as you can tell, i write under my real name now. my pseudonym, z. vega will always be a part of me, but i'm at the point in my life where i am so emotionally vulnerable that hiding behind kind of a secret identity isn't something my heart's telling me to do.
2. i wrote a third book. it's called "swingers" (spelled "swngrs) and it would mean the world if y'all would check it out! https://www.amazon.com/Swngrs-Donia-Kashkooli/dp/1545581932
3. i realized that all i want to do for the rest of my life is write.

on sunday mornings we eat frozen waffles and
wash our faces with stale coors light and the tears
of our mamas that we kept in plastic water bottles from
the time when they cried cause their babies were leaving
for the first time and we wait and we wait for the day to be
over so that we can feel like we’re alive again.
pray for us. pray for sunshine. pray for freedom.

-d.k.

i don't want to feel anything ever again

-d.k.

you hold my face in between your hands and kiss me like you’ll never leave again. we’re walking through a crowded park and it feels like spring even though it’s seattle and it will be another few months before the sun comes back. i’m tired and you’re as awake as a four-year-old riding his bike all around the neighborhood. we’re watching kids play football from behind chain-link fences and it’s getting darker and we’re smoking cigarettes and talking about god and our friends and passing out in garages. you’re still the love of my life. i thought that being 500 miles away would erase you from my memory but even alaska wouldn’t be far enough and i woke up this morning with you and a shot of tequila on my mind. somewhere along the way i learned to live with the aching piece of you that follows me wherever i go.

-d.k.

i still make an effort to take a
picture sitting on the back of the bronze
pig outside the pike place fish
market every time i'm in the big
city. not many people know this
but that pig has a name; rachel,
and she's seen more things than
most people in this ol' world.

break-up blows, make-up kisses,
the man walking alone at 1:30 AM without
a coat and gore-tex in the midst of a wet
winter ****** binge.
the new kid, the east coast kid
starting his jewelry biz in '86,
and kurt after he put washington state
on the map - knowing better
than anyone that fame made him
sick. the east coast kid's curly haired
3 month old daughter in august '98,
the 15 year old boy's face after his
chinese fake id scanned,
the invasion of the bloods,
the invasion of the crips,
the tear gas burning the corneas
of our eyes when we tried to
protest.

everyone else disappeared into
the atmosphere,
but she stayed.
and i have no doubt that
rachel, the bronze pig
that's stood in the same spot
at pike place market for
31 years
has got a soul
in there somewhere.

*-z. vega

I. '88 dakota

mondays still ****. granted i don't get up at the crack of dawn no more but around noon i always feel the need to leave the rest of the day behind me and take the big red monster out and go to the beach and contemplate my life for hours, so i'll reach into my tattered 35 year old prada bag for a lanyard that says "nirvana" on it (like the band, not the stage of buddhism), but then i remember that gas guzzler and i got 337 miles between us, no more, no less.

II. whidbey

on wednesdays i feel like i've shifted into an alternate universe where there are things other than evergreen trees and dirt roads, where the view when i look out the window is an interstate and dagger-like icicles that are as tall as me. maybe it started when they took down the texaco star in freeland and maybe it started the day i left, but i'm not sure if i can remember what home feels like anymore.

III. you*

i still miss you on thursdays, sometimes saturdays. i know, i thought i woulda found someone better by now too till i realized that i'd been giving myself false hope this entire time. no one will ever be you. no one's teeth will curve the same way. no one will ever love the home teams as much as you. no one will ever smile as hard when i give them my last kit-kat in a strip mall parking lot at sunset. they drink to dak prescott and spit wintergreen griz more than you ever did. i thought i would find someone better until i walked into the coldest part of heaven with some crinkled twenty dollar bills and a carharrt jacket.

*-z. vega

i'll be home soon. i need to be surrounded by emptiness and bitter cold so i can think about something other than you and your angelic soul and how i'm so in love with you that i can't think straight anymore because you don't love me back

i could go all the way up north
to the oil fields where alaska
meets the arctic ocean and
i would still be reminded
of you with every wave,
every breath that freezes in
the air,
every drop of oil that pollutes
the water.

i could go all the way up north
to the oil fields where alaska
meets the arctic ocean and
i still wouldn't be far enough
away from you.

-z. vega