A Night of Wonder

“All children, except one, grow up.”

-J.M. Barrie

Saturday, December 15, 2003
10:15 pm

 

A small girl who goes by the name of Valerie sits on her bed as the cold night air sweeps in through her open window. She pulls the covers closer under her chin, clutching the fabric of her light blue pillow. She’s staring straight into the sky, the stars seem brighter to her tonight and she waits. Shivering from the cold, listening to the low, soft crinkling of the leaves that live on the willow, she waits. The minutes tick by, one by one they fly. Her little eyelids start to droop, but she doesn’t dare go to sleep, oh no, she needs to wait or she might miss her chance! A little creak of her door and a tiny figure walks in. Three-year-old Mae is afraid, she can’t sleep alone, there are monsters under her bed. Valerie makes room for her little sister and they both stare at the pearly white lights that twinkle and dance under the dark of the night.

 
“Do you see that star on the right, Mae?,” Valerie whispers, “That’s Neverland,” hushed so mother won’t hear, hushed so father won’t make her close that window. But Mae doesn’t know what a Neverland is. “Only the best place in the world,” says Valerie. And she’s off, flying with words that tell the story of a boy who never grows old, who flies through the skies across time and space to go on adventures with fairies and mermaids and other lost boys. Before they know it, Valerie and Mae are being swept up in dreams of Neverland. They want to see the bright golden rays of pixie dust; they want to think happy thoughts and fly with Peter and The Lost Boys, to sail through cobalt waters and frosted clouds, indulging forever in their youth. And they could fight off the bad guys! Send those rotten pirates back to where they came from and save Neverland!

 
“Do you believe it, Mae? Do you believe?” Valerie asks her sister excitedly. Mae jumps up and down on the bed saying yes, yes of course she does. And then she stops, Valerie and her stare at the foot of the bed, eyebrows furrowed, for curiously enough, there right on the sheets is the shadow of a boy standing straight with his hands on his hips.

Complications

(this poem is a «word salad» of a series of texts sent between me and my friends in 2016)

 

 

The real, complicated, shattering morning date
Snowflakes will never be forgotten
I see u stand in my way
And he’s winning palabras
Im not drunk yet, orange man
Broadway hook ups will fix it later
I take appreciation to ur jokes
Dude, so true, press the link
Download the app
Im down for that

Algún día es ahora

-inspirado por Looking for Alaska de John Green

 

Algún día volaré por encima de cristales,
De esos que danzan con el aire.
Algún día hablaré con Atenea
De esa sabiduría que ya se ha abandonado.
Cantaré con aquel reloj de aquella torre,
Por el pulmón más grande de la Tierra caminare.
Muchos sueños cumpliré,
Y cumpliré bien cumplidos,
Algún día, algún mes, en alguna vida
Lograré todo lo que mis sueños sueñan
Pero no entienden mis nubes
Que los días pasan, y corren las horas
Mientras susurran “Algún día, algún día…”
Una frase que mata
Una frase que engendra ambiciones
Y reduje el reloj para alcanzarlas
¿Dónde están las ateneas que imaginan y crean,
Que anhelan y alcanzan y hacen,
Que idealizan, ilusionan y actúan,
Que entienden que es ahora y no algún día?
No existen ateneas con sabiduría
Existen bolívares con laberintos
Que anhelan volar de aquel enredo
Pero alas nunca crecen.

The Tainted Mirror

(A Slam Poem)

 

Beauty
Double 00,
Curvy,
Thin,
No not that thin.
Short,
Tall,
No, not that tall.
Standards and contradictions
And a girl in front of a mirror
Telling herself
You’re not beautiful, you’re not beautiful.
But according to whom?

Beauty is relative, it’s ever-changing.

“What is beauty?” she asks.
Well, I guess it depends on who you ask.

Beauty is relative, it’s ever-changing.

Her stomach seems ten sizes bigger,
But the problem lies inside
Of her mind,
Of her heart,
Of society.
Society, who tainted that mirror,
Distorted her image,
Sculpted it into something inhuman
And unreachable
Because, well because…

Beauty is relative, it’s ever-changing.

She says,
“If I know what beauty is,
I can mold myself to become it.
Everything will be better,
Nothing will be bitter.”
But everything will always be bitter,
And nothing will ever be better,
Not like this,
Not in front of that Tainted Mirror.

Beauty is relative, it’s ever-changing.

So I tell her,
“Beauty is whatever you want it to be,
You define your own beauty,
Don’t let anyone else do it for you.”

And so, I invite you all to do this:
Close your eyes,
Shut everything out.
In the dark with no one around,
No one to hear,
No one to impress,
Answer this,
How would you define beauty?

El monito enjaulado

Enjaulado. Esa es la primera palabra que pienso cuando miro a mi alrededor. Soy un animal atrapado en un hábitat artificial. No hay nada más, esto es lo que soy y no tengo recuerdo de como llegue hasta aquí. Lo único que me trae paz es saber que no soy el único, que existen otros en este gran zoológico. Suena un poco mal, pero saber que no estás solo en una situación antinatural es esencial para la salud mental. Si no fuera por este conocimiento creo que ya me hubiese vuelto loco, aunque ya lo siento venir, la insania me rastrea inevitablemente como si no existiera manera de escaparla. Pero por ahora puedo sentirme conforme con que hay otros en la misma situación, aunque no todos reaccionamos igual. Existen aquellos que aman estar atrapados, aman ser el entretenimiento de todos. Es verdad que todos empezamos así, con los ojos velados y sonrisas inquebrantables, pero no todo se queda de color rosa.

