A person or people standing before you, seeing you as you are- not afraid of coming any closer. Leaning in.

Champagne Problem

I know these things happen in epochs-

Some seal into your bones and others break marrow.

I just guess yesterday,

I wasn’t counting on counting tomorrow.

If I scrape harder, will I cut?

And if I remember to forget

Will the city forget to remember me back?

And if I shed now, 

Will I have to shed again?

And if these old cells need to die-

Will I ever mend?

And if I do nothing, will I stay?

Will the years I spent keep the worst of me at bay?

And if I run. will I run again?

Or will I always be hellbent- on finding home?

And I’m scared to death that the world that yesterday 

Seemed so vast, now is gone, and overly compact.

And if home isn’t a place, a self, or a heart

Will I ever learn the art – of letting go?

Or am I destined forever to be a rolling stone?

But if it’s true what if they say about cells

Could I find a way to hold space

For the next of me to sell?

And hell, if I make this promise, will it just be between 

Me and you?

And if I ossify and change into someone you don’t like

Will you promise to see the next phase of me through?

And I knew these times they are a changin’

I just next expected the rest of my life to arrive so soon.

But if I stay here longer, maybe I won’t disintegrate or break

And if I don’t go back maybe I can find a way 

For the rest of me to stay.

Hamlet’s Lost Soliloquy (2009)

(This is a poem I wrote for AP English when I was in high school)

It is not the frailty of man kind I fear. 
Only a fool deceives himself when he believes
That strength lies in all men.
For what are we more than concealing ourselves behind a veil?
We act as if we were not already shadows. 

Foolishly yet do we gauge our eyes
And swallow our tongues to praise falsehood.
“Death is worse than living,” they all say
Yet it is me they dare accuse of madman.

Genesis states that women were made from the rib of man,
But it is God’s formal way of disguising
That they are brewed from Lucifer’s astuteness.
For no one else can possibly teach
Treachery as well as Satan does.

Take note Ophelia,
Thee is fairest among the whores 
But it is thy charm that beguiled me
For thou doest not more than deceive,
And one becomes so green in the entangling vines of love.

But mother greater are thou a whore.
Thy beautiful lips only speak lies,
And thy lecherous hips only feed sin.
How soon doth black sheets exchange for white? 
Too soon mother, that the devil himself sleeps on thy throne.

The devil to who my misfortune,
Hath the same blood that is fed to my veins, 
But evil is he more,
The murderer hath the audacity
To drink from the same goblet as my father.

Oh Claudius, if I could just crush thy skull
And adorn it on an altar
For the world never again to forget
What Cain has once again done to Abel.
Thou art a power hungry and envious bastard!

But I would be in oblivion
If I said that my yellowness
Did not consume me nor define me.
Indeed, I am a coward,
And a conscious one at its worst. 

To know one is in err
And have not the valor to change it-
Is a flaw I carry exceptionally.
But I cannot endure the enemy much longer,
Thus must I, Prince Hamlet, become a man.

«

All Bets Are Off

Dear old friend,

I’m sorry I’m breaking your heart

And this is hard for you to understand.

I threw a wild card in

and you know I won’t be forced my hand. 

You’re calling my bluff,

but I’m folding and cashing in my chips.

I was there when the chips were low,

But you played your cards close to your chest.

So don’t call on me old friend,

Upping the ante, don’t call on me.

While I laid my cards on the table

And didn’t keep a single one up my sleeve.

So don’t call on me old friend,

Don’t call on me -calling a spade, a spade.

[Follow suit] 

Gustavo

Brown- mushroom hair cut, medium-tone brown eyes like the color of grinded coffee beans before they hit the hot water and dissolve into black- that is what Gustavo looked like. Gustavo, was my first crush on a real boy. On a boy not in posters or in a boy band. On a boy that was not Nick Carter. On a boy that was not completely white.

I don’t remember much about him anymore, but I do remember that his voice was slightly an octave or two deeper than the rest of the boys. Or maybe, I just like to remember him sounding deeper.  The last time I saw him was in the fourth grade, after he yelled my name when I got off the school bus.

I have tried rummaging through old school pictures at the bottom of my mom’s drawers to find him on Facebook, but I have never had any luck. Somehow Ms. Rodriguez’s second grade class picture of 2000 is the only one my mom still doesn’t have somewhere squeezed in the back of all her pantyhose.