the next great american dyke novel: a zine
afterMeditationsinanEmergency i haven’t written anything in three months so i take 60 mg of Adderall XR & watch the sun rise. i want to be awake & on the verge of greatness. i want to write the worst poem in the world. last week, to a friend, i drunkenly confessed to her that i want to write the next great American novel. but i have never written a page of a novel. or a paragraph. what i mean to say is that i am supposed to be palpable. what i mean to say is that i am not happy. what i mean to say is that i have $30 in my bank account & am ready to drive to Philadelphia. i lack self-awareness. i am 25 years old. i have never been good at the tortured poet thing. i tell coworkers some of my darkest secrets & they say the word, “sorry.” i am not sorry. one time, or many times, i’ve had less than $2 in my bank account, so i have driven to taco bell to buy a spicy potato soft taco. it’s been my first meal of the day at 8 pm. i want to write the next great American novel. unfortunately, i am friends with madness. reasonably, i have dropped out college four times. one thing that college taught me is that pity should last longer. if it did i would make better use of it.
what’s that one line out of that one poem that’s like, “i wake up & it breaks my heart.” that is silly. it is true. i up & it breaks my heart. i wake up & it breaks my stupid little heart.
i think i killed my plant by not watering it. well, it is not dead yet. some of its limbs droop and hang like saggy skin and some of its leaves are yellow (but not all). they are not a happy yellow or a soothing yellow like my favorite color because they are still tinted with dark green. it is simply a color that is a reminder of its proximity to death. my plant is telling me, “help, i am alive, but i need you.” still, they are not dead, they are not black yet, they are not crumbled like paper. yet. so, what is the opposite of blooming, then, if it is not death?
i think i could save it if i tried. like if i watered it more and gave it a nice pot and talked to it like all those scientific journals say to do if i cared enough for it to bloom if its color changing from grey-yellow, to yellow, to light green, to a bright, deep green could offer some sort of deep satisfaction, some sort of reminder that re-birth is possible, that life can exist in the ugliest of colors. maybe the lack of blooming is not death. maybe it is something else entirely, something that i do not comprehend, but i am learning
i think i would have thrown the plant away entirely last year by considering its lack of blooming as death. i think i would have not
thought to understand what it means to start over and what it means to ask for help, and to offer it. i think this because i experienced tiny little deaths over and over at the hands of someone who asked for sacrifice but only offered pesticide disguised as soil in return. pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck until there is nothing left but yellow leaves. pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck until there is only something left that is unrecognizable. violence. something to be discarded. i thought i was meant to be discarded. too many yellow leaves if there were any left at all. violence. but i am not a plant. i am just a 22year-old girl (woman?) inconveniencing their neighbors by anxiously smoking a cigarette on their patio while drenched in sweat because their living room has too many memories of past arguments that happened there last year, on their couch, drenched in sweat, but not due to the yellow warmth of sunlight. what is the opposite of blooming, then, if it is not death? i have not experienced epiphany or catharsis while writing this and my hands shake. but i think the opposite of blooming simply means that there is opportunity for growth, because death is not imminent. the yellow dying leaves are simply a form of survival.
GoodWillHunting
if i were a poet i would write about how my dad started a garden only after his grandmother died to remind himself that life exists outside of life that is lost & i would write about how 3 p.m. is the loneliest hour & about the time i openly sobbed in the middle of a taco casa & the emptiness that refuses to leave my body no matter how many pills i take or many people i fuck & the affinity i have for dying things so i don’t water my plants & the nausea i feel every time i read anything i have ever written & how i doubt every person who tells me they love me & my scars and how i got them & the reoccurring dream i have of dying in an open field while grass grows over me & how i talk to the moon but she never listens & how words lose meaning after you write them & the letters i never sent you & the letters i did send you & my biggest desires and how they are impossible.
1. i hear a woman’s wail coming from the trees outside of my apartment and i don’t know if it is mine or my mother’s or my grandmother’s.
2. i have dreams in which i am wearing a white dress while splitting you open into two.
3. your biggest fears are named after your firstborn daughter.
4. when i become a ghost i will live in the blood of a hunted rabbit.
5. the body remembers and counts the days.
6. mold my skin into something pure and good.
7. carry the weight, but don’t sink.
8. to be holy is to be broken but forgiven.
9. i pray to a god who has been desecrated. i get to choose.
ontoxicshame
i am twenty-five years old which means my brain is fully developed which means i can do things like smoke a pack of cigarettes daily fully well understanding the repercussions of my actions. i can do things like get hot cheetos at 2 am to get away from a fight that i had with my girlfriend and skin my knee because i tripped on a rock in a Kroger parking lot.
i can do a lot of bad things i can lie, i can say i love you, i can lie again. i can do a lot of good things i can lie, i can say i love you, i can lie again. i was once twenty-one and my morning affirmations were, “i am honest, i am good, i am kind.” well, i am none of these things, four years later, and what is guilt and shame besides a form of self-preservation? even the moon needs rest from guiding the sea & i am not even a moon, or a god, or fuck you.
i can do a lot of good things i can steal, i can say fuck you, i can steal again. i can do a lot of bad things i can steal, i can say fuck you, i can steal again.
i was once seventeen and paid big money to see a therapist that made me write my biggest trauma on a piece of paper because i could not say it out loud. she read it. she cried. every weekly session from then on was about toxic shame. look, i know what it means and i know how it is and i know what it looks like.
i know of the speech and of the boundaries and of the weekly meditations and i know of mindfulness.
but i was once small. i was once small.
Alejandra Pena (they/she/he) is a lesbian, Mexican American poet & four-time college dropout of the University of North Texas. they love their pug Kiwi & taking blurry pics of the moon. follow them on twitter: @crustpunked