 
Al principio yo era feliz, sentía que al fin hacia lo que me apasionaba, y además le traía felicidad a muchos. Ellos me miraban con sonrisas en los ojos detrás de aquel cristal de plástico que no nos dejaba tocarnos. En algún momento en el camino, todo cambió. Mi vida giraba alrededor de la pregunta: ¿cómo complaceré a los demás? Dejé de ser un ser vivo con ideales y opiniones propias, me convertía en máquina y no me percaté de lo que me sucedía hasta que ya era tarde. ¿Cómo volver a traerle vida a aquello que ya se ha muerto?

 
No sé quién soy, no me distingo, ya no me reconozco. Soy animal enjaulado. Eso es lo único que sé. En parte quiero seguir brindando felicidad a aquellos que me siguen, dándoles alguien a quien puedan admirar, aunque no sepan que ese a quien admiran ya no es humano, si no máquina y se siente exactamente como un monito en un zoológico.
Ellos dicen “baila monito, canta monito, toca monito,” y yo como gran animador, como gran figura pública, como gran superestrella, les hago caso. No hay de otra, esta es mi vida y no sé como regresar a la anterior. Ya no queda nada en mí, se han apoderado de lo único que me hacía feliz: mi creatividad y mi libertad.

 
Ahora me encuentro aquí, con una gorra sobre mi cabeza, tapándome los ojos hasta quedar irreconocible, orando que nadie me vea. Me acerco al cristal del hábitat artificial para poder mirar a los ojos de aquel monito, y por primera vez en un largo tiempo, reconozco mi reflejo. Ese soy yo.

I’ve still got your poem on my phone.

Remember?

The one you wrote for me a couple summers back?

Where did all that love go?

Did you burn it?

Are you giving it to someone new?

Is it that girl I saw you with last night?

Or the one I saw you with last week?

Did you throw it away?

Or do you keep it in your pen?

On paper?

Maybe in your eyes?

I think I might’ve seen it in your eyes.

Last night.

With that girl.

 

I’ve still got your poem on my phone.

I like to read it when I feel alone.

Or when I’m missing you,

Whichever comes first.

Do you ever read it?

Did you delete it?

I found you on a bookshelf today.

Is the poem on my phone

Now in the hands of strangers?

 

I would’ve taken you home

But I was afraid of what I’d find

In the pages.

The things you had to say

Or didn’t.

I don’t know which would’ve hurt more,

The words

Or the silence.

 

I’ve still got your poem on my phone.

I should delete it, but I’ll keep it.

Not because I still love you,

But because we were art

And I still like to look at us sometimes.

 

From Dust to Flesh

Infinite timelines

running together

and this is the one we’re on.

You and I,

out of all the billions and trillions of cells,

collided in the midst of chaos

and for only a second

it was quiet.

Life.

Being born.

 

The stars realigned,

for God’s greatest miracle

is hidden in the intricacies of our bones.

 

From dust to flesh,

we became.

That

is the true beauty of it all.

How it all happened so complicatedly perfect.

 

We were written into this world

and the story is carved on our skin.

Don’t hide it.

Hide and Seek

Sometimes people hide things

behind words.

But in time,

usually when it’s too late,

they’ll peek around the crevices of a sentence

and you’ll catch a glimpse

of a buried story.

 

 

A Cold Cold Night

(This poem was first published in a series of tweets.)

 

So cold, these hands.

He shakes, he’s frozen.

Where has he been that he’s so cold?

His tears, his breath.

He’s so cold he’s blue.

Voice shaking, teeth shattering,

He tells me where he’s been

and I break.

He takes a step forward,

I take two steps back.

 

«Hold me close, just hold me close,»

He says. «I just need to get warm.»

 

But he’s broken us.

 

I shut the door and all of me shatters,

pieces of him and me on the floor.

I still here him whisper,

on the other side of the door,

«I’m so cold,

I’m so sorry,

I’m so so cold.»

 

 

 

THE SNOW OWL’S FLIGHT

The snow owl watches as the others take flight, dreaming of the day she’ll sail the Great Heights. Up there with the clear blue waters, she’d navigate through the cotton fields and look down to the dust, where all is revealed. At night, when the sea of aquamarines faded into an ocean of onyxes she’d speak to the twinkling lights, the starry eyes in the black night. And the moon, oh how she wants to meet the moon. So many great adventures up there, she is aware she could go Anywhere, see Everywhere. But it isn’t time. Still every day she goes to Father and says “Daddy, I want to fly!”

“Why do you wish to spring away from me so fast?” he always asks.

The little snow owl hates when he asks this because it makes her feel guilty, but then he laughs and says, “Not yet, my darling, don’t rush, hush. It all comes with time.”

Time, how she hates time! But Father always knows how much the little snow owl wants to fly, so he does the only thing he can. “Come on up, little flake, I’ll make us fly.” She never hesitates, for they do this every day. With a big smile, and a ruffling of her thick feathers, she climbs unto his back as he grabs her wings.

“Hold on tight,” he says and he jumps into the air, jumping from tree to tree, the farthest he can go with the weight of both of them. It isn’t really flying, no, but the little snow owl never cares because in her mind she is soaring. The older the little snow owl got, the shorter the distance Father could fly, but even if his arms hurt a little and his back bruised a little, he took her for a flight every day until the little owl wasn’t so little and she flew off to the Great Heights just like she’d dreamed for so long.