I was having a listless kind of day where only a part of my being felt compelled to be thrown into the hours of living. A day of mundanities where crows called out through the window, where the stillness of the air grew thick, where I sat in the bosom of the house’s silence. I was in an anti-social stupor. Burying myself in the lair which was my room all day. Inside me stirred the maladies of my perturbed and lethargic spirit. Spreading like the atomic clouds of milk in an undisturbed dark tea.

The afternoon was a haunting. The dim bedroom grew dimmer and dimmer. A current of sun slipped in through the blinds like a desperate shadow. So much silence permeated the walls, pure like sweat on the skin. Save for the cries of the cat, Blair, outside my door. Cries growing loud, meowing, meowing with fervor as if hades would come to cradle the small body of black fur. Dark, ambient, phantasmagoric-like melodies played in the white space of my bedroom. It was a lullaby. There in the dullness of the afternoon shadow, a blank, porcelain face above me. Crystallized phantasm dripping in dew. I was nothing short of curious. This face stared upon me in seraphic countenance. Empty feeling eyes meeting mine, staying reticent. We had stayed like this for some time. My languid body laying upon the thick cotton duvets, enveloping my naked body that melted deeply into the soft grasp of the sheets. I asked what this darling creature wanted of me.

“Nothing. To stay here awhile and watch the afternoon pass.” and so I let the porcelain face embedded into the ceiling do so. Enraptured in bliss.

At some point, I turned, baring myself to the window above my bed. Opening it, letting the gust of fresh summer air rush in like homesick doves. Before Porcelain and I, metaphysical landscapes entrenched in hues of brassy yellows, pale blues, deep stormy greys that made my loins churn in fantastical eroticism. Land met sky in vast grass meadows. The soil in which the grass grew was parched. A brittle brown that one’s mouth could feel the pure grit that emanated from its cracks. Dry as California deserts. Faraway like pixelated hieroglyphics, horses stood still like ghosts inches away from the towering barn house. A two story yellow building, braving the vast space of land all alone.

“These horses are as still as a building. Frozen in time it seems. They do this after some time of being fed. As if their bodies need the stillness that comes with digestion. ” I said. Porcelain hummed, rounded cherub cheeks turned upwards. Pale yellow dim, leaving no crescent to enter upon my chambers. Darkness swept in like a solemn man of the night. Brassy grass sways. The air whistled in morose hymns that produced goosebumps on my toasted skin. My breasts rose, sharpened against the sudden force of the wind. Summer afternoon’s open womb had closed on me. Leaving me no recourse. I was bare and solemn. I exited the bed, gathered my old candle sticks, and lit them with matches. Spread them across the bedroom. My room, now an altar of quiet sacredness and ritual. I made instant coffee in the kitchen–in its growing darkness. The arresting aroma of coffee swirled through my nostrils. A swig of whole milk and a dash of vanilla creamer. Porcelain humming as I entered the bedroom, again. A pleasant, comforting mood swept in. The kind of obscured melancholic mood that felt delicious enough to be my crux. The kind of mood that lulled me into bed, warm and inviting. I entered my nest of a bed, sipping my warm coffee.

“I wish to be as free as you” Porcelain said, melancholy forming in their muted lips.

“And why is that?” I asked.

“I have been eternally damned. I am stuck in the ether of life’s hot breath and death’s creeping cave.”

“Have you always been stuck? Why are you there?”

A silence. “I don’t know. I ran away some time ago from home. I went to sleep in a shack far off from this old wooden cabin. Potent with the birth of spring flowers blooming on its steps. I fell asleep and awoke in emptiness. “

The music of the wind outside grew furious. Whistling and whistling gruesomely in melody. The cat sang phantoms that filled me with a small nervousness that only a woman alone could feel the dread of. The candles flickered, some blew out, its smoke a siren to me. A seance was entering my room. Pungent were the faint souls crowding. Calm, I asked Porcelain to reveal themself. Wanting to see if the hollow ether in between life and death could be released momentarily to breathing eyes.

More candles flickered, goosebumps fluttered upon my skin. Momentarily, I was breathless as the burgeoning evening sky. A young female apparition descended from the white heaven-like ceiling. Coming down in slow motion, this young woman, voluptuous and bare such as I. With a grotesque wound in her stomach. Gaping and dried, all the blood dried and etched onto her navel. The ambient room appears through her.

“So, here you are. Ms?” I welcomed her.

The porcelain woman with the wound in her stomach painstakingly looks around. Her long dark hair moved with the wind. Her vacant eyes upon me at last. “Kismet.”

“Kismet. How esoteric! I’m Sabine.”

“Sabine. So French. I should like to lay next to you.” Kismet stood there, connecting her pale hands together, politely. As if she realized at once the intrusion she’s committed. I nodded, opening up the right side of the bed to her . As she got into bed with me, cold breath landed upon my body. It nipped at my breasts, my arms, my stomach. Kismet was comfortable, seemingly in good spirits in the haven of my bed.

Her face was tranquil, posed in the lace of goodness that framed a saccharine and composed pair of eyes, resting mouth. A tiny black mole on the left side of her upper lip. Short curly bangs hang over the vacant lot of her brow bone. I found her hauntingly beautiful. Kismet met my curious gaze and smiled. Shallow hazel eyes–distantly gleaming.

She parted her lips, a cool breath trailing on my skin. She said, “I am sorry for intruding. I know it’s quite rude. I’ve just needed to be in contact with a living soul. Eternity in hollowness is an unforgiving hell. I saw you from so high above, swimming languidly in freedom, the sun planting kisses upon you. The safe spirits of this house. I, too, wanted to join. To feel the rays of the sun hit me like it used to when I was young and alive. “ Big were her eyes, glistening as much as they could with nostalgia.

“Well, were you able to?”

“Feel the sun? Scarcely. I am an empty vessel. I can hardly feel anything. The mundane sensations of life are gifts I took for granted. “ The gurgles of curiosity were rising out of me. I wanted to touch her, hold her, see what would rise out of me, rise out of her.

“So, suppose I hug you, you would not feel me? Not my warmth or the tickle of my hair?”

“I don’t believe I will but you can try.”

And so delicately did I envelope Kismet in my arms. I felt her body against mine, feeling corporeal and odd. Her breath shook in rattles. We had looked at one another, perplexed. She appeared less opaque and more alive the longer I held onto her. I pulled her into me tighter–mobilizing all of my female strength to oppress her body. Not a wince, not a heartbeat that stirred. I let go. We sat there, stirring in wonder and early evening air.

“Thank you, Sabine. “ she thanked me, sweetly. Honey falling off the tip of her tongue and into my open ear.

“For what?”

“For touching me. I feel real again despite this state of hollowness I’m in.” color appeared to shade in her cheeks. I rubbed my eyes ever so casually and yes, rouge so lightly colored her cheeks. I was further confused but I remained triumphant over crass expression.

She was bashful as she slipped into my hold again. We laid back together into the bed. Our hair tangled together over the pink pillows below our heads. A mess of black and yellow hair. My right arm hooked around her neck—a brown boa. Her left arm under my body, touching my waist. At last equanimity descended into the room and seemingly outside. The wind, finally quiet. The moon casted a beautifully eerie glow into the room. We felt it upon our faces.

“Can I ask why you ran away from home?” I gently implored.

Kismet looked up at me, hazel eyes a pool of clandestine dreams. They averted downwards, away from mine, a sigh.

“There was nothing for me in my town up in the mountains of Benson. It was only vacant roads leading to what I thought were simple people. Simple politics. I desired more. Like every young girl I felt entitled to a graduation of girlhood to one of a voracious kind of womanhood. I had been good too long. I followed the orders of my tyrant mother. Worked in the fields all through high school. I had enough. One night I packed a bag of all the essentials one could have and I ran into the gorgeousness of the night.” So melancholic, forlorn did she sound. Her mouth formed into a pout. She continued, “I didn’t make it out of town far before I died. I never graduated.” Thick pangs spread across my heart in sympathy. I knew she could not feel me but I squeezed her in comfort. To satiate the omnipresent regret laced in her voice.

“You didn’t graduate but here you are still getting to see the fruits of the world no matter how detached. You are untethered to the earth. You can drift as you like. I suppose I envy that.” I tell her, unsure of if it would comfort her.

“I ache for nothing more than to be tethered to the earth. If I could be naked in the soil, become a vessel for all orphaned organisms, feel the weather on my chest like an infant, I would cry out in joy. I am free of societal constraints as a girl. The insipid eyes and hands of man escape me in which I’m glad but all other qualities of life I am a voyeur to which makes me sad.”

I nodded, keeping my mouth closed as I could not say more to quell her misgivings although I ached to. Kismet sighed. She looked like a picture with the essence of lovely youthful dreams. I laid my head upon hers, whiffs of musk whirled into my nostrils. The quietude of the night settled upon us. Hushed chatter of crickets below the window were heard. Surreptitious sways of the trees rustled in my ear. A distant car rumbled in dance with loose gravel. The black night’s melodies held us in captivating trances.

“Sabine.” Kismet called me out of my trance. I looked down to meet her gaze. “Promise that you’ll seize your life.”

“How so?”

“You must arrest your life. Seize, grasp, hold it in your palms. Lay like this, naked and unencumbered. Refuse to settle among thorn bushes when there are fields of blossoming fruits and roses awaiting you. Run wildly. Loosen your mouth. Make ravishing love. Recognize that you are one that sits alongside the moon. Destroy your innocence and live honestly, happily as a woman can be in one life. For me.” So much conviction in her voice as she said this.

I became so moved—quakes of mixed emotion wrestling in my throat. Kismet disentangled herself from my arms and rose. “I must go.” she said simply.

I reached for her cold hands. “But why?” I was close to unraveling for reasons unknown to myself at the time. What I did not know was that it was an overwhelming sense of passion. For Kismet, myself, and our fleeting meeting.

“I can’t stay in one place for too long. I have to see what else awaits me. Thank you for your warm and open spirit, Sabine.” She smiled, her cheeks raised.

“Will you come back?”

“I don’t know if I will be able to but I’ll remember this day. I’ll remember you.”

With her parting words of gratitude, she ascended into the air, through the ceiling and presumably the ether from which she came. Had I not been overcome with emotion I would have laughed. As the sight of her body floating above me looked absurd. She glimmered like a firefly.

