Month: March 2015

Untitled

Like tryna’ to catch water.
Could never win, no matter how much I fought her.

A pointless carousel, I watched it dissolve.
Those revolving doors,
couldn’t take it anymore,
as they took us round and round,
and I wound up a deserter.

Couldn’t pretend, couldn’t float on the deep end,
felt like an accessory to murder.

Whenever she defiled her worth, didn’t matter what she deserved,
but I couldn’t weather the rewind.

Had to repeat history, had to re-loop misery,
Couldn’t remain blind.

I tried to be hero, tried wise mediator.
Instead I became a powerless spectator.

Maybe my shoulders weren’t strong.
Like slow motion she willingly leaped off
into an ocean of sharks.

Like rolling under a the wheel of a truck.
Like running through a fire.
Poking an electric socket, she was dead set on drowning –
Wired.
No matter the life jacket, what advice she gets,
the only place she could live
were those thorny roads I abandoned.

When a part of you gets gangrene,
you cut it off.
There’s nothing more helpless
than loving one who doesn’t love herself.

And so I swept it under the rug.
Saved myself even though it hurt.
Had to release her from my clutch because I loved her too much,
and I was done being burned.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 3/12/2015

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 

I once had a friend who was more like my sister. She was a part of me, but she was no good for me. And she was no good to herself. Sometimes when you love someone, you’ve gotta let them go. It’s one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make in my life, and sometimes, I miss her… I hope she’s out there, and I hope she’s finally learned to love herself.

Place of Sighs

Click clack on cement past the flip flap stand, down over by the heavy beats and la’s of the boom box.

The screech on the road pulls the leash on my neck, and I wonder how tires hiss.

Boppin’ and chewin’ my pop stick by the slick man who licks his lips as he mmm’s at swish and swivels.

Little girls hop and skip on chalk grids in the chain parks ‘cause big kids boycott swings.

As they squeak and rust, I plug in ear wires with a shrug to provide my mind with breathing support.

Calligraphy bricks line up by yellow cliffs where you can see the rats race.

Thunder rolls in trenches, sparks snap rails,

noses lost in the gray-scale paper. The lifeless paper.

With frost in a cup, hunger tugs my sleeve.

So I flip flop upon freshly drenched summer to where you can scream with ching in your fingers.

I tinker with the slurp bubbles, between jingling metal and my grease pod –

over the stoop dwellers,

sometimes guarding carnival bodegas.

Kangaroo pouched fellas shaking up copper dust on the bottom of one dollar coffee cups.

Finally through the turn and shove into the clock’s hug where I bend and shift up the light switch that flickers over the table that mail has consumed.

My last move on this night’s end and day’s routine, is to snoozes where relief sings me soothing odes.

Tightly secure in my place of sighs, beside wailing windows.

This four-sided burrito roll. This place I call home.

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 2007, revised 3/12/2015

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Weather is getting nice around here. Hoping I can go to that place where I can scream with ching in my fingers soon – aka the chuchifrito place. One coquito and an accapuria please!