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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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 The mother is sullen. Sleepless nights drew maps around her eyes. Enervative months
bulged sacs around her waist. Her fingers tremble from the night before. She feels exactly where her muscles flexed, where her joints folded, and where her nails clawed deep. She’s losing focus, so her husband releases it for her.  Through the dawn break,
Do you see my silhouette dancing? My frail vein burns irresistible, pains grow obvious. I once looked up to you, your gentle taps on my curled up stem put me to sleep. You stood by, holding on my callow leaves.
 Silent screams with a mouth shut tight,
Flashing sirens wail with no light, Empty weeping, cheeks run dry, A raised hand in the absence of sky; I stretch out my fingers to the mobile of stars, Alas, my arms cannot travel that far.  Our lives are written on paper.
We alter our words According to the preferences of our readership. When there’s a mistake, We try to erase it,  Alba and I were virgins together
I never understood her Spanish because she spoke it too well But I loved the way she did, With rose petals the fabric of her irises and wind rushing through her veins in place of blood And one night we practiced dirty dancing to 90s hip hop hits and we were fading fast, blurring out of existence, like two blazing comets orbiting each other in the blink of a supreme being, divine paparazzi,  [Content warning: sexual assault]
Homesickness is the average temperature of a healthy human body, it’s baptizing our hands in Uncle’s ashes, specs of his life between palm creases and fingernails— we fantasize— it’s  Sometimes when people speak their words make no sense. You hear what they are saying. You
know what they are saying. You understand. It doesn’t make sense. Sometimes your words don’t make sense either. They crowd up your spine in a stream too fast to recognize, jam up the insides of your brain until the words tangle on the grooves and ridges along the letters. With steady fingers you pull them apart. You think you know what it means. You open your mouth and the knot of words tumble out and scatter.  july bleeds to death on my living room floor–
paisley dress circling a heatwave. a ghost broadcasts picture shows of vertigo, antennae glinting colors of the sun. in the closet my mouth is moth-eaten and dry– radio static muffling goosebumps of air.
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