All was still after dear Kismet left. The sounds of the earth felt overwhelming to me as I sat in bed. The candle wicks shortened, melted into the weathered wood of my desk and vanity. I closed my eyes, picturing white flouncy cloth, long ragged hair, an unbounded spirit flowing with angels and gods. Consuming all open vortexes, raptured innocence. A heavy cloud of thoughts of my mortality. To die ungraduated. Unable to deliver my feminine mystique into the soil in which I yearn to lap up like an esurient pup. My skin grew hot at the sudden arrival of onset courage. To live earnestly as Kismet directed. Kismet, robbed of being a 20-something woman, could not stand to overlook a putrid life of another. I did not want to waste my life away as a nothing girl, a nothing woman.

So, I blew the candles out in several huge huffs and I went to bed. Showered in thanks for and to the porcelain girl. Her bountiful wisdom borne out of sorrow. Candle smoke and musk circled around me in sensual halos that dissolved upon my face. I dreamt of bergamot trees, sea foam sitting upon my navel as I floated on the wide mouth of the sea, lush lips firmly planted on my chest, suckling and gnawing like infants of the sea, and running. Running far and wide. Weathering the body as to feel the sweat and gunk of real life. This was what prompted me out of an indifferent malaise that would have eventually suffocated me.

Music I listened to while writing:

I wrote this short story feverishly in one night after a day of doing chores. The candles were lit, the playlist listed above was playing, and I fell spellbound into a world that felt familiar and dreamlike. I hope that you can relate to the two women whom I’ve come to think about so much for such a fragment of time. Please enjoy <333

Until next time,

Sade <3

Avril 19, 2026

9:46pm

Dear diary,

I feel a little rotten. I feel a little lethargic but at least I feel like this while looking fashionable! I go back to Anaheim at 5 and I can feel the acrid taste of dread seeping in. After an amazing anniversary with Peter and morning at the thrift yesterday, why would I want to come back to the wretched space I rent? To be quite positive, I’ll only be there for four days before I leave for Sacramento. Thank you, God! My eyes just lit up just now thinking of the cows, the architecture of the university ( UC Davis), the possible connections I’ll be making, the cozy campus spots I’ll be able to go to. Oh, I’m so grateful I’ve been given this opportunity! I never thought I’d be invited to an important conference. I’ve acquired many cute clothes for the occasion as well.

Avril 20, 2026

10:27pm

Dear diary,

Today was not so arduous. I did my usual routine except for attending hcom 308. It’s become so dreadful being in there and my feeling stupid doesn’t help. I spent a lot of time in the WRC applying to jobs, reading, doing some work, and nursing a coffee that I routinely make in their office area. I went grocery shopping with ******and *** after and right in the middle of it, I got filled with so much irritation. I was bloated with it. In the middle of trader joes all I wanted was to have rotisserie chicken and rice and climb into my bed. My annoyance was not put to ease when the cashier charged $80 to my ebt card. I had enough on the card but still…what an irritating occurrence. I stood there in an apathetic malaise as the manager put $59 back on the card. I walked out craving to be enveloped in the recourse of sweet silence. We came home and ****** was unfortunately home. I ate, contributed to a project, showered, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and finally I am ready for the night.

I want to read more of A Love Affair by Dino Buzzati but the MC Dorigo pains me. He is so fucking pathetic its almost become laborious to digest his inner monologues of anguish, despair, or anger directed at Laide. He desired everything from and of her without being ever so direct. He calls her a whore, bitch, ugly in his little head when he wants to distance her from the women of his own background. Laide is a rugged girl with ferocious desires to be someone, something and she treats him like a card to be swiped, discarded, thrown, adored sparingly. Dorigo is well aware that he sits at her feet like a stray dog. Yet, he does not break away even though he so badly wants to. On mornings he wakes up feeling relieved of his “condition”, he feels weary but relieved, then, only for his love ailments to return to maximum levels.

Really, the way he acts could be analysed in a way that concentrates on the stereotypes of the sexes. Dorigo could well be seen as acting “unmanly” because of his pining, breaking out into sob, daydreaming, fantasizing being thought of as feminine traits. These are considered weak traits. Laide herself must view his actions in a similar manner because she rebukes such scenes from him. I think Dorigo struggles greatly with his self-esteem which informs his attachment to particular women. He’s wealthy and successful yet he does not have the love of a woman he desires. His inability to have that connection, I think, brings out super anxious attachment styles that repel women like Laide. He knows their affair is carceral, in a state of perpetual doom. He knows its pathetic for a man his age, 49, to be chasing after a girl of 20. Yet, he cannot go on without her or he believes so. Back to gender, he revels in his “masculine” traits only when he is jealous, angry, or hoping to impress. He flaunts his friends sports car when picking her up, he attempts a cool apathetic suave air when initially around her. He fantasizes about deserting her inconvenientantly and cruelly only in the way a man would. When he is in this state, he feels like the other “manly” men he knows in his circle. The kind of man who would rather shoot themselves than hold the leash, tongue out, ready to be walked by a young woman. He talks of this every few pages when Laide upsets him. It’s comical how he just allows it to keep happening with little to no consequence. Not a boundary set or conversation had. Laide does not feel threatened either. She makes him pick her up in Modena, pay her bills, run her errands without so much of an earnest thank you leaving her youthful mouth. She understands the power dynamic. Laide walks, Dorigo follows. If she leaves him, damn the allowance, he will melt into nothing but a morose puddle. She is his universe. The girlboss/pop feminist rot in me almost applauds this behavior but one honestly understands the ample issues here. The power dynamics, gendered behavior, and each individual’s concept in relation to the other. Dorigo believes he “sees” Laide but only becomes more and more disillusioned the longer he knows her. The novel embodies the male gaze. She is a thing to be looked at, touched, and projected onto. Her wrath always comes into question. She is defiant of all this and even plays with it to give herself a leg up. Much how like all of us as women play the game to a certain extent to survive in the throes of patriarchy. She has more self respect than the man who pays for her time and affection. It doesn’t seem that she views herself, her body, her life, in relation to his. He is a distant figure that serves one municipal service and he abhors that. He well understands but hates it because her natural inclinations for trips, boys, mysterious outings, detract from his sacred time with her. She has currency and is building a social cache with Dorigo in her circle. Their transactional relationship oscillates between struggle and progress. There is so much more to dissect but I must sleep. Goodnight!

Avril 21, 2026

10:54am

Dear diary,

[Redacted]. Listened to Joan Baez and read on the bus. Had a meeting about graduate school which went lovely. I feel inspired and prepared. Listening to my Twang playlist while nursing a FREE matcha!!! Thank you, my forgiving and sweet universe for shining down on me with a vortex of softness. I have lecture in 39 minutes but I can feel the tender animal of my belly aching for more food. I had a measly breakfast: iced homemade coffee and a cup of vanilla bean yogurt. My mouth salivates thinking about chicken, rice, and roasted Japanese sweet potatoes sprinkled in crystals of sea salt. Little broccolini on the side. UGH. An orgasmic playing field on my tastebuds. Green onions in there, too!! Yummy.

Avril 27, 2026

Unfinished Poem:

It was the silky sibilant sigh

of the wind in the California Springs

that delivered me to the great confrontation

of the big wide world.

Lavender petal skies and coffee ground skies

softly envelope my toes as I face the brutality of

the white cuffs around me -

Mai 7, 2026

8:28am

Dear diary,

The morning is quiet. I am settling in it for as long as I can before the raucous I know so well comes driving in. Last night, I went to bed thinking about envy. When one heavily desires the materials and conditions of another, is that wrong? We deal a lot of negative attributes to envy as a feeling. Or its sibling jealousy. To me, I think these feelings are normal and don’t usually indicate the morality of a person. I used to be quite a jealous child. Everyone appeared to have it better than me; a better life, better parents, cute clothes, freedom. I always rotated between popular friends at school to soak in their natural luck. This jealousy I had as a kid never produced bully-like tendencies or anger. I just felt waves of shame about my comparisons. Sometimes I feel like this now when I see people with greater friend groups, cooler clothes, skinnier bodies, better writing, better familial relationships. This normal feeling feels like betrayal when it’s in connection to someone I know. Feeling jealous of an influencer or a celebrity almost feels like it comes with the territory but with a friend it just feels pitiful. I don’t know what I’m particularly trying to get at here but I am telling myself that these negative feelings are not inherently bad. They are useful in telling us more about ourselves, our wants. It’s normal. Which is what I’ll keep telling myself when something cool happens for someone else.

Mai 21, 2026

4:07pm

Dear diary,

I worked out, showered, typed out my short story, all in the early afternoon. I’m in bed wearing a large linen slip, my swollen breasts peeping out. Akiko Yano is playing and I smell like a gourmand cake. I haven’t eaten a single meal yet. Only roasted peanuts and kbbq potato chips. I’m craving meat. A burger, steak, something big and meaty. Desiring many things. Wanting to do many things. Such as [redacted], take out my braids, spend more money on food, leave to LA tonight, bleach my hair, etc. Stewing in momentary foolishness. I want cake, to be in a beautifully opulent hotel room, new boho braids, fresh contacts, to feel pretty out in the welcoming sun, and cute nails. Those Japanese cheddar rings that I can never practice restraint with. Funky kitten heels. Always left wanting material goods that offer me minimal spiritual recourse. Helps nothing. Anyways, I’m going to read and start laundry soon. Or nap, then start laundry.

Mai 22, 2026

3:58pm

Dear diary,

I’m at the train station about 2 hours early. I’m headed up to the valley of los angeles to stay with Anna so we can head up to vegas tomorrow along with ***** and Rain. I’m sitting inside the train station restaurant where LED lights of different beer brands are hung up near the wooden ceiling. The quaint little restaurant reminds of a man cave. With all the wood, beer, burgers and all. The sliding doors lead to an open patio with black tables and chairs. All facing the open train tracks with a divider straight down the middle indicating the directions of the train. Northbound to LA, all the way up to Santa Barbara on the right. Southbound down to Oceanside, San Diego.

A man just spilled his opaque, sad looking beer rushing to catch the metrolink. No words uttered under his breath. Just a look of “welp”. He caught his train, though, and the teenage employee with the soft brown eyes propped up the yellow caution sign at the site of the spill and mopped it up. It smells like diesel, cigarettes, and piss in here. Sniffing my wrists to get the pleasant smell of vanilla wafting through my nostrils. I keep biting my lip when getting a cramp from my period. Now, it’s tender. Probably a little red. I’m craving a beer but I just spent $16.00 on an uber. They don’t have my favorite beer here, either.

