Tag: mental health

Don’t Glamorize the Wicked

MagdalenaLeave a comment

You’ve lingered just a little too long in the bathroom for me to not be suspicious. There are pink boba, shaped like little flowers there are marshmallows with burnt on smiles in a creamy pastel drink and cotton candy placed as a cloud, blushing delicately above a cup of rolled ice cream.

“Mag, don’t you want a drink too?” Says Genny.

My friend, I am powerless when you take so long in the bathroom. I’ve never waited and worried before. Never waited and wondered before. Your little bones peek out these days your beaming eyes leak purple bruises your lips are cracked and bleed you are too thin. I’ve been there before oh how I wish I didn’t know.

Love is painful when I am powerless with you

Dear, an ice cream is enough for me. Do not feel pulled by the ghosts of my sharp habits you comment on eating 3 tacos on feeling a lack of control around friends. My chere, you are a lily that never dies.

Do Not Romanticize the Wicked Things that affect those I Love.


Summer 2018 (edited and posted in Winter 2020)

…And then Water came with an Attitude and a Diamond Ring

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I wanted to, no, I needed to save them all. I was their god, and they depended on me. If they are hurt, it is in my name. I pray they never learn how resentful I am. But look how they sleep, pure and peaceful.

…And then water came, she was beautiful, she shook us up & tore everything down & hopped off to then next highway town with new golden earrings and a diamond ring. We never saw her again and things were never quite the same.

We all miss her smile.

I took a look around at all the babies and somehow they were all okay, tucked in tightly in bed. It’s almost as if they didn’t notice that water had come and gone at all. Maybe she hadn’t been as destructive as I thought.

God- how many years ago was that now?

Maybe she lulled them to sleep.

Maybe she’ll come back home.

Murder You, Anoint You Holy, and Call You Baby

MagdalenaLeave a comment

Aware of the fear of the present
Moment that big cat stalks closer rustling
Sharp grasses. Somewhere between
Black gowns in my closet a rush against
Velvet and bleary eyed in bed I fumble
For that flashlight in the hot night & my sweaty
Fingers anxiously find the light.

There is a low thunder from Tiger’s throat.

& my trembling hands swoop a beam of light like a hawk in large arcs through the darkness

Tunnel vision. Rays and Squids could possibly float
In this dark expanse a feline predator lurks
Waits for me. Where might she be?

Cool sheets cling to me as I rise, toes first and spin, flashlight marking the walls.

Then

A parting in the leaves,
Expose
A pair of gleaming eyes
No, but it’s a mirror!
Oh, terror!
It is me!
Simply me
All of me
Ugly and sexy and soft, ready to murder to anoint you holy to call you baby

I wish I could look away

There is no cage

There is fear of the power within.

Who brings Sunflowers to a Moonlit Mass?

MagdalenaLeave a comment

Mary,
My beating Heart
It was never me who was broken

Magdalena you saw I was wounded but
I saw the wounds as who I
Was told it was part of my brain

Mary I was never sick

Mag I am not sick

Maggie such normalcy,
not drama, I
told them I loved the drama
dress in black
Adorn with creatures of the night
Wearing sunflowers does not
Kill the freak in me, this part
loves pale flowers that
Only bloom
Under full moons

I am the favorite nectar of bats
Weaving serpents to slumber in my braids

Mary my brokenness is not empty
We tell ourselves what we need to hear
We tell others what we really need to hear

We dance with werewolves at the moonlight mass

2019 (Spring or Summer)

I Don’t Recommend Creating an Entire World

MagdalenaLeave a comment

I can make a cage beautiful.

Childhood disorientation in Cajun Country, Louisiana late 90s isolated Family Trauma I struggled to understand what was happening around me so I created imaginary worlds: paracosms, something I could understand, somewhere beautiful and just for me to organize and create rules and guidelines which brought other children to me through creating myself as strange and shocking in the conservative Southeast.

Ability to turn inward from the external chaos, a choice to live in stories live in imagination so the dive into storytelling was natural. I created imaginary worlds with these complex narratives and characters and creatures and whole generations of royalty and history that went back hundreds of years. Saturday nights were for staying up late drawing maps of the kingdom and creating poetry of their hero’s tale. There were wars to mediate and rally my classmates to join. I created special devices that were handheld and carried creatures from class to class tucked under my arm and more and more to create and expanding this world of endless possibility. Other children were drawn in by the bizarre and the ones that were repelled, I never liked them anyway. There was a rush, a power in the polarization I manifested.

As an adult I thought, well, who do want to be? I want to be a witch. I want to be a poet. I want to be this weird, ethereal thing that lives in this strange, fantasy aquarium, a fairy terrarium. Almost a thing of myth, a semi secret character who is shut off from everything and you can look in this regular, inconspicuous home and see this strange little world that just takes your breath away that is decorated with moss and lavender, ivy and animal skulls adorned with black roses it’s like a secret discovery I’m always looking into a weird little world of sorts, usually hidden in plain sight if you just know where to look in the palm of my hand and not only am I gazing into and feeling pulled in deeper especially to care for this world and these creatures, their pure survival dependent on me.

