#apathetic-anthology

[apathetic-anthology]

At midnight, we lie on the pavement and watch the stars. The Nina, The Pinta, and The Santa Maria - that’s what he calls them; my cousin, curly brown hair with the eyes to match, an escapist of the post-Chavez regime and now he’s here, in Tampa, next to me, saying I need to believe in something bigger, help myself in one way or another, maybe go to church, see the light that I’ve been blind to. Baby, didn’t anyone ever tell you some people play with fire just because they want to get burned? Well, I’ll tell you now, then. It’s not about belief so much as it’s about desire or will and I have neither. I am godless, lacking heavily in this so-called ‘light’ walking somewhere in a dark alley that’s meant to frighten, lacking normal human-like fear. He thinks he can show me direction sad, sad, sad, don’t even waste your time – I’m sorry, though. I just know that somewhere along the line, something went very wrong with me. I may have been made by God, yes, but somehow we lost each other, at an intersection between good and evil; I walked right through the traffic. I exist in a gray area and I am wrong, sure, I’m not denying this – I’m just saying I don’t want to be right, not now, at least. To me, he is the embodiment of purity, and for that alone I am thankful. He looks me in the eye and says te quiero mucho, primita, y sobre todo quiero protegerte te digo esto con amor – cuidate, por favor. I do too. I want to protect him from ever feeling like this;   never truly belonging anywhere, like maybe the wrong way is the only way that ever makes sense. No devil on one shoulder or an angel on the other, it’s just silence –  depressing, isn’t it? Yeah,  a distinct type of hopelessness. I don’t mind, I swear it’s fine. Meanwhile in the background, the world continues on its axis like we are two insignificant particles in a much larger picture; but still I see the moon shine, illuminating the yellow painted houses that all look the same, the palm trees sway, back and forth, back and forth, I follow them with my eyes, and maybe somewhere in the distance, the ducks are quacking, something like 'look at this girl, she thinks she stands a chance, she never did.’ It’s ironic, he thinks he is protecting me from something I can’t grasp, but he hasn’t seen anything yet. I let him talk, of course, I listen. I let him believe, because for a minute I forget who I am, more so that I come from a city of corruption, from dirty sidewalks and sinners, from bad decisions and dangerous velocity. For a brief second, I am just me – a nineteen year old girl, making memories with her Venezuelan cousin, teaching him English, watching him grow further and further into the person he wants to be; and as for myself, well, I still think I have a long long way to go – but actually, in this moment, under what he refers to as 'Columbus’ art,’   this is more than enough.

1/11/2017 - Mi Primo y Yo. 

[apathetic-anthology]

When I look at my mother, many many words come to mind - progressive risk-taker, however, are none of them. I am a product of chance; in fact, my favorite pastime is observing expressions when I explain how I originated in a clear test tube, circa a time where it was considered "experimental." This is not a typical immigrant love story; not even remotely close to a great tale that spans oceans and continents, lining its path with future fortunes, inevitable romance, or anything as absurdly poetic. My parents left southern Italy the same way they were to spend a majority of their lives: separately. The year was 1977 - Jimmy Carter is President of the United States, there is a black out in New York City; Elvis Presley dies a shameful death, the Son of Sam terrorizes the streets of Brooklyn. I only exist in the abstract sense, more of an irrational hope than an imminent reality. Among the chaos my mother is dressed in white, almost angelic, in the back of a beat up dance club waiting patiently for her miracle. It was not love at first sight, and I'm not completely sure about the sights after that, either. To this day I still don't believe that universal forces were in favor of their meeting, rather it was just a cosmic mishap; one that slipped under the radar discreetly, praying it wouldn't be noticed. It wasn't - and my fate and I were born some twenty years later, on a cloudy afternoon in April, drenched in platonic love, ambiguity, and most of all, circumstances.

(excerpt from a book I’ll definitely write one day: ‘Are You Serious? My Pursuit of Being Through Petri Dishes, Estrangement, and Maybe A Lot of Other Shit I Still Haven’t Figured Out Yet.’) 