Okay, I bought a corona for $5. I’ve been texting back and forth with my sister’s godfather, Harry, who lives in Dallas. He came to La Jolla a few days ago for Will’s graduation which I had no interest in going to. Mom gave him my number so we could reconnect and now we’re talking about my impending graduation, his children, and the best times to visit Texas. I think I’d like to visit Texas someday. Dallas, Austin, Fortworth. I think of Texas and I think of all the redneck, hyper conservatives, or the bustling black communities with bustling black institutions and art and culture. Maybe I should go. I wonder how long it’d take to go by train.

My beer and granola combo is hitting the spot. I am entering the gratifying spot where I feel completely mellow. A little tipsy. I think the vibes are immaculate right now. Obscure 70s and 80s hits are playing. Older adults are just loitering as am I, and I’m sipping and eating. What would make this more immaculate is if I had a burger and fries and I was not bleeding out from my uterus. The bleeding I can’t control but the burger I can finesse. I’ll make a suggestion when Anna picks me up. Ugh, I can taste it already, The beef dancing with the salted fries. A firm bun. The swig of soda. Yummm. I’m going to continue nursing my beer and read. Maybe stare off into the distance until it’s time to board.

Hello, I love you.

Good morning,

I love looking at you when you sleep

for you look like the sweetest creature

borne from lush Japanese meadows.

Your resting face is naive and juvenile,

precious like ripe nectarines.

The pale yellow glow-

a dash across your face.

I kiss it, and feel sorry

that you cannot see

this beautiful picture.

Roots

Sorrow I have borrowed from my mother—

one that sticks like the rotting flesh of a fig.

It softens me like butter, melts into the core.

Selfishness I have borrowed from my father.

A curse and a prayer befallen on the young daughter.

In oscillation I exist with its consequences.

Crucifixion I have borrowed from my sister.

Falling into the pits of eternal suicide

where its ferocious breath resuscitates

the weakening soul.

The family picture sits dusty on the mantel.

Slowly greying like the roots of my parents.

We are farther away than ever from the dream.

That Sweet Lick

I left the flesh of the city behind me,

Its crisp, glowing edges shone into the hollow ether.

Its vivacity that oozed out of the old village brownstones,

the unforgiving honks of the city cars,

I packed delicately like a child into my suitcase.

The sweet sex of the weathered houses, potent

like spring blades of grass—-

I savored to not lose the taste of its processed memory.

I take it all with me, selfishly.

I leave my naivete on the dirty stoops

with the gum wrappers and trash bags.

I have not changed but I have been rustled,

feathered as to arouse my dormant chambers of vitality.

So, I come home transfixed on the quest for vivaciousness.

This is what a city must do to you.

What I’m Listening to:

The Season Where I Live

Spring has led me down many bare roads

where I sat at the end of it— restless in the jam of unease

And I went down lush ones

where they were enveloped in Sacramento greens

which their people, with grime in the pad of their fingers

marveled and kept driving

Spring fed me new cities corpulent with plentiful sidewalks

and curious characters that sniffed out my naivete

Like the one man in Washington square park—

with his halo of curls, his cigarette stained fingers,

and the di prima memoir he sold to me

Or the auntie in blue scrubs and a thick,

comforting Haitian accent who led me to flatbush

April bled into may like a waterfall

where I never felt the quiet blossoming of new fresh earth

but rather pummeled into it head first

with no way of turning back

I am currently in the throes of exam season and instead of studying, grading the work of my students, apartment hunting, whatever, I am reminiscing about the birth of my niece. She is a running one year old with a full head of dark brown, arugula-like, curly hair. Much like myself she loves to scream and takes her meal times very seriously. Thinking back to the moment of her birth, I had felt a mangle of emotions such as excitement, fear, and restlessness. Here, a life was going to be born into this cruel but loveable world. I remember the silence before her head slipped out, where all of us in the room stopped breathing for a minute. My niece came out with her first big gulps of real world air and screamed into the sterile blue room. I cried out in some sort of shock, I don’t remember. My sister laughed at me, later, when everything had settled down. “You were so serious all day I didn’t expect you to start crying so much!” she said, cradling her daughters head against her bare chest. I remember refusing to hold my niece the first few days of her life afraid that I would drop her tiny body onto the floor.

I do not know why I am thinking about my niece’s birth right now. Perhaps because its emblematic in connection to spring. Comparing birth to the season of spring is very cliche but I cannot help but always indulge because the unruliness of childbirth and the rawness of the earth’s perpetual metamorphosis is beautiful to me beyond words. Its what keeps writers such as myself perpetually hunched down writing ramblings in the note app or the diary to save for some poetry!!

Spring this year has been so different than springs of the past. I committed myself to doing hard things (except for posting consistently on this blog..) and remaining curious. These goals of mine led to me new York where I went with nothing but goals to flaneuse about. I walked all day while in the city, just eating, sitting in parks, writing, and saying hi to anyone who looked in my direction because why not? I sat in a few cafes across brooklyn and wrote many field notes. Many great poems. I went to Washington Square Park where I sat for some time to listen to the jazz being played by a group of old white men and one college student. I remember sitting next to a fashionable Asian couple on the benches, who were adorned in Eckhaus Lotta. I adored their vibe but said nothing. I adored my solo trip to New York! I did everything I had wanted alone, with no outside pressure or limitations, and with so much ease. I loved my time on the subways to the city reading and people watching. I loved observing the different personalities entering on and off the train, soon becoming blurred pictures as those of us on the train sped past them. Now, sometimes I wake up forlorn, disappointed that I am not back in the city but rather that I am here in California.

I will not disparage California too much. I had a brief stop in Los Angeles in March to see my best friend Alo. That quick weekend was all I needed to reaffirm that in the mountainous veins of my heart, a love for California will be plenteous. I thought as much when we cruised on the freeways blasting George Harrison and Cocteau twins. Wind blowing as the blue-purple haze of the LA sunsets enraptured us completely. That was also the weekend where I had cared about Carolyn Bessette and JFK jr. for all but two days.

I went to Sacramento last minute a few weeks ago for an NABJ conference I was invited to. I said yes without thinking much about what the weekend would look like for me but I said yes, excited and for once, feeling really important. I packed a small duffel with casual business clothes and headed to LAX. Sacramento, with its evergreen trees, lush parks, and farm-like smell. The drive to the hotel was a picturesque dream where the trees balked and swayed. Speeding past remnants of an old Chinatown that I was saddened I could not see. Those 48 hours spent in Sac oscillated between moving too fast or having hours stretch like fresh gum.

The conference was the first time in decades where I had been in a room with only black people. I looked around like a child enveloped in the amazement one possesses when going without something for far too long. I was so delighted to be in a room again with people who looked like me, talked like me, shared the same goals for writing and education. I attended a few panels where actors, news reporters, CEOs talked of their experiences in their respective industries. Those of us young hopefuls sat before them with pen and paper in hand. Admiring the debonair ways in which these individuals spoke, directed their lives. I left these panels with new connections and an invigorated heart. Although, a lot of these panelists ran tongues about the use of ai and some of us in the audience spared humorous eyes towards one another. I left Sac highly fulfilled, a tummy full of Fixins (must visit), and an insatiable need to be left alone for days with no contact with the world. I never did get those few days alone.

The days that nestled in between the big chunks of time going out, doing things, I read a lot of Di Prima’s memoir. I read it everywhere I could even though my cheeks grew hot and my loins turned through every page that I read. In my diary, about the memoir, I wrote:

“I read more di prima as I ate. More descriptions about her myriad of lovers and their sex. Cunnilingus, ass eating, comfortable contortions of the flesh to reach the delicious white light. Lots of fingering men, tugging their balls, biting their flesh until teeth marks become tattooed memories. Many languid massages of the clit, lackadaisical make outs, and fresh sap forming in between dewy thighs. All of course arousing me during my morning coffee….”

I didnt expect her first memoir to be salacious in any way but it was her editor’s idea for her sexual escapades to take center of the memoir and not the bohemian lifestyle she lived in the 50s. I couldn’t help but love this book, though. I loved it most when I passed through the areas she talked about living in, or sleeping on the benches of, I had lapped it all up. I’m always inclined to read memoirs or novels about women who live on the margins of society either by choice or not. It makes me feel less alone, less crazy. Less like I am the only young woman on earth who likes to wrestle in the raw musk of life. I had always heard about Diane Di Prima but hadn’t real work of hers up until now. Now, I itch to read her second memoir about her later life.

Now, summer is practically here and I have not soaked spring in at once. The seasons speed past you when you get older, you barely register the last breathing notes of it until its taste sleepily kisses you goodbye for all. You never know you had it in your grasp until it seeps out of your reach. Nowadays, I am trying to keep myself afloat until I leave for Vegas with my girlfriends. Then, I might just be able to taste that pungent but saccharine tongue of summer’s while it settles in on the west. I’ll be waiting.

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Essence of Winterdom

The season in which we live is supposed to hollow us out, my dear.

Dry brine us in the aloof, melancholic air.

Like empty souls with shadows illumined from the quiet sun,

We must surrender to the silence which permeates our being.

The aching cavity of our soul empties, replenishes

With warm yellow weeds in which we take comfort.

We lose in the waking blue dream hours

And we contend with it to digest our seasonal woes.

This, love, is the essence of a winter.

To face loss in the wispy , white streets

And to rise once more with newfound warmth

Burning in the hearth of the sucking teat of our souls.

Petals in January

I wonder why the babies have not yet bloomed.
I wonder why the sky collapses under this January moon.
I wonder why we must toil in this grime
instead of luxuriating in our precious time
on this sacred land of the wretched.
I am bewildered and confused.
I am a familiar kind of fool
to believe that this is all we’ll ever be.
Children that will never be freed.

The Tumble Towards Beginning

The dramaturgy of the occupation

in Minneapolis sounds like a bird cry

we have heard before.

Lest we pause

to hear its braggadocious rhythm,

its callous promises,

we shall heed its message.

We must defeat resignation

unite gracious hands

for the ultimate struggle.

We must hear those ravenous hymns as in those great Alabama churches.

To sit in the dense snow or oppressive heat in herds to ward off beasts.

To use our anger to love harder,

fight harder.

