Visual art by Yulia Kuan
VIGNETTE ONE
Dear Mom and Dad,
Please pardon the smudges, as writing this is making me tremble. In a few hours from now, you will walk into the house like always. “Honey”- you will call- “Darling we’re home.” Without my response, you will tip-toe around the house, assuming I’m already asleep. However, No-Doz has put me in an eternal slumber. I know this news will bring you great misfortune. Please recognize that this is not your fault, but his. You have always been the happiness in my life. Let my ashes swim with the dolphins.
Love Eternally,
J
THE PILLS
She looks at us with her lusty eyes. Lightning tears make war with us, melting us into her. Slowly, we become her, one by one. As we individually make our way down her larynx, we are greeted by the residues of her dinner. And like sugar cubes, we dissolve into her hot lava blood stream. We float through her, changing her, polluting her. We graffiti our chemical identities in her brain. In her, we exceed maximum occupancy of “one every three hours”. Our colony over-populates her adolescent form. Slowly, we kill her.
No-Doz
Mom’s overdose
Hospitalized
Pumped clean
Saved from her ghost
The hospital- where she met my dad
Alchohol- induced psycophrenic
Tragic
Iliad
Dad’s disease made him call himself Jehova
Mom and Dad fuck
Backseat
Toyota
Positive test
Deciding what’s best
Mother torn
Adoption, abortion, life
Baby me born
VIGNETTE TWO
Please refrain from judging my following words, as exposing my soul to a stranger comes with great reluctance. I pray your promises of confidentiality are legitimate, as only the night sky knows my secrets. I am writing this in the solace of my four-walled bedroom. I would have no need to write this if not for he, the cause of my recent metamorphosis from lover to single mother. Looking out my window, I can see the leaves are turning that venom piss color, not unlike the hue of his booze.
Seasons change with love’s rolling tides.
And within my soul, a lost identity hides.
Unwillingly Yours,
J
MARAJUANA
We are the shit that turns fathers into criminals. We tempt the youth generation with our promises of social acceptance and popularity. We produce burnouts, high school drop-outs, addicts, abusers. We produce users. We live in their lung lobes and modify their brains. We are the writers of tragedy and the murderers of identity. We bomb their brains with false imagery. We develop synthetic serenity and plastic euphoria. Encripting dream-like visions. Phantasmagoria.
Dad chooses drugs.
The real one he loves.
Paper wrapped green.
Crumbled love dream.
Scream.
Dark.
Moon beam.
VIGNETTE THREE
Every day, I disappear deeper into my bed of petunias and daffodils. My tattered comforter provides no comfort at all, as these feelings of inadequacy are becoming me. These feelings are engulfing me. Perhaps even killing me. My caccoon is inhibiting my true-nature as a butterfly. This sorrowed bedroom of lavender and gold suppresses my identity with the passing days. My son’s eyes are searching for his inadequate mother trapped in hybernation. And my little boy fears that he’s the cause of my tears.
Unwillingly Yours,
J
PROZAC
We inhabit the bodies of mental hospital patients and housewives. We create mannequins out of men and fabricated females. We are the craze of the crazy. We are guilty murderers with innocent labels.
Tin-foil wrapped wishes
Hershey’s Kisses
Codependent candy dishes
It’s daddy she misses
Diamond tears
I fear those diamond tears
VIGNETTE FOUR
Perfect specimen
Absent father, bound with aggression
Bed-trapped mother, lost in depression
Shit births obsession
Compulsion
Disorder
Whorish hands
OCD demands
Tapping
Brain trapping
Checking the lock on the door
“Go do God a favor”
“Die”
“Gay whore”
Peace no more
Afraid of loss
Tap the possession
Anxious obsession leads to depression
Meditation versus medication
Prozac
Remeron
Abilify
Chemical shit gets me by
Now, I’m becoming what’s prescribed to me. Truth be told, the apple doesn’t fall far from the family tree.