[apathetic-anthology]

I still don’t know if the word ‘father’ is appropriate in this case and although you are the worst half of me, it is half nonetheless. I am not the type of child who blames my parents for everything - I am practical. I know that in reality life is about a lot more than just what is right and what is wrong. Often, it’s about pain and all the tricky crevices it hides in, or about the days when I am more angry with you than the universe. It’s about feelings that can never be properly explained in words, some unspoken code that only we follow. I lack any ability to be selfish. All I can seem to think is how we both are on the opposite spectrums of grief and even though I can’t understand yours, I need you to help me understand mine. Throughout my life you’ve always been a conflicting figure, my link to the darkness yet the only chance I have of counterbalancing the war that has started. I want you to help me fight. Let’s just say the days are adding up quicker than I’d like them to, but I am great at waiting. The missing pieces are the only things I’ve asked you for in nineteen years.  Plus now they’re just as much mine as they are yours, remember that.

I’m also great at writing letters I can’t send. 

[apathetic-anthology]

I come from a generation who managed to deep-root its life in a singular place. Our lineage is that of immigration, mothers putting money in boots and traveling across disease, continents, and seas only to inevitably arrive at a dead-end, nestled conveniently between the upper and lower class, and call it home. In my family, we say 'Brooklyn girls.' We don't go to college, we find a boyfriend. We eventually marry, move into the empty apartments near our parents house, and children grow up with amnesia, forgetting any sense of identity once possessed; when asked 'where are you from?' the reply is 'Brooklyn.' I am not a Brooklyn girl. While my cousins were eating pasta on Sundays I was calculating, determining the distance it would take to rid myself of the standards that have haunted my upbringing. Sure, in actuality I guess it isn't that bad, but the thing about me is that I notice every unnecessary detail, like the glimmer of disgust in that girl's eye that one summer day in the park when she said, 'what are you looking at, bitch?' I was six years old. My mother says, don't mind her; this place is full of trash. From this moment I decided I did not want to be a Brooklyn girl. This came way before the gentrification, before the organic supermarkets, before the idea of Brooklyn was morphed with that of sky-rocketed rent and vintage boutiques. I am talking about the real Brooklyn - the spit on the sidewalk, and the block parties that repeatedly played the same five songs until our parents told us it was time to go home. The fireworks on Friday nights and the free time spent running up and down the avenue. I am trapped in a fake reality. Whenever I form a sentence that surpasses a 9th grade intelligence level I'm hit with: what're you talking like that for? What do you think you are, a big shot? So, I'm still here only to say that I've decided to take my words elsewhere; far away from these preconceived notions or lack of ambition - and when I'm asked where I'm from, I'll just say New York.

(on the corner between Benson and Bath) 

[apathetic-anthology]

You deserve none of the poems I’ve ever written about you. You don’t even deserve my 8 AM thoughts, let alone my 3 AM ones - those accompanied by sleepy eyes, a beating heart, and a little bit of angst. I can’t think of anything you deserve, actually. You deserve no stories, or alliterations; no fast-paced words that I spew at my therapist as she nods empathetically. ‘How do you feel about that, though?’ Well, quite frankly, I feel like my lungs have been ripped out of my crumbling body and put back just in time for me not to die, but enough for me to feel like I really really want to. You know, when you have no desire to wake up in the morning, when the daylight feels like a burden you can’t shake off your shoulders? I feel like I am in between two moving trains going in opposite directions. I feel like the wind is knocked out of me every time I hear your name. How do I feel? I feel, actually, I’ve decided that don’t really need to feel. Yeah, this is indeed my decision to make because I feel nothing yet everything. There are times when I am tempted to put my hand on an open flame just so I can find pain, but there are also times I want to regurgitate every single sentiment that has ever crossed my disturbed and twisted mind. I don’t do either of these things. Instead, I write about you. I write about something that everyone can relate to, something that doesn’t make me feel sick to my stomach (for the most part, but I heard an illness left uncured can develop into a deadly disease.) Fuck, that’s a real accomplishment, isn’t it? The ability to make something so horribly ugly into something so beautiful. That’s what makes this happen. It’s not the black-inked poison you drip from every pore, it’s how I make use of it with my pen.