Fight for the beloved in which we believe.

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Songs On My Mind:

Weary - Solange

Bad Idea - Ravyn Lenae

Front Toward Enemy - Incendiary

Foo Violence - Manos De Fierro

Scantily Clad - Haute & Freddy

Help folks out in Minneapolis! :

Emergency Support for Rockford Area Families In Need

Rent Assistance for Families & Workers in the Twin Cities

At the end of 2025, I had reflected quietly, in my lonesome, about the year I had just experienced. What had I done? How did I feel? What did I do that felt fulfilling? What did I achieve? Was life lived or was it just a matter of surviving it? I felt that the year was a blur, that the moments I could remember were the quiet, mundane ones that were not shared with anyone. I had achieved some goals I had set forth for the year such as landing a mentorship, submitting my writing to publications, exercising consistently, returning to myself, etc., the usual goals one sets to achieve. While waiting in anticipation for the new year, though, I thought of what I wanted in 2026. Then, in the midst of a brutal leg workout, I thought of asking my girlfriends what they want in 2026. I wanted to express my curiosity outwards and use it to peek into the desires of the women that I know. So, I sent out a survey on new years day and waited. A part of me had thought that some of my friends would respond with amusing quips to subvert the usually uncertain expectations of January but it was surprisingly so earnest. So much so it had welled up my heart with immense respect and love. So, I hope you enjoy the responses and let me know maybe what you want in 2026!

Lili, 24

What do you want for yourself in 2026?

Confidence. My mental health has taken a huge toll on my confidence, I want to be more sure of myself this year.

Josselyn, 24

Financial/ job security, travel, have new adventures/experiences, meet new people, make new connections. Now as a working adult newly graduated with my engineering degree what I want most is to secure a good and stable job. I’d like to not worry about my finances and be able to spoil my friends/family when I want. The past few years have been spent with the goal of getting my degree and now that I have it I want to see more of the world, meet new people, and have new experiences. That all starts with getting a good job and being able to finally relax and enjoy life a little more.

Amy, 26

more everything! more love, more joy, more laughter, more experiences, just moreeeee <3 we only have this one life + the time will pass anyway, so might as well make the most of it!

Alondra, 25

stop caring what others think and start doing things for ME. i’ve held myself back from many different experiences out of fear of other people’s opinions.

H, 21

i wanna find my people and my community. i feel like i’ve been in limbo state between many people and i don’t want to keep it that way.

Dariam, 24 almost 25

I think, more than anything, I’d like to have inner peace. 2025 was a year full of lots of changes for me (especially professionally) and while I’m proud of the way I navigated some of those things, I can also recognize that I found a sort of comfort in my discomfort where I’m not necessarily pushing myself to embrace the change fully and truly grow (if that makes sense??). As a result, I’ve also thought about how I’d like to be more intentional with how I spend my time outside of work. I found ways to keep myself busy nearly every weekend (and sometimes on weekdays) and while almost everything I did was tied to an interest of mine, sometimes I felt like I was doing things just to avoid having to reflect upon other areas of my life. Essentially, I want to leave 2026 knowing that I am truly putting my fullest effort into everything I do and that I am not limiting my own potential.

Winette, 21

i want more patience. I’m looking forward to increasing my savings. I’d like to experience new things and travel more this year! first, i struggle with my temper sometimes so I know that my lack of patience is what hinders my ability to take things slower and also comprehending things. i also want to increase my savings because financial stability is one of my goals. Also i’d want to experience new things through traveling!

And as for myself? In 2026, I want to hold life in my firm grasp instead of letting life’s hand pass under me like receding waves. I want to feel everything even from the deep recesses of my soul, be everywhere, and feel that I am truly a part of the world even at its insipid state. Quite simply I want to be the woman who dominates life in her own way. Always, I am the lady in waiting, timid and invulnerable. Always wanting to do more but so paralyzed by the vastness of environments in which I slink around. No more of that. I also want to travel, be strict on my finances, and be a fantastic lover and friend. The usual because I always want to grow and be better!

99% of my dear friends have said that they do believe that they’ll make their goals happen this year. All of us, I believe, will be toiling and unraveling at certain parts of our lives to make sure our desires reach actualization. I hope those of you reading this also have the belief that the things you want to achieve will come into fruition. We do not move past another day without a semblance of that belief! I wish you good luck :)

Thank you my dear readers for tuning into this evening post! As always, let me know what you think. Also, today is my childhood best friend Josselyn’s birthday. Happy 24th, I love you !!! <333

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It is January now. This lucid winter air outside is biting, the sky dreary. Winter’s melancholic disposition comforts me to no end. I have been in hibernation for a week now after multiple weeks of copious amounts of studying and attending parties. I felt so stretched thin by Christmas, as if my spine were so brittle and about to part. But I was also brimming with contentment for I have been spending so much time with people that I care about. Really, I am grateful that I get to be tired by spending so much time doing what brings me joy. I also feel that winter is trying to make me more supple mentally and physically. To relinquish some of the rigidity that has plagued some of my ability to flow loosely with my time.

Sartre, in his book Truth and Existence, theorizes that “Ignorance conditions knowledge and is defined by it..both as possibility and as possibility of remaining in ignorance”. Which I have taken to mean that we arouse the pursuit of knowledge through the inherent ignorance we possess. Some of us acquire this [knowledge] and remain in ignorance because of whatever disposition we have. Whether it be fear or stubbornness. Reading Sartre for the better half of late fall and early winter, I have been philosophizing about the state of existence. Does the ignorance of self deny us proper existence and our humanity? On a micro scale, does our emotional/mental self-flagellation, our endless pursuits to be something or someone different persist because of our inherent ignorance of self? Perhaps we’d feel more confident, fulfilled, to some extent if we began to be more curious about ourselves. If we felt inclined to harbor compassion in the process of de-tangling the false knowledge that we hold in the ragged spine of our supple corpses. When it is a soft, powdery sunny day outside where the brisk California air feels like a quick kiss, I contemplate on how much not knowing my true identity has held me back in the arms of a woman who is not really me. I am thrust by this ignorance to pursue the real woman. One who accepts her neurosis, lives madly, and understands the spectrum of vitality in which she moves throughout her life. To deny that I am moody, stubborn, paralyzed in fear, and reckless with insecurity at times is to deny the reality of everyday humanity. I, like everyone else, cannot operate on the whim of perfection. Sartre questions curiously, earnestly, about what it means to be willfully ignorant in turn to push away truth. What even constitutes truth. I wrote comments, quips, questions of my own about this philosophy of his and how it translated in the modern world. I couldn’t help but draw connections to what is happening right now socially, politically, culturally here in america. Those of us in the imperial core are bearing witness to countless atrocities every day; deportations, homelessness, police brutality, our money being used to spread galavanting explosives across the sea onto people who want freedom. We understand this, are angered by it, yet some of us will not validate its existence by seeing it for what it is. We mostly live in the dark, turning our sacred eyes to frivolities such as tiktok trends, reality tv shows, endless celebrity worshipping, rigorous practice of undiluted vanity. Paralyzed and entertained so much so to the point of relinquishing the vitals of our humanity. I am not standing up on a soapbox as I do this often but I guess I am wondering how can we reckon with this dissonance and use it to move forward without being immobilized by shame. We are so desperate and we are so fragile when we cannot afford to be.

A passing thought has occurred to me. I have gone around eight months without instagram, tiktok, and even tumblr. I have obviously kept substack, youtube, and pinterest which I access through my laptop. Throughout these past few months, I have felt a sort of peace with not being in step with the digital world. I like not knowing about the latest trend or meme or discourse happening on apps that have wrought my attention span and confidence. When I see my friends they fill me in on the latest gossip which I always find fun. I am more present, more conscious of what I am consuming and how much of it. Although, now that I am home for the holidays, I have regressed into similar habits of the past. Staying up late watching youtube videos, scrolling on pinterest but now on my laptop, using my partner’s phone to bum a scroll, etc. The regression that occurs when at home is something I must find a way to prevent as it makes me feel idiotic. The digital self-control I have worked hard to possess the past few months are slowly disappearing like sand. I am getting better, though, with my efforts to intentionally occupy myself with writing and reading. Now that I have a niece, when I need a break, I bother her. We sing, walk laps around the apartment, and I give her the excitement of allowing a few minutes of rummaging through my glossy, new possessions.

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December melted into a beauteous symphony of petal-like rain drops and sacred kisses of equanimity. I am relishing in my winter break which has provided me the solace of uninterrupted alone time. Always, when I find myself alone and entrenched in pure quiet, I am in fact the most at peace. I am able to arouse myself mentally, spiritually, and physically. My world renews in metamorphic sequences. The same woman routinely turns a new leaf on terms of her own, alone, and unafraid. Now that it is January, I wish for it to test my suppleness. To press me down unto the earth and have me feel the very breath of winter’s nature. I want to burrow down, pick at my brain like pecks of a silky bird. Then, to plant seedlings out into the world. Quite simply, to move and work in silence. If I can! I wish January to move in kind to us all as this harsh winter flogs us repeatedly. I hope it revitalizes us in some capacity to act, to not only move in passion but in strategy, and to pursue knowledge always.

What I’m Loving At the Moment:

- My winter playlist:

- Black beans with everything.

- Brightly colored hair; red, pink, purple.

- Heated Rivalry!! (My bff Amy and I rewatch episodes daily).

- The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

- My loop ear plugs for sleep and daily wear.

- Ornate press on nails that are a bit impractical but so pretty to look at!

- This photo of FKA Twigs in Korea

- This Hearts2Hearts song:

- Shannon Kim’s videos. I learn so much from her insightful and thorough research and observations of the art world and its impact on society and culture.

Dear readers,

Thank you for reading tonight’s diary entry. I hope that the new year is starting off in a way in which brings you peace. Let me know how you’re feeling so far this winter! I have an exciting and fun little piece coming out soon. Please look out for it patiently <33 :)

Ines woke up in the midst of a dreary winter morning. White snowflake wisps crowned the window above her. The frost gave darling breath on her naked face. Stark white contrast to velvet red walls. Satiny cream drapes splayed open. Her head ached terribly, like a heavy stone danced inside it. The night before she checked into the suite after driving three hours from the city. She was there for her company’s annual end of the year party. A celebration for all employees to consume, desecrate, thrash beautifully, deservedly after a hard year’s work. One she routinely went to because drinks were free and fully stocked. Nothing to cause worry either as she was in the middle of nowhere with imperfect connection to wifi. Possibility to fully abandon was abundant.

