recollect

we were on the roof overlooking 2nd street while the wind was carefully caressing our backs. after hours of words that were meant to be lyrics and drinks that should have never started, we just smiled silently. that was always when i knew to pull back. once the laughing would stop and the gazing began, i'd guard up. that very moment was the last time you would ask.
could we truthfully start this? could we invest in longevity and publicize our writing's muse? could we wake to each other and know our goodbyes would be shorter? could we start being vulnerable and make a life out of this piano's chords?
the answer was always no.
two self destructive creatures could never last long enough to not burn down the city. i didn't fear our differences but knew too well our similarities. our taste for darkness was too elegant; our love of selves was too demanding.
"i just thought that you should know, it's never one thing at all."
and in moments where i would unfailingly turn back to you, i have since then refused.
you always said to trust your gut.

unnecessary invitation

let us speak truth through the movement of our bodies,
for we can no longer claim to be victims of what we ourselves manifest.
allow the space between us to evaporate, as your body's temperature ceases to rest.
oh what gorgeous creatures we have hidden within;
away from those who claimed to have conquered our sins.

we merely surrender to each other, each with a ritual of our own.
i surrender my words and the sound of my voice;
you surrender your strength and the width of your shoulders.
oh what gorgeous creatures we have hidden away,
what careless things have led us astray.

take my hand in the light of the moon, for only she can unite this pair.
allow my body to cover your reflection, so you don't give us away in the light of day.
recite your days through the motion of rotation; arriving again where we left off yesterday.

oh what creatures of adventure you and i; too faithful, but in the shade of grey.
we lose ourselves in this nocturnal act, but speak of nothing in the time of day.
so keep my hand, sweet sinner, locked inside your thoughts.
and forgive me for all the trouble, yesterday has caused.

and unlike the times before,

from yesterday comes tomorrow
yesterday to tomorrow

promises

when night arrives,

i promise to love you.

as soon as the stars come out,

i promise you my lips.

when the sun falls, i assure you,

you have my heart.

it is only within these short hours however; 

for during the day i fear the fragile state of my emotions, 

in the arms of someone else. 

we are in an eternal cycle of lessons missed and lessons learned. the words so easily remain the same and one would never know the difference. there's a vicious pattern of self destruction that masks itself in daily routines, thoughts, and emotions. yet, it's after destruction that certain beauty presents itself. we either break the cycle, or we embrace our mess and the beauty already within. 

original poem

october 10, 2012

cuando la noche llegue

es cuando prometo amarte

en cuanto las estrellas salgan

te garantizo mis labios

cuando el sol caiga

te aseguro mi corazón

pero solo por esas cuantas horas

porque es durante el dia que temo la fragilidad de mis emociones

en las manos de alguien más. 

alone

i'm at a bus stop a mile into my run with tears rolling down my face. the humidity makes it especially dramatic and disgusting and the plethora of cars speeding by add a sense of shame, almost; i cannot possibly be the strangest thing they see on their commute today.

i sit with my head down, looking at my running shoes as i type on my phone. there's an older man pacing behind me exhaling his cigarette smoke in just the perfect direction for the wind to blow it my way. my cloudy thoughts find his smoke and marinate themselves in a haze of choking reality. 

how did I get here? 

running was my salvation. the thing that allowed me to want to get up, want to move and conquer. the distance always itching to go longer and longer. yet i sit on this bus stop a mile away from home with no idea why i cannot go further. 

before embarking on this heart rate training, i could count on one hand the amount of times i had ever set out for a solo run. i either had a training group run on the weekends or a weekday practice. the group mentality always made me show up, and the rest just kind of took care of itself.
yet here i am, alone on a cement bench with no desire to keep going another step. every possible dark and twisted thought filling my head and multiplying enough times to give me a headache.

i miss the joy and cleansing from long runs with friends. i miss the mindless morning drives to wherever to run towards a sunrise and away from the norm. yet i am stubbornly tied into seeing this through the end and reaping its results. so until then, i'll sit here alone fighting between my deep desire towards where i want to go, and the smoky maze that's the path to get there.