But the truth is I have placed myself into that world so not only am I looking into it, holding it in my hands but I am physically trapped in that world too which was created to understand something, anything in the chaos to feel a shard of agency it is Mine created in beauty and wonder, created in a last ditch effort for salvation. This I can choose to share or define there is a clear idea of my role and my expectations, I am needed and important. And yet it is simple that as I stare as a zombie into this small treasure, eyes in a mirror stare blankly back into me. For I created myself in my perfect image, in my perfect imagination. For I am trapped here as well, trapped into my own perfect creation.

I can make a cage beautiful.

Fall 2019

I Know You Fucking Saw Me

MagdalenaLeave a comment

Today I take myself to the New Orleans Museum of Art
Alone past lotus pond a ghost’s reflection a Magical Girl
Sat on the concrete ledge you were once here
With me. I always loved you by my side.

Back inside, down a sleepy hallway
Corridor less wandered
Exists a Golden Cabin I saw you here
Mr. Alligator. Sun kissed pebbles flow
Up my belly warm my breasts
Pool in my collarbones
Whisper your voice lowers for me
You were here many years ago
And I fall in love at City Park again & again
As I always do

You are here somewhere in my body you
Haunt these halls enthralled in mystery
In lust with wonder do you feel me here too?

In ceremony, I approach the golden cabin,
Enter my feet inside the holy indentations
Your boots follow a gilded pathway inside

Breath escapes body we make contact here
Skin to frozen skin between thin metal sheets
Ghost to howling banshee
Stand where you stood, Mr. Alligator. Eyes
Ablaze in molten gold, in mundane splendor
There are metallic smartphones and straws and
old soda can tabs I begin to see simplicity
Now I know why you were here.
This whole fucking city
Our feet, soles to soles
Connect Siamese Twins
I can bet you’ve been about everywhere

I discover myself lonely
Expose a hollow I am
14 years old
Bathe in that old music you got me back into
If I cut myself
If I bled & left a mark a call or please please I am here do you see me?
On Repeat? The Noose?
You were fucking right okay?
The Nurse who Loves Me is my favorite song please tell me how you knew
You fucking Saw me
For a Split second for as long as
I needed, You
Fucking know
Stop
You’ve done nothing to hurt me lonely
I fucking hate you
I beg you in finality
Release whatever filth in me in full lucidity you can
Fucking take me

I pray to god one day I will
Have the words to say the Courage to
Face whatever needy, clinging sickness
I orbit you a comet I crash into you Burning fast and
Arrogant, selfishly tearing apart the atmosphere you spent
A decade weaving blankets you insulated
Your heart attempted to snuff out the fires I burst through,
I do not care at all. I am full of violence.

Unstoppable force: You are Welcome Here
Child on Bordered Lines
If she cut her thigh
& bled it all out felt that
Pain white hot counting seconds nursing
Bandages too clean for this filth
I desire most pain

Yet the truth behind the truth is
The shame at the swelling in my heart the
Fantasy that no one could see my dripping wound.

Not a breathing soul would see it there
Could feel that pain
No one could detect it in my eyes
No one would know at all

But the truth behind my heart is the
Secret behind my fantasy is the
Little girl behind my rage that one day
Hopes you will know &
You will feel bad
And you will know
One day
How you have hurt me so

I must disconnect.
“Don’t sleep on a bare mattress again Chere,
When are you gonna stop breaking your heart at City Park,
Like you always do?”

This is dysfunction
This is longing behind
Holding my own body hostage
Behind whatever worth I may or may not have
Behind Check Mate Screaming
Whywon’tyoulovemewhatthefuckdidIdowrong?
Please don’t leave me here
I need you, there I said it,
I fucking need you in finality behind
I know you fucking saw me
THIS IS REAL
I AM NOT A GHOST
if only for a split second
I know you fucking saw me

& the deepest truth of all is the pornography I loop in my brain of a fairy tale I read to babies where you look at me all dressed up and all beautiful all fucking funny and taking over the fucking world
And you just know
I don’t have to say a thing
Somehow you just know
You see my suffering
You see through me

The Serpent

MagdalenaLeave a comment

Here I lie it is 2019 and I never imagine things would come full circle with myself alone in perfect symmetry in the middle of my bed, an enchanted room I have created and in which I make magic in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Half of me is lit by Magdalena’s dancing flame, a soft gold as I fall asleep, the other side lit by white roaring lighting, wild and loud. And all the while my lost love Maynard chanting and this magic builds in my delicious room. Mer de Noms on shuffle and no, I am not triggered at all. I shine. Basking and swelling, humming prayers as I slip into sleep.

Full circle

Sweet child, if you could only see me now. Maybe you do, maybe that’s why you hold on.