Ines had checked in at the ripe hour of 5pm. The sun was at it’s last bend, melting into the early caress of the evening as she walked into her room. Little time did she have before she had to undress, cleanse herself, redress into nightwear. Her body gleamed in a black silk dress that clung to every curvature, every muscle that flexed when she moved. A messy, curly, French braid. A whisper of flushed cheeks. Upon leaving, she slipped on glossy leopard print kitten heels and her late grandmothers 1970’s fur coat.

The first hour, the young woman sat alone with a lone glass of whiskey. Whirled bodies around her, low grumbles, and shrill voices entered and exited her line of hearing. She preferred to be on the peripheral of all the movement. To be the brooding spirit hovering over the tables. The fourth hour, Ines grew loose from the several glasses of whiskey and their warm embraces. Body warm like a midnight bath. Her heart fluttered easily, she grew flushed. A lean man in a tux, with curls of black and white had sat next to her. He had fixed his vision straight ahead as if survielling the gyrating crowd for a familiar face. Except for a moment to glance at her with a soft expression. A cup of golden liquid with ice. His fingers gripping the ridges of the cup with intensity. After each sip the man took, Ines watched the ice pirouette in unison. She had never seen this man prior to the party but she thought him alluring sitting in his fancy tux. They both sat together side by side in sheer silence, only the cacophony of the pop music mixed with crowd chatter filling their ears. Soon, Ines fingered the button of her red clutch to search for a cigarette. She was not a serious smoker but it was reaching a point in the night where her mouth wanted to keep busy. Two cigarettes were pulled out in which they were held out like extensions of her fingers. Looking over to the man she asked, “Would you like?” he nodded politely.

She led him to the parking lot closest to the entrance of the foyer. Winter’s thick breath consumed the entirety of the outside world. The sky so dark, the stretch of concrete before them an empty dream. Ines and the man shivered under their coats. Slowly, they stood closer to one another for warmth whilst smoking. He blew a faint ring into dusk. She blew warm breath onto it as it escaped his pink lips. Her finger lay upon her lip. Little by little they started to converse. The man was Dr. Sweiss, a professor at the University of Eldridge Stram. He taught philosophy and research methods in literature. Dr. Sweiss had been invited to the end of year celebration because of his generous donations to the company as well as his close friendship with her boss, Mr. Jordan. Amusing he was to Ines in subtle ways; his pauses, his almost poetic disposition that betrayed the intensity in which he held himself, his quiet chuckles when she spoke. How fascinating he was to her. Dr. Sweiss burned through his one cigarette rather quickly. At its end, he asked if she could spare another in an embarrassed manner. Ines dragged her cigarettes for longer. She adored the quiet lullaby of the smoke drifting through the air despite its repugnant smell. So, the young woman fed him her leftovers. A smoke to not be wasted. The minute flick of his tongue over the lipstick smudged on the ring of the cigarette did not escape her. Dr. Sweiss found Ines quite endearing. He thought her beautous. Her curly hair, although constrained in a braid, shrouded her small face. Her almost careless disposition intrigued him. She was far distant enough to have him desire reaching closer, to see her. Her full glossy lips. Her devoted eye contact which never strayed. Her fingers twitched and she blinked three times in a row without miss every so often. “How enchanting.” he thought.

They soon started to discuss an array of things that mostly centered around philosophy. His eyes became a storm of light when he discussed the essence of truth, how we discover it’s totality. Ines, at the beginning of winter had contemplated the very existence of a truth. Precisely fixed on the truth that appeared in the growing cave of her life. What in her life was not being unveiled as to become a near truth. How could she unmask the creature inside her that longed for something more. She was stuck on what was it she was exactly looking for nor how she should go about it. Ines had known for certain that her creature ached for release after so long a period of suppression. An arrival of metamorphosis.

Ines and Dr. Sweiss at some point in the night made it back inside to sit on the stairwell of the foyer. They were the only ones sat as other guests stood around them. Ines then could not control the eons of time between their close chatter and her hooked finger travelling to the pouty lip of Dr. Sweiss. He responded with fervor. A peck on her lone hooked finger led to a lick, a craned neck to reach over and kiss her. An arm around his neck, an arm over her waist, a pull closer for embrace. A break away for composure shortly after. A “shall we head?” gesture by Ines. Ines felt her loins start to circle, transpire. Her body in this moment was ravenous for him; for his wet mouth, aching fingers, his honeyed voice dripping into her ear.

Into her room they went. An owl coo heard from the closed bedroom window. He cracked it open for fresh air. The cream curtains lightly rippled, billowing into the room like a string of leaves. The wind of the night sang like as Dr. Sweiss slid Ines’ silky black dress off of her body. Goosebumps rose on her skin. She slipped off his coat, then tuxedo jacket, and finally his shirt dress. Off came everything else prohibiting their union. How quickly their bodies became one whilst still apart. Puckered lips on her breast, a wandering hand stroking delicately. Together their bodies in the duvet danced. Rhythmic trances flowed naturally. Careful, like a skilled equestrian, she rode him. The last thing the woman had wanted was to subject him to her clumsiness. Dr. Sweiss brought her head to lay on his mountainous chest as she continued. His lips pressed upon her bare neck, his warmth invaded her as he sang in hymns close to rapture. Ines smiled. How she fed on his pleasure. She gathered herself upwards slightly to look down at his face. Powdered in hot blushes, eyelashes fluttering, almost wistful. Their bodies in sync, had moved faster with great power. A cornucopia of stars shone into her vision. No longer could she make a sound she was so paralyzed by her arrival. She was enraptured in the moment. He moaned a crystal tune in her ear, coming blue dreams. In bed they laid for some time absorbing each punt of breath they exhaled into the humid room. Ines felt recharged, sober, able. She peered at him through the curtains of her stray curly wisps. He was looking at her soberly. His hand searched for hers to hold onto. Small kisses were planted upon his chest save for a tug of his nipple with the front of her teeth. Humming, he brought her close to his body while she laughed in satisfaction. 30 minutes they stayed in bed like this. Post-coital meal; scraps of chinese food left downstairs at the party. They ate ravenously near the now empty bar looking disheveled. Everyone had been slowly trickling out of the ballroom in which the party was held. Only a few people were still inside alongside them. The pair had a post meal smoke before going back to Ines’ room to sleep peacefully.

Now, it was back to the grey morning. Ines looked to her left to see Dr. Sweiss blissfully asleep, his supple buttocks left uncovered , touched by crisp air. Great shame settled into the pond of Ines’ stomach. Had she made a mistake? But what for? She had felt so renewed, so free. It was her first time in so long that she had slept with someone completely removed from her personal life. She could go back home, go back to her life with a piece of him. She observed him once more, he was slowly waking. Eyes peering over his fingers to then kiss them. Slipping outside the duvet, she prepared a short note before dressing and packing her belongings. It read as follows:

“Dear Dr. Sweiss,

I am glad to have met you on a night such as yesterday. In the middle of nowhere so close to Christmas. You are charming. I could not have imagined last nights events unfolding the way they did. Can I say that I am thankful for it in some weird way? Perhaps you understand. You were a sight to see amongst those soft cotton sheets. A beautous man who looked biblical. I feel that there was this deep shameful hunger for something such as this and that I still harbor in the cavity of my heart. Something to possibly deal with the reality of the truth of my desires. I am not the first ensurient woman to be perplexed about the navigation of self and carnal desire. Maybe you can understand. I feel so light and airy despite the cloud hanging above me slightly this morning. I hope we can see each other again at some point. A mere caress, I can bargain. Without Mr. Jordan’s awareness, thank you! I hope to see you. You know where to find me.

Sincerely,

Ines B. "

FIN.

Hello lovely readers,

This is my first time publicly sharing small short stories! Especially those written off the cuff. I hope that some of you could enjoy something new from me as well as experimental as I don’t write NSFW related works all the time or to share with others. Tell me what you think in earnest. Thank you for reading. It means the world. To write to you all again soon <3

-

SF.

It is the first of November. The sun bares bright and the air is crisp like the flesh of an Autumn apple. I am in SD hours after the party has ended. The headspace I am in at the moment is liminal. I am sitting in twilight at 5pm. The crowning of powdered stars at dawn. I am writing for the first time in what feels like centuries. How time escapes between the grasps of fingers. Perhaps its the arrival of uninterrupted quiet. No distractions to cling unto me. I went to the theatre to watch Frankenstein on my birthday. I had eaten high sodium, plain, movie theatre nachos that were more underwhelming than I remembered them. I acquired a “medium” soft drink that could have quenched the thirst of two individuals. I sobbed many times through the film. I filled the theatre pews with my brown napkins soaked in lined tears and sniffles. Frankenstein’s perpetual ache for humanity had touched me. How we all long for comfort and undeniable acceptance. “Oh, Frankie!” I cried to myself. “We are all so wretched.” How do we undo the horrors we enact unto others as well as digest ourselves? Sitting in my seat, leather from the seat peeling beneath me, I thought of James Baldwin. How Frankenstein, much later in his life, would have loved Baldwin’s quote,

“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on earth as though I had a right to be here.”

The door to freedom in our own chambers opens once we all come to realize this, I believe. November I pray is quiet and forgiving. Madness slips into our lives violently but there are bound to be breaks of relief. Like complete silence on the day of the first snowfall. How I pray for that.

writing letters to kill morning dread. radiant heat bouncing off fake grass on elaborate lawns. unreliable premonitions. desire on the corner of new world. freedom in my natural coils. grey mondays before sweltering heat. military occupation in the city of the beloved. red cards in back pockets. gestapo in my backyard. nightly meditations to settle the blows to my nervous system. the cleaners from venus. reckoning with summer’s past on lifeless dirt roads. 30-minute walks to overpriced, dead thrift stores. saccharine kpop nostalgia. grown out eyebrows. cravings for hojicha and Alice Walker novels. granola crumbs in ragged handbags. living as means of resistance. battle of whether to dream despite enveloping decay or to release them from my grasp. learning to organize properly. buff, strong arms of a woman to cradle her lover’s head. lost in the nightclub on a wednesday night. curating a vibe for an autumn that may never arrive. wrestling with my reflection while on the clock. only a shadow.

