my brain tricks me into thinking
that i'm the only woman
who's turned out jaded
after watching a man eat
chunks of my still beating heart

it's easy to place myself upon
this island, silent and sorry
while i sob under pine trees
and curse the planets for
making me endlessly desire love

i see you approach the shore,
the boat wasn't built with
your own hands, but you're
still a better man than all
of the ones that proceeded you

i speculate that you're here
to hunt weak and easy prey,
truth is that doubt and not loving
myself will be the only misfortunes
that bleed me dry

I keep thinking you're lying in the adjoining bed.
That you're sprawled out, tangled in blankets, your hair a wild mess.
I have the desperate urge to crawl over towards you.
To stroke your errant curls from your forehead and kiss your face.
Whisper your name in your ear until you wake up.
To place my head on your chest and listen to your funny little heart, beating just a bit too quickly.
Your eyes would open and you'd be frustrated at it.
But you would hear your funny little heart and know I was there and we'd be okay.

This is our place; here on Whidbey Island
We came here to escape all the noise of Seattle
To escape the chaos of our friends and family
It was just you and me
Our own little world
Our cleansing time by the ocean

We didn’t have much say much to know the other was content
We sat there by the sand listening to the waves
Letting our hearts whispers to one another
And as I ran my fingers through your hair
And you closed your eyes
At that moment we merged as one

Knowing that this is what we’ve been waiting for our whole lives
Knowing this is the person I want to be with for a long time
This is someone worth fighting for
Knowing that there will be those moments
Of being angry, scared and confused
Sitting in silent aloneness
Waiting for those secure arms and bright smile
To break through all the darkness

Looking out on the sound now
Listening to my single heart beat
Remembering how much I love you
And knowing you are worth this aloneness

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

05/16/2018

i ******* hate structure in every sense of the word. always have.
any expecting mother, upon finding out that she's going to have a baby girl, suddenly begins spending all of her life's work on gingham overalls, and gigantic, faux-velvet bows to adorn her newborn daughter's bald head. my beautiful persian mama had nothing to worry about at first, she had it her way, and for a while, i was the baddest baby on the block, except i didn't have a block. i grew up on a dirt road on an island called whidbey in the north puget sound. much to fatima's dismay, all that little me wanted to wear once i turned six months old and developed a personality was big t-shirts with logos of bands whose music would keep me sane and my heart only half-broken seventeen years later. i wouldn't let her put pants on me. i would crawl around in my backyard in little more than an alice in chains shirt and a diaper, sometimes riding on my beloved golden retriever's back. i was young when my parents realized that they could try all they wanted, but their child, born on the cusp of gemini and taurus, was too much for them to handle.
i started skipping class when i was in kindergarten; i would run out into the acres of heavy forest behind the playground during recess, and i'd be ****** if i decided i wanted to come back. in middle school, i would skip because growing up middle eastern in a post 9/11 society was enough for me to be bullied to a ****** pulp. in high school, i would skip because i wanted to smoke cigarettes behind the football field with my friends who couldn't go to class because they were tweaking too hard. we would make daisy chains and listen to everything that mark lanegan ever made. i was throwing my life away; well, at least that's what they told me, but i was happy. and it was cause i had been successfully fighting the man since before i could walk.