long runs with these three drain the negativity and fill my heart with love

myself, jim, and angie on one of my absolute favorite days. 

eve(s) has dropped

it was by his side that i lay, in a fetal position, with my chest burning. i could hear the screaming so clearly and the faint crying even clearer. i could feel the pounding of the walls inside of me as though my very insides were being shaken.
i begged for him to call someone, to go downstairs and do something. i whimpered as my memory took me back to being twelve and everything spinning around me. i vividly remembered the shaking ground, the burning legs and shattered glass. i remembered the bruises on the neck and scars on the legs. but he said it was none of my business, that i couldn't know for sure.
please, i said. we can help.
i got dressed and ran outside barefoot, the cold concrete an immediate relief to my burning body. i ran downstairs but halted immediately at their door. standing there with no real plan, no ideas, just emotions. i peered through their kitchen window, tears dried-on by the breeze. their dark living room offered but a meager insight into the truth within their walls. i could barely see her left leg as she lay across the hallway, motionless.
the crying got increasingly faint as she fell asleep in the hallway and i stood there, watching like some twisted guardian of her safety.
i watched the sunrise off of sawtelle and slowly walked back up to our unit, as if sunlight itself would protect her from harm. though fully knowing that sometimes those scars never truly heal.

white space

for each day and each thought, with all that they brought

would just calmly linger. 

so much that i felt, unbeknownst to anyone else,

the very moon was my only trigger. 

and blank pages would sit, untouched and unlit

for hours and hours on end.

stared at, they burned; to fill them i yearned.

but wordless pages you cannot amend.

so quoted i remained, from new words i refrained

for fear of being misread

although i know well, that the stories i tell

leave me entirely once out of my head. 

so reality or not, or loosely made up

i stand by every word

regardless of interpreted text, of this boisterous mess

make of it whatever you choose. 

migrating memories

There are roses on the coffee table, right next to the empty bottle of wine. The entire room is motionless while it gets progressively darker and the sound of outside life eats away at me slowly. There has been a nagging tug that has taken shape in words and colors and scents; no clear melody or rhythm to it. 

It's probably the weather, maybe even the lower dosage of stimulants. 
Or it could be the bull. The bull who will begin to migrate in the days to come. 

The bull with his furious passion and aggressive lips that taste of whiskey. 
The same bull that led me up a twenty-story building and pushed me off. The one who charged full force onto another chase while I still lay half naked on cold concrete. The bull who smells like a sweet summer night when laying next to you. 

The past is always romanticized; more often than not, reminisced. 
There were plenty of intoxicated nights to last a lifetime and plenty of half remembered words that were spit in front of cabs and doorways. The city bridges were witness to too much and my heart to not enough. There will be a form of closure in this migration, though not certain for who. 

The rain will continue to pour and the sun will continue to kiss my skin.
Nothing and all will be remembered because nothing and all is still mine. 


Rest assured, the bull will still roam.
With me, or without me. 

shadow casting

I always had a hard time sleeping. I knew that at any given point one thing or another would interrupt any kind of real rest, real comfort. There was no security besides making sure that my feet were covered so that nothing would get to them. There was a night-light of some sort but I was torn between hating the dark and having them be able to see me while I slept. "Do I leave it on? Do I leave it on?" 
I slept next to the window because that's where my bed was and really I never considered moving it. I would listen to the house wind down and the doors close, then the silence. Then there would be waiting for the seconds to pass. The minutes, then the hours. The window tapping was probably the worst, except for the one time I forgot about  my feet and I could very certainly swear they had been touched. 
If I could guarantee my parents had fallen asleep I would make a run for the TV room. I'd bring a blanket to cover my feet and turn the TV on without the volume. Infomercials to fill my tiny little brain. Where do all the bad things go when the sun comes up? What box to they melt into and why is there nothing underneath my bed when I get my parents to look?
My grandmother said I needed to pray more, and so I did. 
I would have my own rosary and feverishly hold on to the beads so I never lost track. I would murmur all the Hail Mary's and Our Fathers under my breath in perfect Spanish. I would pray for everyone on this planet who had no one else to pray for them but I never prayed the bad things away. Why would I leave that out?