To be a writer is to condemn oneself to eternal self-deprecation.

[apathetic-anthology]

The paradoxical nature of celebrities is the fact that their lives have the ability to be so public yet so impersonal at the same time. Unlike their own problems, many people see the problems of those in the spotlight as distant and fantasy-like. Only in the wake of Amy Winehouse’s premature death did the world realize that she was a person with a real problem. Many celebrities, including Amy, often give the impression that they are invincible beings, living on the edge of danger while skillfully eluding death. Amy’s passing resonated through the public so greatly because it showed something genuine. Death is something that everyone can relate to, whether it be losing a loved one or specifically losing a best friend or child to addiction. The grief felt by her family was very authentic, showing that she wasn’t just a troubled girl for the public to pick apart. Amy was a singer who followed her dreams only to unfortunately succumb to her own demons. Five years ago today on Saturday, 23 July 2011, Amy was found dead in her Camden flat. Prior to this, she was widely known as a drug-addled celebrity trainwreck, or simply “that girl who sang Rehab.” Ironically, after her death, the focus was shifted off her addiction and towards the fact that she was unarguably the greatest Jazz singer of the twenty-first century. To some, she is still only recognized as that British vocalist with all those tattoos and too much eyeliner; to others, she has become the embodiment of everything that is wrong with mainstream society, the sad victim of the trivialization of a serious problem. Amy is part of the reason I am able to overcome many of the struggles I face everyday; she is the source of my strength as well as my inspiration. In my eyes, she will never be just the star of the tragic, yet cliche rise and fall to fame cautionary tale. To me, she will always be just Amy.

14 September 1983 - 23 July 2011

[apathetic-anthology]

What happens when two emotionally unavailable people get together? This isn’t a joke - don’t wait for the punchline. It becomes a cryptic competition of who can last the longest; like ‘do you miss me? do you want me?’ Well, do you?  Sure, I’ll wait it out. I can wait infinitely. I think I forgot to tell you that I’ve spent my whole life waiting, and I can rightly assume that you have not; now, who do you think will win this fight? We will lie down on your bed and discuss things normal people talk about - you know, the universe, or the human condition and such, but I’ll know when your vulnerability is showing - and love, once it’s showing, you won’t ever be able to cover it up again. There is a world out there full of people who aren’t anything like us, people who seem genuinely happy (and don’t give me that 'I’m so happy, I’m great,' load of bullshit.) A life devoid of emotion is simply an existence. So, which is it? Do you want to exist, or do you want to live? I think somewhere along the line, someone went very wrong with you; it amazes me that you’ve made it passed infancy, let alone existed two hundred and forty one months carrying on in such a manner. That being said, in lieu of a panacea, I have a proposition for you: I am here to be your wake up call, when you are down, I will pick you back up and remind you how human beings are supposed to act - and don’t you dare try to put me out like a cigarette when you are done, because I’ll burn the fuck out of you before you can even step on me.

I know you’re just a social smoker. 

[apathetic-anthology]

I am waiting for the day when I am not reminded of you by miscellaneous objects. Maybe I really will be twenty by the time I'm over you; symbolically it makes sense, given the events of my nineteenth birthday and the formula I use to calculate the time it takes me to get over things. It's quite easy, you see, I just take the months and multiply them by three, subtract every occasion you've made me sad, then add how many times I felt like you were actually here. I don't exactly know how foolproof this formula is; all I know is that this is a long time to wait before I stop thinking about your eyes, turning my phone off when I am drunk, or associating you with a whole general area of the country. In fact, this is way more than a long time to exist in this state of mind; I say your name about ten times each therapy session and roughly five each full night of sleep, that's a lot, right? Do you even remember mine? It took a week for you to save it in your phone and less for me to start feeling this alone. Sorry, I rhyme when I get too wistful (which is pretty much all the time, thanks to you). What I meant to say is, I hope this is the last thing I ever write about you; figuratively I am putting the revolver in my mouth, and pulling the trigger. My brain will be all over the walls if you would finally like to pick it.

I said I was done waiting! (ironic, huh?)