I wanted you but God wanted you more Perhaps you were an angel not meant for earth Perhaps you were a hard a lesson in grief and loss That I needed to learn A lesson that I should never take love and hope for grant No matter how brief the stay is A lesson that your heart can break within a span of a few minutes A lesson in surviving what you think is unsurvivable
never understood why you took us with you maybe it was to assuage your guilt maybe it was say you really did nice things for me and my brother inviting us to an all day road trip to Tijuana in your air conditioned Blazer silent as mice and on our best behavior to not disturb you, your husband and your son it was all so strange the only thing I can remember was the messiest hamburgers we needed a hundred napkins to eat and the picture with the donkey maybe you were kind and graceful with us at times but all of that has been lost with the trauma you incurred on us I’ve blocked out and 34 years later in my middle age sitting in my hot car in between jobs I still don’t understand why you took us with you
at 9, Mariah Carey taught me to look pretty even as I’m suffering, even as I’m cast aside for someone else even as I’m crying and dying from grief at 9, Mariah Carey taught me about all of the lovely and terrible things that come with falling in love at 9, Mariah Carey gave me lessons about life and love I’ve carried into my middle age
Ostracized, alienated, and abandoned for being too odd, too much cried a million tears over the same story too stubborn to learn from the tragic lessons sent from the universe naively believed this one will complete me, this one will save me it wasn’t until my middle age, I had a great catharsis and said “OH SHIT, I AM ENOUGH!” I let go of my damsel in distress story wrote a new story of empowerment and love within the pages of my journal Wrote and wrote like a madwoman until I found peace and closure from anything that traumatized me come to the conclusion the only hero I ever needed was the woman in the mirror
I’m lead to a higher version of myself after integration it’s uncomfortable and I blush red in this latest transformation annoyed and hate everything I write as most of it takes a romantic undertone I started to miss the woman-scorned and empowered who decimated her exes the one who came up with the clever phrase electronic pink slip but that woman is slipping away from me transforming into a woman who wears her heart on her sleeve with her poetry transforming into a woman who’s grown bored of hating her exes and instead wants to be on friendly terms with them transforming into a woman who understands and accepts she not defined by her trauma or a diagnosis and instead should lean into the magic of love that lurks inside of her
my body keeps score even when I think I’m better even though I’ve found closure and made peace with most of my demons my body keeps score on certain dates and remembers unintentional trauma inflicted and the great impact it had on me great emotional earthquakes that shook and broke the core of my soul leading to breakdowns and breakthroughs understanding and accepting who and what’s right for me and what isn’t
thousands of indigenous children never made, never born Fujimori’s presumptuous superiority and cruel policies caused this inhumanity, this crime against the most marginalized the poorest robbing thousands of women of their right to procreate a shameful part of Peru’s history thousands of indigenous children mourned who were never planted, never had a chance to bloom perhaps their existence was a threat to those in power full of corruption, now we’re never know
mami dressed me up in ruffles and pastels whenever she could I’d swirled and twirled in my dress until I got dizzy loved when everyone told me, “ay que bonita te miras” and I awkwardly bowed, smiled, and hid sashayed to every single one of my relatives and did the same thing it’s one of the few times I remembered being vain as a child one of the few times I didn’t feel weird and like an outcast external validation learned at the tender age of 8
It’s April again and it’s not only spring that is in bloom but also the creativity that goes along with it. And of course, it’s national Poetry month and every year since 2022 I try to participate in NaPoWrimo which is an activity where I write a poem a day and post it on my blog. I use prompts from this website for inspiration: https://www.napowrimo.net/ and as always I’m excited to see what crazy poems I come up with. Last year my favorite poem was a spicy one I wrote about Yung Gravy that I ended up performing at open mic.
my forever muse
Also, this year, I decided to give y’all my own original prompts to inspire y’all. Feel free to send me your poem and I’ll post it on my blog or you can just keep it in between the pages of your journal. I had a goal last year that I would post my own prompts for National Poetry Month and here we are. So here are prompts that I wrote sometime in early 2022. Here’s my contact info where you can email me or dm me your poem.