I don't remember praying for the glass to stop breaking or for the bruises to cease. The mind of a child is molded by a plethora of things and people and events and moments. I can see where every bruise used to be and though it doesn't burn anymore, I know exactly where it used to. 

"pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death"

I can feel the shards of glass and sometimes I feel like there's something at the window. The screaming manifests itself in neighbors and strangers but there's no longer a night-light in my bedroom. 

There's this intense beauty in shadows; though you need light to cast them. 

 "Hail Mary, full of grace

the Lord is with you."

forks

It was 1996 and I was nine years old; I had no idea what a fork lift was.

My mother was pregnant with my sister and in her third trimester. There were phone calls, some tears, more phone calls. I think it was night time but that could be my memory associating it with the darkness of it all. My dad hadn't been home for a few days but that was the nature of working as a semi truck driver. He wouldn't be coming home anytime soon, however.

No one really treats nine year olds like real human beings. They don't consider the possibility of them going through the same anxiety of not knowing what is going on. The fear of a child is very similar to that of an adult, maybe it even has a certain rawness to it. Perhaps there was a need to feel like they needed to protect me until they knew what was going on or how bad it really was. "They" by they way, is everyone else who appeared to know something about all these phone calls. "They" is all those people who told me "I'm sorry" and "Everything is ok".

I was left behind initially. My mother, in all her pregnant glory, rushed to the hospital while I waited at home with someone who apparently had no impact on my memory. I could have very well been left home alone since that too wasn't unusual in my growing up. When I was picked up, we didn't go to the hospital. My mother told me as little as possible. She said my dad had been hit from behind with a fork lift while he was unloading his truck. She still failed to tell me what a fork lift was so I created this image of a large fork coming after my dad and attacking him in the dark. I went to school like normal going through the day as though everything was fine.

I didn't get to see my dad until after he had surgery. I didn't know what anything meant but I heard doctors say he had two plastic disks inserted in his back. "He might not walk again, let alone drive." "The chances aren't great. He'll have to do a lot of physical therapy."

I had been going through a manic drawing phase to deal with no one talking to me directly. I wanted to draw something that would help my dad walk. I had piles of family pictures but I couldn't get my mom's pregnant figure right. And it always bothered me to draw my dad shorter than my mom. I spent hours with crayons and colored pencils until I finally finished. It was a portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She was everywhere in our home and I always thought that my dad looked like Juan Diego at her feet. I don't remember how much thought I had placed behind it but looking back, it was oddly significant.

The Virgin of Guadalupe is a Catholic icon of the Virgin Mary who my mother named me after. Her belt is interpreted as a sign of pregnancy and  she healed Juan Diego's uncle as a sign of who she was. I therefor wanted her to heal my father. She initially revealed herself to Juan Diego in early December and so it fit in nicely, I thought, just appear again and fix this.

The drawing was received well. There were tears, there were "thank you"s and "I love you"s. My dad came home, went through therapy and began a long painful road to recovery.

All of this was the beginning.

Since no one feels the need to fill me in on what is happening to my life I am left with attempting to figure things out on my own.

My mother had stopped working because she was late in her pregnancy. She had struggled to get pregnant ever since she had me so no risks were wanted. Our pantry at home began to shrink and meals all became incredibly repetitive. A few family friends would come over with grocery bags. Funny gifts, I thought. One day after school we went grocery shopping but we drove past our VONS. We drove a few streets over to a small store with a counter that you weren't allowed past. My mom had a list and she requested the items as someone from the back grabbed them. She asked me if I wanted cereal but they had none that I had ever heard of. I remember the cheese looked different and later found out it tasted quite odd. All of our food fit into two bags and when my mom paid, it wasn't with money.