What I’m listening to:

What I’m reading:

• Princess Jellyfish Volume 6 - Higashimura Akiko

• You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays - Zora Neale Hurston

Thank you lovely reader, for reading today’s post. June felt incredibly overwhelming and unrelenting. Not that July is any different but the ennui at the beginning of summer versus now has changed. It has become a crafty, bitter, resistant, although hopeful summer. I can taste the acridness of the disparities that affect us all over the globe. I have found that it is worth keeping my dreams in this exhausting moment. To arrive to all occasions with my desire in hand. I am going to continue to nurture the nascent beginnings of an imaginary world that may not become so imaginary in my lifetime. Be safe <3

It has been a while that I have written on this blog. Some months have passed by and I have found it hard to return as writer not reader. We are in the thick of summer here in California. Dewy mornings that caress supple skin grow into restless heat. The midday sun can be unbearable. A modicum of AC, a passing breeze, feels like god. Although it is nearly the end of June, soon blending in to July, I have found the true meaning of this summer for me. In the minute crevices of the sunlit hours, in between the quiet pauses of the day, I am finding that the only way to get through is to let go. To rid yourself of the notion that you must be the one to hold onto everything, to what once was. To relinquish expectations.

I am attmepting to let the old me slip through my grasp. I am allowing her to dissolve so that a newly forming woman can develop, start anew. For so long, I have made myself a sort of definitive person. I made up my mind on an array of things about myself and others but now I am interrogating on why. What is the point? Obviosuly, it is a matter of control. My ability to hold onto all that I am, all that I know. For better or worse. I do not need to live in such a way, though. It atrophies the experience of life. As someone who does not like to be confined, I have put myself into a box, unknowingly. I am unearthing all the expectations on myself and others. I am disposing of them, throwing them into the minefield that will dissolve them in my mind. It is a hard practice. I am easy to feel disappointed at short comings and inabilities. I am trying to not expect so much from anyone. Not in a pessimistic-everyone dissapoints me- kind of way but in a way that allows the people I know to exist naturally, to not be wanting so much from them, and in turn myself. Life is ghastly at the moment for us, so should we expect the world of each other?

While I am writing this, I am preparing to go back to being natural for quite some time. Meaning no braids. Like many black girls, the relationship I have with my hair is strenuousand complicated. Braids have become a too reliable safety net. But no more! This naturalization of myself is to allow freedom to come into play with this relationship I have with my hair. It’s to acheive a neutrality that I cannot reach with perfectly prim braids all the time. It is to form radical acceptance of who I am without accessory. This is an exercise for me but with one exception; a blowout here and there when I am faced with listlessness about my hair. I am excited yet also relieved that I have arrived at this point.

This past month, I’ve been spending the quiet mornings of my summer waking up with my heart gliding down into the acidic bath of my gut. A feeling of immense doom. I drink my morning coffee while watching the morning round-up news. I feel sick, angry, and depleated most times. I talk to A or L or K about the deportations in our communities, how the future seems unlivable, the wars, and you can almost see the drainage of our hope at times hovering above our heads like mist. As horrible as everything is, I can never let myself sink into the oblivion of nihilism. It is too easy nor does it insitigate change or action. I need to have a radical belief in this country, in this world, rooted in immense love, to keep moving forward. I must do it scared, confused, and angry. We all must. Change is imminent. So while the world as we know it is collapsing, our administration obviously being perfidious, I still look forward to a tomorrow.

I’ve been praying more since the middle of spring. At first it was the usual kind of prayer one does when in need of luck or a favor. It’s always desperate, the pleading is exacerbated. It slowly became a source of solace, meditation. I do the Holy Triangle these days; the son, the father, and the Holy Spirit. When I was a little girl, my father would do this to me as I was tucked into bed. He’d light incense, play christian lullabies, then do the Holy Triangle followed by a blessed kiss on the forehead. It was a sacred ritual in which I adored, always looked forward to. Now as an adult, I yearn for the ritualistic nature of religion. So I pray, meditate, try to have one sided conversations with whatever god is listening. Sometimes I feel that they are and I smile.

Thank you my lovely readers for reading tonight’s post. I hope to come back to you soon with more notes from my contemplations, more conversations. Please stay safe <3

What I’ve Read This Month:

• The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion

• The Lover - Margeurite Duras

• I’m glad My Mom Died - Jennette Mccurdy

• Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan

Now Reading:

• After Dark - Haruki Murakami

What I’m Listening To:

It is nearly may now and every morning I have woken up to grey clouds rolling in capriciously. As if they are water rolling on a bare back, easy. I am in the middle of spring, sitting in its palm like an egg. I lay on fresh cut grass on my days off across from the library. I smile at the same faces that I see on the way to the grocery store, to the library, to the corner gas station with the same man who checks out my soda, coffee, snacks. I always think about how he has seen me high, tired, depresssed, happy, etc.

I read A Room Of One’s Own by Virgina Woolf earlier this month. I had gone through it quite fast but I had digested every truth she had written in every page. Even though what she had discussed was for the women of the early 20th century, I believe it is still incredibly relevant now. Not in terms of literature and writing but in the general sense of what women can do now. The social ennui for women now is quite stagnant. We are at a standstill. With every head that turns, every mouth that dares to unravel a string of rebellion, our rights shrink into smaller and smaller seeds that are being squashed by dangerous people. Many may think it best to enmesh with the walls closing in on us all and wait for it all to pass but it will not. Now is the time to take up space, de-prioritize men, be experimental, loud, ugly, and free! I feel it best that instead of becoming smaller we allow ourselves to become untethered to expectations that we are suffocated by. Feminism has been maneuvered into something, perhaps a notion, that is extremely toothless. It has been reduced to girlbossisms or illusions of choice. Our lives have been free flowing waterfalls because of this. We have been metamorphasizing into consumer beings rather than conscious ones. We must be more radical. We are on our backs aching for it. My girlfriends and I are at ages where the question of marriage and children are brought to us sporadically through the lips of our elders. No one really knows what to say when my answers are coy and are not straight to the point. My answers jump through berry bushes into clean shaven lawns, eventually onto busy street traffic and run over by a suburban SUV. I don’t know and I don’t care.

As I have examined all of spring, rather ruminating on this chapter of my life, I am a woman so completely untethered to everything I am supposed to want. I am not living my life to aim for marriage or children. I am in a relationship but I have the freedom to leave it if I feel compelled to. I am an unbounded sea of possibilities. There have been moments where I am so consumed in my own neuroses that I forget I can/will opt out. I am building a life only for me. One that can be shared with whomever I see fit. I am consciously, spiritually, physically, unconfined.

I am in my solitude which is a gift I often take for granted at times. I have all the time right now to enjoy being a flaneuse. To write poetry while basking in the sun or rain filled clouds, to cook an ordinary dinner while wine drunk, to pack up and wander somewhere new for awhile, to challenge myself further, to live radically and earnestly, to give my life for something much greater than I. The power for me, for other women, is in the now. Let us re-orbit around one another, genuinely and unabashedly.

Are you too ready to be unchained?

The Ones With the Most Desire

When the world laps you up like a dog.

Saliva dripping down your face like blood—

one wonders if this were fate?

Ashes fall over this plate of scrambled eggs

The weather has run amuck.

It attacks the poor body, tired and confused.

Spring awaits but nothing is fruitful.

No fruit to bear, nothing new to tend to

the wound of limitless hardship.

One sits at the dinner table,

meal of crackers and cheese,

and ponders if this is it.

Is the tumultous journey of life

to be starving for what once was?

To gather the crumbs of a past life?

It used to be a blood orange sky,

jovial pitter patters on the rainy cement,

licking cream off the navel,

and a lamb slab on the table with wine pouring into waterfalls.

When one is hungry,

there is nothing to reveal.

No curiosity to be found in a waning body.

Shall we be forever famished?

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It is 70 degrees in February

Sweat beads barely form on my temple

Flowers have barely bloomed

Bleached t-shirts hang in the California sun

I nod my head to the bounce of the bird’s song

The modicum of shade blankets me

I know that the lemon tree will droop soon

like a pregnant belly

Spring is here

It is late winter now. Spring is soon to make an entrance and I await it rather with equanimity. In the fall and winter, it is routine for me to settle down into the earth and reflect upon myself. I look inwards to such a severe degree, to recover or examine all that I am in the current season. As the season transitions, I have re-examined what it means to self-reflect and on whether it inhibits me, us, from being all that we are.

A few years ago, swaddled in the bubble of lockdown, I was becoming more and more self-reflective. I journaled every day to gain more understanding of myself. Of my patterns, flaws, peculiar insights. I was my own therapist at a time when I was anxious to have one. In being my own therapist, I approached my own being with judgement and potential. With each entry, I became cognizant of my own cyclical patterns. I had started to understand why I had felt that my own internal garden was withering at certain times of the year and how I had enacted these feelings onto the people around me. But at some point, these reflections and my own understanding of these reflections came to superficial solutions. I had done so much ruminating that the only thing that had come out of it was inaction. Yes, I had come to realize that it was not okay to disappear on the people in my life when I had started to feel like a shell of a person. I knew that my wounds from childhood had permeated every part of my being, making relationships of any kind very difficult at times. I knew that I had to change and grow at some point but these realizations did not cure such ailments.

I feel that in this time, from age 19-21, being so introspective had done the opposite of what everyone would assume it would do for a person. Quite frankly, looking back from out of this haze of intense scrutiny, I was judgemental, envious, and riddled with schadenfreude. The flaws I had come to see in myself, I had seen in others and that had irritated me greatly. I was annoyed with people who I deemed incapable of self-reflecting. If I could do the work, why couldn’t they? If I could sit in my room nightly, putting pen to paper, my self critiques, goals, and raw feelings, why couldn’t the next person? All of these irritations reflected the dullness of optimizing ones introspection. I had believed I was infinitely so much better than the next person for not commiting a mistake. For not behaving humanly on the outside. My public face was neatly composed, mature beyond years, and ever metamorphasizing into a greater being connected to the universe. It was an allusion to myself that I had stopped believing when I turned 22. I was envious of people who kept themselves neatly in a proper package. Who, seemingly, had things easier than I did. Who could make grave mistakes and move on. I didn’t know then, that I had admired their unabashed humanness.

