Dear amiga,

I forget my worth sometimes

like not on purpose though.

I get lost in my daily rituals

& end up letting all these losers

in.

This kid man,

he just comes & goes

as he pleases

He takes my offerings

sweet nectarines
tangerines
oranges
pumpkins
sunflowers
honey
lemon cake
that’s all glazed
@ the top

right out my palms

& then asks me to write

a poem about him

what.a.fuckin.joke.

right?

He walks off with my heart in his hands

I only get to keep the heartache & bitterness to pour

into my weekly poems… great, more sad shit.

I will not lie to you friend,

maybe I do put myself in

these

heartbreaking situations for … idunno… inspiration?

Being the 2nd choice fucking hurts, loca.

I don’t think I want to be that anymore

what does it feel like to be the 1st choice?

Is it nice & stuff?

Mira,

I still keep my phone in my hand

even though he lets me know

his ex will be in the city for the weekend.

I make sure to keep my phone on high volume

especially after she goes back upstate

because

I know he’ll need me to vent to

about how he knows his worth

yet still decided to sleep with her

even though she told him

she might be in love with steven or jay.

idunno… one of those.

Tears fill my naïve eyes

as I boost his ego

with my personal list of his best qualities

I say, of course you deserve better, baby…

You’re worth so much more.

“You’re so right. Thank you

for always being there

for me to talk to. You seem to be the

only person who understands me…

better than myself sometimes,”

he says.

but what about me though? hmm?

2 weeks later,

he lets me know

she’ll be visiting

for the weekend

again, so I

keep.my.phone.close

& the cycle begins.

Pathetic

always there.

Signed,

your amiga

from the Heights.

_________________________________________

I write a letter to a friend, but at times that friend is also me. I reflect on a useless man… again. My thoughts are in italics and on the right side of the page to make it obvious that they’re sometimes just thoughts in my head. The stanzas that hold the most sentimentality are centered. I mention an offering that is commonly known to be for the Goddess of fertility and love in the Yoruba religion, her name is Oshun. I list the ingredients in a checklist. Each of the ingredients is sweet or symbolize something that is alive which connects to my love for the person I write about. He robs me of my love offering which leaves the love Goddess with nothing to use to grant my wish of fixing the relationship. In the end, we do not work out and I am implying that he is to blame even though the relationship never had a very good chance of succeeding in the first place. In reality, I am to blame for trying to protect a lover’s feelings more than my own. We are all social distancing and I have always loved the idea of writing letters to my friends, so I wrote this poem in the form of a letter to my amiga. I am venting, but also asking her how she goes about her relationships with men where she never seems to end up in my position, “pathetic & always there.” Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this poem. Stay safe!

Thomas Benke: Looking Around In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, in the Chapter “Looking Around,” says this: Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. Otherwise we’d all just be barking away like Pekingese: “Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it’s your fault, you did this …” Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can’t do that if you’re not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you’re going to get them wrong. She goes on to speak about empathy for other people and also, as an extension empathy for yourself. So, in a sense as you try to write believable, relatable characters, you will come to forgive people their trespasses—because no one believes they are the villain of their story, so you have to write “bad,” or “evil” characters from a point of view where they rationalize what they are doing in such a way that it is the right or only way they see is possible. By extrapolation, then, if you begin to forgive and withhold judgment from your less-than-desirable, or annoying characters, perhaps you can extend the same courtesy to yourself and forgive your own trespasses and sins. This, for me, starts to enter the realm of “writing as therapy,” and though I am a firm believer in that—I practice it to this very day—I think I would caution anyone who thinks that simply writing through things is going to lead you to a place of light and love. I am not saying it can’t by any means. What I am saying is I have wrote through my thoughts and my problems and my desperation and depression for decades and I still had enough baggage on my shoulders to supply an army platoon with rations for a year. In any case, when thinking about craft, it is very important to step into the shoes of all of your characters, especially those characters that you see as antagonists and villians. I believe there are very few universal maxims in writing but one thing is virtually certain: every character you write is your version of that human being. Confucius said “everywhere I go, there I am,” and that is never more true than when you are writing. So if you are writing a character that is distasteful to you, it might be effective for you to ask yourself why that is the case. I wrote a blog for Obscura last semester titled, “The Puppy Had It Coming.” The gist of the article was to pose a puzzle to writers. How can you write a scene where an adult human kicks a puppy across the room and the reader at least understands why. I am not saying there is any way to justify the action or for the readers to be on the human’s side unless they are sociopaths. I am saying you need let the reader know how dark the place is in the character’s mind that he is capable of doing that.

Dear amiga,

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