I remember crying.
I cried at night and I cried alone. I know my mom cried too because I could hear her through the walls of our house. I cried for my unborn baby sister and I cried because I didn't know what was going on. I wanted a baby sister to love but I didn't see how you could have a child when you didn't have food.

Things can change overnight, for the worse or for the better.
Sometimes it's not always clear which one you're going through but it can slap you hard, with a fork lift. There are moments in life which you can point to and say they changed you and this was one of them. Once again, this was the beginning to a fork in the road. Everything from here on was a  choice, lefts or rights because we had had enough back; Backs hit with fork lifts, forks that haunted my dreams, forks that you used to eat with, forks in the road.

Here our story made a full circle.
Here, while my baby sister doesn't remember, we faced hunger, fear, a cold winter and what I remember as, Where three of us hardened our hearts to keep from letting it hurt anymore.

Related or not,
Here I stopped saying "I love you"

Somewhere between love and pain

a minor

[I can feel his fingers upon the keys. His touch takes me back, takes me away and elevates me. He caresses them, assures them they are each his. He looks up and dedicates every minor chord to me but I ask him to pick only two. The two that always remain on my skin and penetrate through my deepest fears. The two that only he can play just right. His hands - always with such beautiful timing.]

When we were young he would sit me on his bed and just play. He would play for hours and I would sit there, feeling. He never once asked why I was crying because he knew, he knew it was his chords, his hands, his touch. He had the music and I had the words. 
We wouldn't sleep. 
We wouldn't eat.
It was just love and music because when you're that young, that's all you need. You live off of scribbled pages and lost notes. You live freely and without time constraints but time still goes by just as quickly. So soon enough your stomach aches as mine did and I grew restless. I began to resent two of those black keys and asked that he never touch them again, to stop calling them by name even. I touched his bare shoulder and begged for him to turn around. I didn't want to sing anymore. I couldn't even bring a horn up to my lips without the taste of salt. 

"Perhaps we could just have a walking base line that we could fall asleep to tonight."

 But we didn't sleep for days and his eyes grew dark. His back still turned and those keys continued to mock me. My head was throbbing and the sound only grew louder and louder. He changed the time signature and made my heart skip a second. He played with the pedal and slapped my pain to the ground. It was never just the two of us. It was always the keys. It was always the love of vibrations. I was a simple bridge that provided all the necessary words to explain what those beautiful harmonies could do to your body. I always wondered what would happen when he ran out of notes, but it was the words that ran out first. For when I left through his window, I never again had anything to say about the beautiful boy and his black keys. Keys so dark they matched his hair and the darkness of his room. Keys so powerful that they possessed his deepest love. Keys so beautiful, that they never allowed him to truly see me. 

With intimate passion

you caressed each key

In ways I only dreamed

you'd ever touch me 

a beginning, of sorts

The first time I went on a writing binge was summer of 2000; I was twelve years old. I diagnosed myself with what at the time I thought was, "the worst heart break the world has ever known". (That title came straight from a poem written that summer) I spent every waking moment writing, rewriting, rereading and moping around. One late night I noticed a sort of wart-looking piece of skin on the left top part of my right middle finger. My first callus. My first broken-heart-induced callus. I would never be the same, and that callus would only get bigger.

As a child I often had phases of feeling alone. Not lonely, but alone in the things I knew, the things I believed, and the things I understood. I don't exactly remember when I started writing but I know that I always kept a journal of some sort. My mother always ended up coming across my journals so in hopes of finding privacy, I would write short poems on tiny pieces of paper and hide them in boxes under my bed. This would be a growing habit until my early adult life and the journals kept piling up. The person I was at home was drastically different than the loud, outgoing energy ball everyone else knew. But on paper, I was always the same. 

Writing and reading were always my escape. Whether it was from pain, rejection, loneliness, over-socializing, exhaustion, uneasiness... I always came back to this.

So, this is my first attempt at a blog, since I've always been a pen and paper type of gal. 

*Side note: Until this day, I still find random sheets of paper when I clean out my car, move, or visit my mother's house.  



"Life is a beautiful flower
It blossoms, then wilts and dies"
-2004 excerpt