One cannot make these self observations by abandoning their humanity. It is good to understand your flaws, patterns, desires but to critique them to such a scorching degree does not make many feel they can be proactive. It leads to a river of loathing that can be hard to stop. Life is about the endless creeks of mistakes, the abandonment of the self and others, blooming again and again. It is a continous journey of getting to know oneself alongside the past versions. It does us no good to criticize until insanity, leaving us so immobile we cannot forge forgiveness. It is much harder for us to forgive ourselves for our own transgressions.

These days, I allow myself to be. The mind is never quiet but there are moments when it almost is. I have realized that I am not an immortal being and one day my demise will come. It would have been a shame to spend my younger years so consumed with appearing perfect. I can be bad, make mistakes, be selfish, change, and grow. I can be a multitude of things that can perhaps not make sense. As long as it does not deter me from doing good in the world. It is freeing, to allow myself to be so human.

The lull of winter is tantamount to the transitional period that arrives throughout life. This lull, drags for so long. It bends around you like a river, flows into the abyss until one day you’ve awakened, and spring has come to greet you. Living can start to feel banal. The coffee starts to taste much more bitter than usual. The air stale, uninviting, but then there are days that are tremendously surprising. The morning workout is satisfying, the coffee tastes sweeter, and your nostrils are overtaken by the smell of morning dew. Days like this, I have learned, are to be held onto.

A few weeks ago, I had watched the film “Perfect Days” (2023) by Wim Wenders. The film follows Hirayama. He’s a toilet cleaner in Tokyo and is content with how his current life is. Throughout the film, you bear witness to his mindfulness, his ability to remain present in his day to day life. He captures the sway of the trees on his film camera, listens to Lou Reed and Patti Smith on his morning drives to work, visits the same bookstore and restaurants, and goes to bed the same way most nights; reading a novel.

Once the credits had rolled, the screen returning to its familair darkness, I had found myself utterly touched and very, very moved. Hirayama was not living a perfect life but he was making the most out of it. He knew he was an active participant in his life and worked to make every day something, if anything, gratifying. The film highlighted the minutae of Hirayama’s every day life. In certain scenes, it was touching, sad, and comical.

An interviewer on youtube, Tom Power, had interviewed Koji Yakusho who plays the titular character, on his process and thoughts about the reception of the film. Tom highlighted how upon leaving the theater, he observed his environment differently. He took in the trees around him in a much more present manner. I, too, felt an appreciation for the minutae of my daily life. After watching “Perfect Days” I felt moved to an incredible degree to find the pit of contentedness in my life. To cultivate such a state of being with pure intentions.

A few days after watching the film, I took a long walk to a park in my neighborhood. I had Frank Zappa playing in my headphones but I could still hear the whir of cars driving past me. I had walked through neighborhoods I hadn’t been through before. I admired their mid century build and style. I remember pausing in front of this maple-colored home with its gorgeous, lush, green lawn. Three toddlers ran across it while a woman cradling a smaller child watched over them. I swooned, my heart had melted. I continued with my walk, looking up at the sky every now and then, being greeted by wispy clouds. At the end of my walk I had made it to the park where I sat on a tree stump, taking in everything around me. There was an elderly asian woman using the exercise machines across from the large tufts of grass. She had smiled to herself upon her completion of exercising. A man had laid before me, asleep, snoring into the air. A school of dogs were being walked. Many of them trying to liberate themselves of their leashes. A woman had come up to me to ask for a lighter and for some reason, I felt sorry I didn’t carry one on me. I wrote a poem in my commonplace book. I left the park feeling my internal cup close to overflowing. I was content with my morning.

Over the years I have worked to cherish the unseen joys. I find that through tumultous periods of my life, I grasp onto these moments as a child does to a toy. The way the sun’s light casts though my window, watching people walk across the courtyard, reading with my morning coffee, brings me such a delight. I feel as though I am a real person when I embrace the smaller details. The unseen shadows of an ordinary life are what I yearn to always discover.

At the end of last year, I was sick with the flu, laying in my bed feeling incredibly defeated. New years day had arrived with no noise, no real cause for celebration. A sense of dread had come over me like a tsunami. I had my head above water but I was close to being fully submerged. I had texted my friend L, as a way of using her as my life raft. She had told me maybe I was feeling this way because of my illness. She wasn’t wrong but there was much more brewing underneath. It was the dread for the year to come, the dread of having to survive instead of getting to live, it was an amalgmation of monstrous worries.

The world is ending. It is going out in a ball of flames and we are all holding onto something in preparation. The world is also beginning again, becoming anew. What will die will soon be rebirthed into an unrecognizable beauty. As winter persists, I am holding onto the every day, the small joys and the small wins for myself and for everyone else. Everyday is truly all there is.

Hello, my lovely readers! I wanted to leave a personal note thanking all of you for 100 readers here!!! I have never thought that I could grow to have more than 5 readers here. I am sincerely grateful that my writing has connected with this many people <3. I hope that my writing can continue to touch you all in any kind of way. Thank you so much !! :)

Also, as my beloved los angeles is facing horrific climate disasters, I wanted to leave resources that could possibly help anyone affected or for those who are able to donate and share.

LA wildfire mutual aid:

Baby2Baby Relief Funds

CA Wildfire Relief Funds

Malan Fire resources

Support an Altadena Family

thin, grey trees withering before me

frost bitten skies embracing the sun mid afternoon

monotony cut through by indica, embers still floating through the midnight sky

trepidation of mid winter sitting in the gut, fermenting

self control at the holiday house party

near breakup at the park

hungover, angry, appearing calm

all i wanted was to make love — back of a car like rapacious animals

crying on his lap on the cold silver bleachers, a

man vomiting near by

john doe hit by our train, wave of confusion and exasperation overtaking the lanes

sex on the sofa—quick and enjoyable

frantically spraying the room after

james baldwin’s words wounding me

chaka khan while i do laundry—-she seduces me as my underwear sits in a pile

contemplating the end of humanity while the pacific coast blurs by me

how i ached for it all to be over amongst the winter breath

the dread of january approaching like a sore throat

i think about love at the end of the world

does it make one more earnest ?

i try to believe so in hopes it will save me

my desires hold such gravity in the winter time

and the lull of january splits me in half

time still decides to move on

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The sound of winter’s exhale is one I have been awaiting for quite some time. Much like autumn, its first breath was quiet and passive. Winter is a full steam ahead, grasping me in its arms, tying me down like an incubus. I have been trying to find the eroticism of the mundane. Glances of pleasure and flirtatiousness in the day. With the brisk, grey days, I find that a new found sense of eroticism is nascent in my mind. I suppose it is winter’s prudish and serious essence. One thinks of winter and what comes to mind is the irresistible urge to nest, provide comfort, and to be comforted. One feels the dreary melancholia crash into the body like a virile tsunami. This winter, sensuality is in the air. The quiet observation, the sap lying between two legs, is honey to me. There is arousal on the edge every day.

A month ago, after a long day of work, I laid listless in bed. I put on Anatomie de L’enfer (2004) and had awakened a dormant channel within myself. If you have not watched the film, it is about a woman who pays a gay man to observe her body for a few nights. I had read the reviews for a minute in the middle of the film and had been surprised it was rated so low. Some reviewers thought it detestable, pretentious, and gratuitous. After the film was over and the credits rolled, I found that I didn’t mind the film. I find that some American audiences are too puritanical when it comes to movies about the body. About sex. I think audiences are like that now even more so than in 2004. There were scenes where I found it uncomfortable to watch. And there were scenes I found compelling, arousing even. The woman had bared herself to the man without much shame. Much like the man, the audience was also the voyeur. The man and I watched her piss, come, and bleed onto her hands and onto the white sheets. We were exposed to the full display of her genitals, every bit of her without being able to look away. I was intrigued rather than disgusted. We got to spend such intimate moments with her but in the end knew nothing of her. She was merely a figure to explore human desires upon. She was an art installation much like Marina Abramovic has been.

I too wanted to lay out and be observed. I have always wanted to see myself through the eyes of others, especially by my partner. I don’t know if it is born into a woman to desire being observed closely by a man. I want that sometimes, anyways. It is only human, I suppose, to have the desire to get to know yourself, be inside of oneself, through others. It is a desire I wish I could fulfill as easily as a degree. But I too want to observe others. Not in a perverted way but in the name of curiosity. Everyone is too perfect or trying to be. I want to open the curtains, unveil the ugly, the gross, the titillating. There’s an essay by Jessica Defino about the unsexy reality the beauty industry has created. She goes into the perfect sexless look people die to achieve which had me thinking about on the polar opposite side of the beauty-pilled arena, were people like me who loved hair, crooked teeth, big noses, fat, etcetera. There is beauty found in corners people do not dare to peek in anymore! There is another essay here on substack, by Catherine Shannon, which goes into detail on why we may not feel sexy either. She talks of the organic virility of life, how our phones take us out of our bodies, disregarding the carnal desires that are natural to our core. Our ailments about sex and desire, really, are salvageable. I, we, ought to be more comfortable living organically and accepting risk in our relationships. And leaving preconceived notions and unnecessary expectations out the door. I still try my very best to follow that but like anyone else I falter.

Having been moved out for about three months now, I feel the drastic changes that have occurred within my walls. I could only hope that the changes have been displayed on the outside. On my face, on my collarbones, my legs. I want to show everyone that a new woman has arrived. I have been extremely busy these days and have only now begun to digest all that has happened to me within the past few months. I have not faced rebirth in the same way I have this fall. I am getting to know who the woman in the mirror in front of me is, for once, with clarity. My mind was muddled with despair and stagnation back home. I could not paint a clear picture of who I really was. Yet, I still do not know who I really am but I am becoming more acceptable in my own eyes. I come home to, feed, amuse, and comfort myself. I am my own wife, my own husband. I am proud of myself, in a sense, that I have stayed alive to get to this point.

Now that winter is here, I am hunkering down to experiment with my writing. To be less risk averse like I am with other things. I am currently working on an essay about diaristic writing. I can only hope that I feel confident enough to publish it here without any qualms. There has been an anxious ball in the pit of my stomach when posting my writing lately. I think the lack of true connection and engagement has finally gotten to me. I love that I have a small group of readers but I crave the feedback. The good and bad commentary on my work. I’ve learned that becoming nonchalant online isn’t true to me. I do in fact care because I have so much to say. But in saying that, I accept that I cannot expect for everyone to flock over to me like packs of doves. Much like everything else it needs to be natural. I still believe that good things come to those who wait. So I shall hunker down and keep working while I wait.

