Creative Writing and Poetry
Table of Contents
Andromeda
Dark Seaweed Braids
Dear Young Artist
FLORENCIA, THE QUEEN OF HEARTS
jumping crabs
Tacitas De Cafe Respiran
Dreams in Transition, Translation
peace is a cup of coffee that fell out of the trash and onto the street kicked around and run over by passing cars
The Old Pond
Andromeda
i.
once upon a time
in a land hot and humid
there lived a strange girl
with long curly hair
and a twisty twirly tail
with her limb-like tail,
she poured the waves into her morning tea
while her hands milked the sea shells sweet
unusual for small strange girls like her, you see
small strange girls like her
with brittle bird bones
and fragile petalled scales
drink wine with honey
and skip in flowered fields
singing and slurring their lullaby songs
no, not she
she gladly, greedily gulped her milky sea
from lips to lungs
she pleaded to her treacherous heart
please pump salt water instead of bitter blood
for blood binds while water frees
at the peak of day
she leaves her milky sweet tea
for the real sea
it stings sharp her feline eyes
bruises purple her scaly thighs
a sharp smile creases high
for her speckled yellow shins
and burning red skin
rolling and rolling
again and again
in a whirlwind of colorful highs
she holds her breath under
‘til her vision spots polka dots
twisting and turning until her knees nearly pop
ii.
and then what happened?
iii.
the honey and wine girls
kept their hollow bones safe
dancing among the daisies and daffodils
forever spinning in their colorful carousel
of comfort and distraction
round and round
and round and round
never, not once, noticing
one strange girl had stepped off
iv.
and then what happened?
v.
the bruised girl with the monkey tail
with petalled scales and long hair
drinking sea tea with seashells
well,
she learned
her brittle hollow bones
could float
so
she spent her life floating
tracing the clouds and naming the stars
vi.
and then what happened?
Dark Seaweed Braids
She grew up dreaming stories of the women and the sea.
The ocean hums for her. At 4:30am, she answers.
She preferred to get there early–wrapped in darkness before the light emerged.
A seer once told her, “Your soul came from a galaxy of light. From that far away galaxy, a ray of light so strongly streams into your soul. Sometimes, you will feel it's too big to fit in your little body. Sometimes, it will boil your blood. Sometimes, it will burn your tears.”
She would go to the beach, to watch dawn’s soft life politely emerging from darkness. She so wished to learn its ways.
I can be soft too, she reaffirmed.
She would drive with the windows down, cruising the dark empty highway, twirling the wind between her finger tips. She would often play music, always reggaeton, to make Miami’s thick humidity purr.
Flip a coin and a moon rises. Each full moon, she would drive thirty minutes to her beach. Sometimes she would go with friends, sometimes she would go alone. Always, she would get in the water– in summer, in winter, in wind, in rain. This particular chilly November night, she walked into the cold water, salty sand and shallow shores filling the gaps between her toes. When the waves licked her thighs, she turned her goose-bumped spine to the infinite horizon, and leaned backwards, falling, and sinking into the black inky water, submerged all at once. Her monthly baptism. She swam towards the moon’s ivory beam twinkling on darkness’s wavy edge. With no one around, she takes off her bathing suit in the water and lets it float between her frigid fingers.
Fully be. Submerge me. Purify me. Please.
In front of her– an invisible neverending horizon of blackness.
Is there still a horizon if I can’t see it?
Under her moon’s light, she twists onto her back, closes her eyes, and floats, letting the delicate waves cradle her up and down, up and down. This rhythm, this meditation, she knows well. She’s learned to ignore the salty water splashing up her nose. She’s learned to surrender and let the wise water take her where it wishes. She trusts this dark water, though maybe she shouldn’t.
None of her friends would ever join her. “Too cold, too windy, too wavy”.
Shoulds aren’t real. You only live once.
It didn’t matter if she had a thirty minute car ride back home, knowing she would be sticky and sandy for every second of it.
I won’t remember my sticky sandy car in 10 years.
It didn’t matter how windy the night was–those seconds running from shore to towel, her goosebumps so sharp they could cut light.
I won’t remember how cold I was.
All she knew was that she was here, present, now, floating on this breathing darkness.
Algae and seaweed tickled her spine, her neck, braiding into her long, dark hair. She thinks of Sedna, the young Inuit woman, pushed off a boat by her angry father. Holding onto the boat, he cut off her fingers, both her and the severed fingers falling into the sea. Her submerged severed fingers transformed into all sea creatures– seals, whales, dolphins– and she sank to the cold, dark bottom, and transformed into the goddess of the sea, commanding all marine life. She controls the food supply for the fishers and hunters. When they grow greedy, she withholds all her creatures, mercilessly causing famine. Only then must shamans dive down to her and comb her long dark tangled hair– since she has no fingers to do so herself–to see her, her anger, and brush out its stubborn seething knots.
She thinks of this as she floats on the top of the wavy surface, seaweed curling in her own dark long tangled hair. At least I have fingers to brush them out. But for now, they can stay. She likes to play dress up with the moon and sea. She’s just a girl who wants to be seen, wants her light to be seen, and wants her hair brushed and combed. I don’t think that’s so bad.
In many humps and bumps, the waves untangle her hair and the moonlight dissolves some of her burning light.
The moon and the sea, they see her free.