The Pen and Book Files

This day has been like nothing I ever imagined. That’s what Shiro thought as she opened the box from Sophie. Upon seeing the dress inside, she was unable to hold in a gasp. It was beautiful, unlike anything she had ever seen. Somewhere in her mind, Shiro started matching the dress with accessories in her possession. She wanted to feel beautiful, in this dress from Sophie. Carefully holding the dress to prevent it from wrinkling, Shiro went into her room. She was still grateful to Sophie for what she did. This room bore traces of Shiro’s personality, in the fairy lights along the back wall and the bed pillows, all in shades of brown and white and gold. There was storage underneath the bed; Shiro had asked for it as a special request, and was grateful to Sophie for accepting. Opening one of the drawers, Sophie retrieved her butterfly bracelet from its box. Putting on the bracelet, Shiro matched the rest of her accessories to the dress. She undressed, letting her clothes pile up in the co...

  The girl reached up towards you, her hand shaking. She sees you walking away,  blurring at the edges  just out of sight and the  screams of her telling you to come back, not wanting  you to get hurt by people who don’t understand  language is a precious gift to keep memory sleep under the stars as children  holding close a lullaby. stay close in the dark, where things are not danger and she does not have  nightmares of you on the ground and bleeding the love away. History there, too much history, you in her shadow  so many times to keep her safe at school  blurring at the edges, just out of sight and memory long after they tease her for  trying to hide. Native voices keep memory and bring it back to a place that does not remember you because of the distortion. “You do not belong,” they say to her when they see she loves a girl  but she loves that girl because she doesn’t look like you  The way you are separated by a gu...

 When the music turns on, I can see a scene in my mind’s eye. A woman maybe in her 20’s, wearing a halter dress with a sweetheart neckline. She holds the sides of the dress and smiles as she looks at an unknown someone, lips painted with a dark red. When she extends her hand, the scene changes and she is dancing with that unseen person.  It’s an old-fashioned scene, from the 50’s or 60’s. She dances with the person that I can’t remember even in the midst of my own daydream. They spin around each other and smile. It is with a man, because that is how we are taught to dream. Man marries woman and produces the next generation, leading the way for his queer sons and daughters and Those Who Do Not Wish To Identify to wonder at the system which allows for their continued prosecution. I do not love a man; I do not wish to ever know one at the mandated depth. Yet, our society makes it so imagination does not include those who dare to have it. The scene changes, leaving the girl to spi...

 I would be lying if I said that I knew where to start off here. Like most of the decisions in my life, this one was made pretty quickly and probably not thought out all that well. Regardless, I’m continuing to write now. I’ve been through a lot since I stopped posting stuff here, a lot of it complicated and not all that good. I’m here now, though, and I have survived everything. The thing about anxiety is that it makes things worse, especially the things that make you anxious normally. That’s a huge part of the complications that I’ve been dealing with, especially when it came to the rough patch that was during the holidays. I never stopped writing during that time, but all of it wasn’t exactly happy.  No fluff pieces, for example.  Most of the time, things that I considered writing about were based completely off of my own experience and I knew that presented a huge problem for me. Writing about your own life could only take you so far, especially when your anxieties we...