Every once in a while, when the temptation nibbles at me, I peer intently into the mirror to analyze myself. I look at my eyes, glaze over my brown skin, my slim languid body, my long legs, and my stomach churns. Heat rises in my chest like a hot summer day in a swamp. I look just like you. I see your lips when I pucker mine. My oval face shape resembles yours. My mother looks at me, takes me in like a painting, and tells me 

“You really are a mini version of your daddy.” 

And I grow into a ball of fury, a ball of swallowed down pain. I abhor it, I detest it. I hate that I resemble you the most, am your spitting image, and not my mother. Not the parent who had worked the hardest to maintain my life. What did I do to deserve such a thing? What did you do to receive a daughter such as me? 

Words from the grapevine trickle down the stream, down into my village, into my ear to tell me that you cry for me day and night. You want to hear my voice again. To receive the gift of my companionship and care. Why do you ache and long for me when it was such an inconceivable thing for you when I was a little girl? Why did it take decades to open yourself up to being a father? Was it difficult to see a small version of you and to take care of her? To swathe her in the safety of parental love? It is inconceivable for myself, now, to imagine such love and affection from you. Your yearning this late in life does not move me. I swallow it like a bitter pill and it expands in my gut like a pit of lava. 

My life could have been different because of you. I could have been kinder, trusting, less secretive, whatever. I aim to dominate, not submit. I rebuke motherhood and marriage despite wanting to give myself away to it. I am drowning in my own hyper independence and I cannot get ahold of the life rafts the people I love throw over to me. I question men and their love and respect. I hate everything you would respect, obsess over (money, status, perfection). Would I be like this if you had the space to be a father?

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

 I have grieved, am grieving, and will continue to grieve what you could have been. What we could have been. Nights like tonight, I remember the brief moments we had together full of adoration and play. Like the day you took my sister and I to a zoo in the middle of amiserable miami summer's day. You fed me a spongebob popsicle and pointed out the different kinds of reptiles that were native to florida. I didn’t know then, my mother had begged you to go on an outing with us. To have quality time with children you helped bear. Yet, I still look back upon that day with a distant sense of nostalgia. I look at other young women with fathers, exceptional fathers, how well they’re cared for. How the love dribbles down from them and onto their kids like honey. Nights like this, I sit with the knowledge that I could never have it. Honey does not percolate onto me from your lips and it never really has. 

My mother, when she’s mad at me, says 

“You’re just like your dad!” 

and the same ball of fury rises up from my belly and into my throat. My throat grows hoarse from screaming and crying, the ugliness pours out of me like a dam. I feel like the beast unravels from within me and all I want to do is slowly disintegrate. I feel an intolerable itch to disappear. I have never wanted to be you but as I am your offspring, I cannot help it. I have your deep seeded anger, your avoidant nature, your despair, your materialistic eye. I look like you so it is not unsurprising that I can inherit some of who you are. It is an ugly and unbearable truth. I cannot even part my lips to boast about the positive traits that you do have. It's insignificant, irrelevant. All of your pain, unendurable trauma, has been born into me and it will take a lifetime to manage and expel. 

So, with the knowledge of your intent to rekindle a non-existent relationship, I am burning in anger. I have been burning for quite some time. So badly, that all I can do is curl into the fetal position with tears pouring out of me. I am so consumed in my indignation that I cannot move at times. I am paralyzed, then after, the clarity I wish to relieve me greets me. I have spent much of my adolescence wishing for your death. For you to keel over and leave us once and for all. I realize now that it is too easy an escape for you. I still cannot bring myself to talk about certain horrors you have inflicted upon me and the women in my life. You have slashed me, gutted me, over and over. You have had painful regrets in your old age and I know it eats at you. I hope it continues to eat your insides. I hope regret sits in your intestines and drains you like a parasite. I hope this longing for me dies because I will never return for you. It is a sad existence you live but it does not give me pleasure. This is all really sad and you could have changed the trajectory of our story. It is all really sad, gut wrenching, really. There is nothing more I can do.

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In between late autumn and early winter, in between the morning birds cannibalizing on their own calls, you oscillate between apathy and action. Some days you are in the middle, unmoved but willing to feel hopeful. Everything that was once overripe has now fallen to the earth and has exposed their cores. They’ve accepted that they will die and soon be cleansed, rebirthed, and become anew.

The transition between autumn and winter is never seamless. Your depression gains strength, nothing quite ever feels real anymore. You graze the wind while on a drive and you feel it blow through you. When did this start happening? You look at your bare hands and they no longer feel like yours. You feel as lachrymose as the withering leaves. Perhaps its the weather, the air is starting to bite. The time has changed and now precious daylight abandons us earlier, quicker.

The restlessness eats at your brain, laps it up like a dog. Saliva and all. It is a time, you think, that drastic changes must be made. Everyone is concerned about their “winter arc”, their “glow up” in time for the new year. A cyclical pursuit towards beauty standards. To be buffer, skinnier, sexier, etc. It is our job to reach maximum wellness and perfection. It’s amazing how the business and culture of self improvement has evolved. You want a sharp turn into change. A new hair color, move countries, commiting to anaism, trying shrooms, anything to feel this omnipresent aliveness that everyone supposedly feels doing these things. You want to crash until the sparks in your fragile body combusts. Is this the destined winter arc for you? To crash is to succumb into the abyss of avoidance, of pain. Crashing will not gaurantee some sort of metamorphasis. It might be an overwhelming darkness that consumes you, instead.

Curiosity killed the cat. Supposedly. You always wondered if it made her purr instead. You know, this feeling of not being real, will not be forever. One day you will awaken and feel that you have been here all along. The body will be cognizant of its existence. You are a real, live, woman. In the meantime, you can meditate on who you are. Really. What is it that makes your belly gurgle with amazement? What propels your heart into oblivion? What turns you on? Conceivably, this unhinged part of your life is nothing but a moment. A paragraph in a chapter. A moment of feeling so invisible, un-human, numb, can lead to an alchemy of epiphanies. For now, you’ll lead the winter season with curiosity, approach with radical optimism rather than apathy at your own existence, and maybe just dye your hair pink. As soon as you think your life is over, it isn’t.

Hello lovely readers!

Posting my writing online feels weird even foreign to me these days. I have been writing while not being active here but to post them for everyone to see is now something that makes me shy. It’s now that I must stop being shy and return with confidence!! I hope you enjoyed whatever this piece is today. I will leave you with a song.

Goodbye for now <3

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In late summer, I had been prepared to live the life I thought I ought to live. One with purpose, discipline, and routine. I was then harshly reminded that life does not set plans into stone. It curves, spills, bends over and around you like a snake. I spent the rest of summer in a puddle of my own tears, exhausted at the mere notion of trying. Trying to dare to live another day, trying to make my days bearable, trying to be happy. I moved an hour away at the end of August, cutting the umbilical cord to SD. I was free at last. All the years I had kneeled before my bed, in tears, praying for relief, were not in vain. My last week in SD was bittersweet, filled with dinners, cafe brunches, and promises of visits in the near future. I was utterly amazed at my composure. I did not cry once or feel heavily emotional. I was excited!

Now in the middle of September, I have been enshrouded in the throws of homesickness. After hard weeks of working, deadlines to be met, trainings, the rivers of tears poured out of me. After a miserable day, there was no familiar face to offer me much solace. On my commute home, I ached for the comfort of my mother. A feeling I hadn’t felt for a while. Suddenly, I felt truly alone. Like a lone cub in the woods, I feel I have to fend for myself without much community in sight. Community, I have always felt the most important thing in a being’s life. But no one is really that open about how hard it is to create one as an adult in a new city. Let alone how to maintain them in a way that is natural. When your life is now mostly consumed by work, school, and home, you do not feel as if there is more time to go about meeting new people. When going out now, I try to be more open, wear my heart on my sleeve. As hard as it has been to readjust to the new life I am making for myself, there are kind people showing me grace when I step outside my front door. 

September is over now and the days of October are soon to be filling over. Two weeks ago, writing in my diary, I wrote “It was foolish of me to believe that I would finally be getting what I want.” I was sitting on a ball of my own anger. I still lament my own foolishness. I am in a state of jadedness. The anger no longer sits in the gut of my belly but now has risen to my chest like heartburn. There is a bitterness I am wary of forming. But is this not what it means to be human? To believe that something good really can come? Even if it takes forever? To feel the depths of your depression and rage? Nothing perfect is ever going to be delivered to me, I realize now. I can try my hardest. I can use the might of 1,000 army men to grasp my dream but even then, it won't look as exemplary in my hand. Like water is what I need to be. Free form flowing into these complexities. Pain and heartbreak will not be forever. It glides over me after a while. Maybe it’s because I am becoming senseless or… I have truly accepted what is.  Time will tell. 

As I’ve been sitting on the stump of melancholy, I have wanted to burrow into the slowness of autumn. To take my mornings slow. Read, read, read. Absorb the cool air that brushes against my face upon sunset. I have been mindful to do this on the days I need to be grounded. I wake up a bit early, make a hojicha or coffee in a french press, and I read or report to my diary on my early morning thoughts. I settle into routine when uncertainty looms over me. I have made it a point to keep it loose, open to insertions of seeing a friend or goingon an excursion after work. What I need now is willingness on my part to find meaning in the most mundane days again. To let go of the anxiety that eats at my core. To run against the crippling dread and worry on the brisk evenings. To do anything but succumb to the debilitating depression that hangs over me. 

This fall is much different than the last. I am in a new environment, a new home, and a new job. Nothing seems to be predictable at the moment. It all seems uncertain. In some aspects, I feel like a teenager again. Perhaps, it's all the life changes that have hit me. In other ways, I feel more like an adult. I have more responsibilities and I have recently become an aunt/godmother. I guess this is life at 22 almost 23.. I hope by the end of fall, life feels more clear than a hazy dream. 

Music I’ve Been Listening To:

As always, thank you for reading my writing. From looking at my stats, I see that I have 74 readers?? I could not have imagained having more than 10 readers on substack so seeing this many feels the most special to me. 74 can seem so small as a number but imagining 74 people in front of me is not real. So I thank you. I cherish you, my dear reader.

P.S. I am going back to being called by my birth name Sade. Just wanted to keep you guys in the loop if you missed my note :)

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S.

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